OK, i have hopefully just one more question for you guys. I really hope you can help me with this one!!!
so i backed up my entire c partition with acronis, and replaced my 7077 build of win 7, with the 7100 rc, using the technique you listed above. but instead of staying with the 32 bit system, i went with the 64 bit system. and OH MY GOD WAS IT FAST!!!!! i mean my computer didn't wait for anything. everything i clicked on was up before i finished the last click. really, really fast in doing everything, and that was with out any readyboost, or eboostr. that is the good news.
now for the bad news, when i completed all the initial setup procedures, i decided to restore my previous loads settings, so i could have everything just the way i had it, which was perfect. however, acronis kept crashing, and would not even run properly on my new x64 build. so i decided to restart into my win vista ultimate partition, and do everything from there. and while acronis would load and work in vista ult, after restoring everything, i went back to win 7 x64, but nothing worked. instead of the programs being in the \"programs folder\", the programs restored to a folder called \"programs x86\", and would not run on the new x64 sys.
now, it was my understanding, that 64bit systems can run 32bit software, but not hardware. so what am i missing? how can i do this? i don't use any really old software, everything is fairly new. so i am perplexed as to why i am having the problems, unless it is just a problem to transfer 32 bit programs from a 32bit system, to a 64 bit system. is that a no go?
more good news, however, is that acronis did perfectly restore my 7077 build, to my c partition, afterwards. so i have my win 7 32bit system running again, but still want to load the 64 bit system.
how can i use acronis to keep ALL OF MY SYSTEM SETTINGS??? i love the way i have my 7077 build setup, and it hasn't given me any trouble at all. but now i am drunk with the speed of the 64 bit sys, and would like to set the x64 up, just like i have the x86. i hope you can help. thanks.