Windows 7 RC1 to Windows Home Premium 64-bit

The RC1 install I've had on my system for most of the last year began rebooting every two hours starting March 1st, right on schedule, so I decided to finally install a copy of Home Premium from the Family pack I bought a while back.  While reading up on Paul Thurrott's excellent guide on how to do a full custom install from upgrade media, I realized that now might also be the time to move from 32-bit to 64.

A year ago I'd seen some horror stories on the web about living with 64-bit Windows, mostly regarding lack of compatible software, and especially hardware drivers, but while researching the laptop I bought for my sister last Christmas, I noticed that the majority of Windows systems being sold to average consumers these days are all 64-bit, so I'm confident most of the issues have been resolved.

Not knowing anything about 64-bit software, the first question I had was: can my Dell XPS 420 desktop run 64-bit Windows?  Below are the instructions I found on Microsoft's "32-bit and 64-bit Windows: frequently asked questions" page:

To find out if your computer is running 32-bit or 64-bit Windows, do the following:

1. Open System by clicking the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking System and Maintenance, and then clicking System.

2. Under System, you can view the system type.

I was happy to discover that my system was compatible with 64-bit Windows, so the next question I had was, does the family pack I bought include 64-bit?  Turns out that most available copies of Windows one purchases include both versions.

After that, the process of installing was the same one I'm used to: Microsoft recommends a clean install from RC1 rather than an upgrade, which makes sense, and I prefer to clean install anyway when I get the chance, since I love working with a brand new system every so often.  The installation procedure itself was exactly the same as I'm used to.

I have had absolutely no hardware incompatibility issues so far - my audio, video, USB, Logitech webcam, wireless NIC, etc., all installed themselves automatically and "just worked".  The only differences I've encountered are:

1. I now have two "Program Files" folders in my C: drive.  The first is called "Program Files", but the second is called "Program Files (x86)".  I'm assuming that there's some kind of 32-bit emulation going on that allows 32-bit software to work within 64-bit Windows, and that second folder is where they get installed, but that's just a guess.
2. Whenever I download a program to install, I look to see if a 64-bit version exists.  If not, I just download the default, and so far, they all work.

I'm going to tag this post "rebuild" and begin a series of posts itemizing the steps I'm taking to rebuild my system.