Serious upgrade problem! My computer previously was 64 bit and now is 32 bit.

[Bill Stanley]

On 04/30/2012 01:09 PM, Chris Green wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 01:01:20PM -0400, Bill Stanley wrote:
> [snip tale of woe]
>
>> I also notice that the boot time is significantly longer.  The boot
>> time for the original installation, 10.10, (turning on,logging in
>> and finally being able to run applications) was less than 30
>> seconds.  For this version upgrade (version 11.10) the boot time can
>> be as much as 3 to 4 minutes.  This might be due to the wrong OS
>> being used.
>>
> You can't upgrade directly from version 10.10 to version 11.10 so I
> suspect something else has happened.

This is true!  I had to go through two steps to get to 11.10 so maybe 
the error was in the first step.  This doesn't alter the fact that the 
OS was changed from 64 bit to 32 bit.

>> Having established that the OS upgrade is in error, I now have to
>> manually change from the 32 bit version to the 64 bit version
>> without losing my data.  Not having to completely replace the OS
>> before, I would like instructions on how best to proceed.
>>
> You will always lose *some* settings and stuff.
>
> You need to back up /home, /etc and /var, to somewhere *off* the system
> you are restoring.  Then do a clean install of the OS you want, then
> restore /home from your backups and the bits and pieces needed from /etc
> and /var.

I'm not too concerned about the changes to data that is not in the home 
directory.  Some of the user settings might be lost and I understand 
that.  I can recover from that, I am just worried about losing data in 
the documents, pectures etc.  My computer has two HDs (the other one is 
Windows 7 which is mostly unused)   I copied my critical data to a 
directory there (I hope Win 7 will be unaffected by this) so it relly 
wont be lost if a real disaster happens.  Still I don't really want to 
do a restore from the saved data on the Win 7 HD.  I will also save the 
/etc and /var directories, but is there any other was other than doing a 
clean install?

Bill Stanley