Upgrade journey from Windows XP 32-bit to Windows 8 64-bit

Now is the time to upgrade to Windows 8! Microsoft offers it's new version of Windows for a price you can't say "No" to, but only until end of January 2013.

Summary | This blog post shows how to upgrade from 32-bit Windows XP to 64-bit Windows 8 with a purchased downloadable upgrade. This is possible without buying the physical DVD despite contrary reports.

While taking the option to download your new Windows 8 is the quickest and cheapest one it can have its pitfalls. Have a close look at the bitness of your systems! Especially if you are upgrading from 32-bit to 64-bit you have to take care of not getting the wrong upgrade version.

Upgrading to Windows 8 (32-bit and 64-bit) from Windows XP (32-bit)

Downloading installation files - easy

I chose to upgrade an old XP (32-bit) installation of mine. I thought 30 € for a download sounds like a good deal, so I chose this option. After purchasing you have to download and start the setup file Windows8-Setup.exe. It downloads about 3 GB of data (2,05 GB for the 32-bit version, 2,62 GB for the 64-bit version):

Then it asks you how to proceed. Among the available options should be the one to create a medium to install from. This would create an ISO file you can burn to DVD. The setup screen should look like this:

But it didn't.

So the lesson here is:

If you are running Windows XP 32-bit you will not get the option to create an installation medium and you will not be able to create an ISO file.

At least the option was missing for me.

Getting an ISO on Windows XP - not so easy

I want to have an ISO file I can burn, so what do I do now? I decided to try running the setup on another PC running Windows 7. So I needed to find the files downloaded by setup to copy them.

On Windows XP the Windows8-Setup.exe downloads files to a hidden directory ESD on the system disk, e.g. C:\ESD. I copied the folder to the Windows 7 (64-bit) machine (also to C:\ESD) and started the Windows8-Setup.exe there. That looked much better. It recognized the copied ESD folder and offered me the option to create an installation medium.

So I clicked "Install by creating media" and it did as told. It created an ISO file I could use to install Windows 8. 32-bit.

Oops. I got an installation medium for 32-bit Windows 8 but needed 64-bit!

Getting an 64-bit ISO - easy again. But remember those old preview versions!

So the second lesson was:

Starting Windows8-Setup.exe from a 32-bit system will provide you with a 32-bit version of Windows 8.

To get the 64-bit version I obviously had to start the Windows8-Setup.exe and the download on a 64-bit system. On my Windows 7 machine I deleted the ESD folder I previously copied and started the setup again. That worked. It started downloading and the amount of data now was more than before. I again chose "Install by creating media" and got an ISO bigger than before (2,05 GB x32 vs. 2.63 GB x64). This was it.

To get 64-bit Windows 8 run Windows8-Setup.exe on a 64-bit system.

I omitted one detail in the above description: I had to remove the folder C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WebSetup as it still contained content from a previously installed Windows 8 Consumer Preview. I think this is why the Windows 8 setup once showed the wrong registration key (I assume this was the evaluation key for the consumer preview) and tried to read from the folder C:\WindowsESD which still contained the Consumer Preview installation files. Such errors looked like this:

Removing said directory solved these issues.

Third lession:

Remove old files from Windows 8 Consumer Preview setup.

I now have an ISO for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 8. It took a bit longer than expected but finally it all worked out.

Bonus Lesson - match your licenses and ISO files

You are allowed to upgrade up to 5 old PCs of yours. As this is a nice way of getting rid of old machines I took this offer and bought two upgrades, both delivered digital. Because both upgrades were to Windows 8 64-bit I burned only one DVD. Windows 8 is Windows 8, right?

Wrong!

One license/product key is associated with one Windows8-Setup.exe which will install (or create an ISO for) a Windows 8 that can only be activated using this exact same product key.

Apparently some licensing information is already embedded in the downloaded files. I found this as I installed Windows 8 from the DVD burned after buying the first upgrade but tried to activate using the second product key. This didn't work. So I really had to create two media for two product keys. Out of curiosity I calculated CRC checksums of both ISO files and the result was indeed different.

To spare you the hassle you should burn one DVD per upgrade license.