SOLVED Trying to upgrade Win10 32-bit to 64-bit

I have a PC which is running Windows 10 32-bit, and I want to upgrade it to 64-bit. I have checked the hardware; it is 64-bit capable.

So, having backed up my files & documents, I downloaded the Media Creation Tool, and had it create a bootable USB stick to install the UK-English 64-bit version from. The tool happily did so.

I went into the BIOS, changed the boot-up sequence to the USB drive (yes, it is listed and therefore bootable) and re-booted.

This is what happens: an underscore character ("_") blinks at the to left of the screen for about 15 seconds. Then, the light-blue Windows logo appears briefly in the middle. Then the blinking underscore appears again. Meanwhile, the USB stick's LED blinks merrliy.

But that's all. Nothing more happens. I left it for 20 minutes, and both the underscore and the USB LED were still blinking away, but nothing else.

I have tried a different USB stick. I have used the media creation tool again. No difference.

What am I not doing right here? Should the USB stick be formatted in a certain way? Should it not exceed a certain size? Or is the media creation tool corrupted? Any ideas?

When I say upgrade, what I mean is I want to install a new 64-bit Windows on the hard disk from scratch in place of the 32-bit one, which is as far as I know the only way of doing it. If my use of the word "upgrade" is incorrect for this procedure, I apologise.

- - - Updated - - -

Anyway, it appears I spoke (typed) too soon: the installation is now running. It appears that waiting 20 minutes was my mistake....... it needed 21.

dalchina said:

Hi you can't 'upgrade' 32 bits to 64 bits.
You can only clean install a 64 bit OS instead.

From the first post:

I downloaded the Media Creation Tool, and had it create a bootable USB stick to install the UK-English 64-bit version from.

It took 21 minutes for the Windows Install blue screen to show up? That seems odd/too long.

Are you sure the computer has a 64-bit BIOS. Many of the mini PCs have 64-bit processors but they only have 32-bit BIOS that won't boot a 64-bit OS.

The Shuttle PC in your specs only has a max memory capacity of 4 GB, so I'll bet it only has a 32-bit BIOS.

Nevermind. I see the update now!

Is the Shuttle PC in "My Computer" the one you're trying to install X64 on? With 2GB of RAM (the maximum the 915GM chipset supports), it must be really marginal. As well as ancient. I see that you have a discrete graphics card, so at least you won't be affected by the lack of graphics drivers for the 915GM chipset.

I'm not sure why it would be so hesitant to boot from a USB flash drive. Even if the installer refused to allow the installation to proceed, I'd expect it to get to that point fairly quickly. (I imagine that the executable is 32 bit, even for an X64 install. I hope that others will correct me if I'm mistaken.)

The only restriction that I know of is that the USB drive must be FAT32 if you're installing onto a UEFI machine. I doubt that applies here. I presume that the MCT creates a FAT32 system by default, regardless. (I've never done that. I always have the MCT create an .iso, and I manually produce the USB drive from that.)

Those are cute cases Shuttle PC Rebuild - YouTube