Will I be able to upgrade? If yes, should I?

[senorcarne]

Ok, I have Windows Vista Home Premium but had a problem and instead decided to use Windows XP Professional. I missed media center so I hacked my professional into Media center through the common methods online (basically change a registry key and install Media Center, Pre-Rollup 2, and Rollup 2) while it still uses your XP Pro license key.

There are some things I love about XP - driver support is much better in XP and some things work better. But I see no performance gains over Vista despite what everyone says, and my games that are DX10 don't look as good in XP (obviously, because it's missing DX10).

Now, I was thinking of upgrading to my Vista Home Premium and probably will if you can answer these questions:

1) Home Premium can't install over XP Pro. But since the computer thinks its Media Center Edition, would the install work?
2) I spent a few days perfecting my XP install. It has all my games, all completely updated, as well as all my programs. Would an upgrade to Vista keep these things or would I need to reinstall?
3) A continuation of 2, will Vista be slow because it has XP installed under it, or would it be as fast as a clean install?

Also, I had Vista 64, but I would be upgrading to Vista 32. I have 2 GB of RAM. Do you think I should, or just keep a perfect install of XP?

Thanks!

 

[Archer75]

ALWAYS do a clean install of an OS. Always. There is just too many problems with installing over the top of another OS. Your system specs are fine in terms of upgrading.

I'd go with the x64 version. Better performance(there are benchmarks to back this up). It seems more robust to me. More stable. I have x64 on my desktop but I use Vista 32bit on my HTPC due to certain codec issues. Mainly AC3filter and Haali splitter not working so well with 64bit and Media Center. But they play fine in WMP.