Migrating from 32 bit to 64 bit on Windows 10

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homoludens1000
Posts: 12
Joined: January 15th, 2009, 7:40 pm

Migrating from 32 bit to 64 bit on Windows 10

Post by homoludens1000 »

I have to migrate from the 32 bit version of Windows 10 to the 64 bit version in order to make use of additional RAM I installed the other day. Since I'd like to make a clean installation of Thunderbird, I have a couple of questions:

1. I understand there's a 3rd party 64 bit version of Thunderbird, would it make sense for me to switch, or should I stick to the 32 bit version? Are there operational problems with the 32 bit version on 64 bit Windows?

2. What would be the best way to backup and re-import my profile (emails and Lightning events / tasks)? I do a regular backup of Windows, can I simply copy the files from my old profile folder to the new one?

My calender is synced through Gmail, so I suppose easiest would be to simply download the data from the Google Server.

Thanks for the help!
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tanstaafl
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Joined: July 30th, 2003, 5:06 pm

Re: Migrating from 32 bit to 64 bit on Windows 10

Post by tanstaafl »

1. I suggest you stick with the Mozilla 32-bit version. Thunderbird doesn't use enough memory that you need to use a 64-bit version, and so far the differences in performance seem to be small. A lot of the performance differences for a third party 64-bit version are due to it being optimized for more powerful CPU's, not it being 64-bit. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/64_bit_builds

2. See the "Quick and Dirty without using Mozbackup" section in http://kb.mozillazine.org/Move_to_a_new_PC . You should be able to adapt that to use your backup.
homoludens1000
Posts: 12
Joined: January 15th, 2009, 7:40 pm

Re: Migrating from 32 bit to 64 bit on Windows 10

Post by homoludens1000 »

Excellent, thanks so much for the advice! :-)
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