This could sound kinda newbie but I have been running windows xp home for a long time now. My cpu fan was getting ready to die so I just got this wild hair to throw in a new motherboard, cpu, heat sink& fan and all were built for 64 bit. My question is do I have to upgrade to a windows 64 compatible o/s now? in order to boot this new hardware? is it imposible for the system to boot with 64 bit hardware and 32 bit o/s?

Thx for the help

Diamond

You can still use 32-bit software on 64-bit capable systems.
It is too early to migrate to 64-bit right now.
Wait for Vista.

That wasnt an answer that was your opinion but thnx anyway.

Read again very carefully... he did answer your question:

That means any version of Windows (other than for IA-64) can be installed on that system... 32-bit or 64-bit... it doesn't make a difference in terms of installing the OS. The only problem you might find is with 64-bit drivers for your hardware. Ensure that all your hardware has 64-bit drivers available before you make the leap to 64-bit.

That was a bit more of an answer. I wasnt being rude in the last post I guess i was just hoping for a more in-deph answer like yours.

Thnx!

Is your new CPU an Itanium? :?

If Itanium is intel then no what i have is a biostar nf325-a7 motherboard and a amd athlon 64 cpu