Desktops & All-In-Ones

[LloydPryce]

Acer Aspire M5640 AM5640-E5500A Intel Desktop PC - Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz, 3GB DDR2, 640GB SATA II, Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Player/DVDRW, ATI Radeon HD3650, TV Tuner, Gigabit, Vista Home Premium

That is as much detail on what I have as I could find. 

My question: is it possible to change to a 64-bit OS using the same WIndows Vista 32-bit product key? Someone told me I could download the 64-bit version and install over. Would I loose any of my data? 

The reason I am asking is I am having trouble installing a 3 TB Seagate 3.5 inch internal hard drive and getting full function from that drive. I get the 1st 750 Gigs and then maybe another 1.3 TB using the Computer managemnt software in Control Panel. I can format the full 3 TB using my laptop which is running Win 7. If I cannot install the 64-bit over the 32-bit, could Win 7 solve this issue? 

I did download a 64-bit Win 7 and tried installing it on the 3 TB HD as a primary drive but I only got 760 Gigs of the drive and Computer management could not give me the rest. It has been a very frustrating month or trial and error -- mostly errors!! 

The other issue is the Win 7 on the 3 TB drive is missing a coprocessor driver. Can anyone point me where to find one? Update and the Win 7 disk cannot install one. 

Thank you, 

Lloyd 

[Acer-Tommy · Accepted solution]

Disclaimers and Information up front:
http://community.acer.com/t5/Community-KB/Installing-a-different-Operating-System/ta-p/48739

32-bit product key will not allow you to install a 64-bit version of Windows Vista. The keys are different.

The original recovery media will only recover the operating system that Acer shipped with the system.

Most likely you are running into an issue with the drive architecture, probably 4KB blocks, which are not being recognized by the system.

You may find additional information that helps here on the Microsoft site:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2510009