"Upgrading" from OEM Vista 32 to 64 - a story

My HP Pavillion shipped with a copy of Windows Vista 32-bit OEM edition, but like alot of people I wanted to put in some more RAM, only find out out the 4GB limitation inherent in any 32 bit operating system.

So I went out and bought a full retail copy of Windows Vista Ultimate and a new motherboard and case and went upgrade crazy until I had bassicly built an entirely new system. I took my old hard drive out an reformatted it, kissing (I thought) goodbye to my old Windows Home Premium 32-bit.

But as the months wore on, my old motherboard case beckoned me with it's empty CPU slot, and eventually I relented. I bought a E5200 and hardrive, did some BSEL and VID mods and overclocked that sucker to 3.34 ghz.

But I had a problem - no operating system! I had lost my HP system recover discs! I got on the phone and yelled at HP - who here in Thailand, didn't support my U.S. purchased computer.

Then one morning I woke up on the floor from another drunken bender, and as I lay next to my HP case I noticed something - it had an OEM Vista Product Key printed on the side of it!

I staggered over to my copy of Vista Ultimate 64, put in the disc, entered my OEM product key...and it worked! I had wasted hundreds of dollars on a upgrade I didn't need! Aahahahahahah

So to anybody with an 32 bit OEM copy of vista - just borrow a 64 bit vista disc from somebody or download the image from a torrent and install it using your orginal Vista OEM Product Key! You'll have to do a fresh install, but you'll experience the radiant joy of seeing your system showing 8 GB of System RAM!

I love you long time

Wheres a good place to get a 64 vista .iso?
Torrent site or just pinch my dads ultimate DVD?
He is a stickler for security and licencing and such so if theres any risk involved to him then he wont go for it.

32 bit vista OEM btw..

If your dad has the media, I'd use that with your key.

And remember, that it has to be a clean install. So use a separate partition/drive if at all possible. Make sure you have your drivers on hand, and back up your Data! If you *must*, then Vista 64 will put your data into a folder called WINDOWS_OLD. Once you have verified that all is well, then you can safely delete the Windows_Old folder to free the drive space.