How To

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Hope you find what you are looking for here or somewhere…

How to install Windows 7 64-bit from a 32-bit Windows XP system?

This is the story of how I installed Windows 7 64-bit on my computer that is currently running 32-bit Windows XP.

Windows 7 release was today, October 22 2009, and I downloaded my version and was all excited to start installing it. Since I had not got my backup installation media yet I was just going to have to install it by using the executable. That was when I ran into the first problem.

I ran the Win7-P-Retail-en-us-x64.exe file I downloaded & it started unpacking setup1.box and setup2.box. It created a folder called expandedSetup and extracted all the files into it. Then I ran into the error message:

“The application cannot find one of its required files, possibly because it was unable to create it in the folder. Please make sure that the folder in which this application is accessible and not read only”.

But soon I found an easy solution to it. At least one that worked for me. If all the files were extracted then this will work, if the extraction was incomplete then you are out of luck. You can make a bootable Windows 7 ISO image with the “expandedSetup” folder, then burn it to a DVD and then boot from it to install your x64 Windows 7 :)

You can go to this page for the solution: How to Create and Make Bootable Windows 7 ISO from EXE Plus Setup1.Box and Setup2.Box Files

Here are the steps in brief:

  1. Move the “expandedSetup” folder to C:\
  2. Download Oscdimg CD/DVD Premastering Utility: oscdimg.exe and put the downloaded oscdimg.exe into %SystemDrive%\Windows\System32 folder
  3. Open a command prompt and run the following command “oscdimg.exe -bC:\expandedSetup\boot\etfsboot.com -u2 -h C:\expandedSetup C:\Win7.iso” (make sure you are logged in as administrator)
  4. Now burn the Win7.iso file located in you C:\ drive using your favorite DVD burning software and voilà you have a 64-bit Windows 7 installation disk

The installation itself takes only 30 minutes and is pretty much hands-off compared to previous versions or Windows.

So I got my install DVD burned and then started the installation. Which is when I ran into another issue. When I selected the drive to install to I got this error message: “Windows cannot be installed to this Hard Disk Space, The partition contains one or more dynamic volumes that are not supported for installation”.

So looks like Windows does not like to install on a Dynamic Drive. I unsuccessfully tried to delete the partition so that it became un-partitioned space, but I was still not able to partition the free space from the installation screen. The solution was to remove all partitions from the disk and then convert it from dynamic to basic. But Windows XP Disk Management would still not let me do it. But the command prompt solution worked. The solutions is available at this Microsoft page: Change a dynamic disk back to a basic disk

Here is the command-prompt solution that worked for me:

  1. Open Command Prompt
  2. Type “diskpart” and hit enter
  3. In the DISKPART prompt type “list disk” and hit enter
  4. Note the number of the disk you want to convert. Assuming it was Disk 2
  5. Type “select disk 2” and hit enter. You should see the following message: “Disk 2 is now the selected disk.”
  6. Type “convert basic” and voilà you have converted it from a dynamic disk to a basic disk
  7. Type “exit” to exit DISKPART and close the command prompt
  8. Now you can use the Disk Management screen to partition to the drive the way you want

So now that I have got the disk converted to basic I rebooted and booted off the Windows 7 64-bit installation disk and started the installation process. 30 minutes later I was up and running Windows 7. The interface is nifty, very responsive, so far I’m very impressed.

Looks like Microsoft has done good this time. No major problems, at least none that could be blamed on Microsoft, and no major driver issues or blue screens.

I have Windows Media Center up and running on my 50 inch Samsung plasma TV.

I am running a 64-bit OS on my 64 bit hardware finally.

I’m happy & I’m loving it.

Microsoft, I hope you stay on this path and not make any mistakes to spoil Windows 7 for us.

Any problems I’ll update the page to let you know.

I hope you were able to find the solution to your problems that brought you here, if not then good luck google-ing or bing-ing, whatever tickles your fancy :)

Good luck!

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