Installing programs in Win 7 64bit

I am considering upgrading from XP to Win 7 with a clean install.

Currently on my system I keep a few programs on the C drive but most are on another partition.

I have read that 32 bit programs are treated differently to native 64 bit, so can I continue to keep my system of different partitions?

Thanks

 

You can install programs wherever you wish, though I personally have never found a benefit to doing so.

 

Thanks for the confirmation

Each to his own - just my way of doing things.

 

I have all large applications on another drive/partition as well.

On the OS drive, 64bit apps will be installed to "program files" and 32bit apps will be installed to "program files (x86)". You may want to consider recreating this directory structure on your other drive/partition if you want to keep things straight.

The only other factor is that in the registry, 64bit entries appear as normal, while 32bit entries appear in a different parent key. If you plan to use existing installed applications with x64 and export the registry entries, before you merge them you will have to modify them. Nothing major, just an annoying change to everything that has been for years lol.

The advantage for me is that 1) I don't clutter up my SSD drive with gigabytes of programs/games and 2) if I reimage/reinstall I don't have much to manage on my OS drive.

Sul.

 

Thanks Sul

No SSD here but same reasoning.

Think I will try installing them as I am likely to get in a mess with registry entries. If they don't work then that is a fall back.