Upgrading 32-bit Win7 to 64-bit Win10?

Thank you.

Winfried said:

The mobo on my old computer has two RAM slots, and supports up to 16GB of DDR3, so I'm thinking of getting two 8GB sticks for a total of 16GB.

Can I use any DDR3 stick, and expect it to slow down to whatever speed the mobo supports?

"Supports DDR3 2400+(OC)/1866/1600/1333/1066/800 non-ECC, un-buffered memory"

Don't think you will ever use more than 8G. My suggestion is to buy (4+4)G


ddr3 | Newegg.com

I might, but I can always upgrade later.

Winfried said:

I might, but I can always upgrade later.

New computers use DDR4 and DDR5 is on the way so you can't use DDR3 on new computer.
On a old computer I wouldn't put a lot of memory that won't be used.

Is there an application that 1) takes the path to an app and 2) watches all the files + Registry hits that second app uses, with the option of filtering (eg. show only use of the Registry + INI files) so that I can see what it does?

That would be an easy way to see where each app saves its settings, and just copy/paste into the new host to avoid having to reconfigure each app manually.

I would buy another disk, preferably an SSD and install Windows 11 or 10 64-bit there. I would dual boot with Windows 7 32-bit. This would give me the time to install my old applications one by one while still having a fully working system, so no hurry. After I would install all my applications on the 64-bit system, I would copy all my data and make sure I am 100% ready to replace my old system. I would then remove the old disk to avoid any fatal mistakes and I would keep it as a backup. I have done the same since Windows 98. I dual booted with Windows XP before fully adopting it. I then dual booted XP with Vista, then 7 with 10 and I will dual boot 10 with 11. It is the safest way.

Thanks for the tip.

This is what I did, with a KVM switch.

I'm currently almost there, and just switch back and forth at the tip of a button.

A few notes about installing from clean:
1. Take your time. In first day, I would install OS, drivers and minimum essentials apps only.
2. For rest of week, slowly install the apps in order of importance or that you need to run them now.
3. For free or shareware try a tool like Chocolatey.org which is a package manager and can install many apps at once!
4. Keep copies of software on a external hard disk or USB for easy access and save time downloading them again.