Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see why you'd want a separate partition for your swap file. If I had 8GB RAM, I'd minimize or eliminate the swap file to save wear on my HD. People say to have 1-2x the amount of physical RAM in swap file space, but I don't agree.
Only in Professional, and I think enterprise, can you use what you're talking about, which is essentially Windows XP in a virtual machine. For those programs, update and patch as much as possible, then if you still have issues running them, try Windows compatibility features, which I've had much success with. If that still doesn't work, you can use the key from you old machine, and a Windows XP CD to install XP in a virtual environment on your new PC.
All modern 64-bit OSes that I know of have a compatibility feature to run 32-bit software. I wouldn't bother with the Virtual PC compatibility thing unless Windows compatibility tweaks won't do the trick. If an OS supports NTFS, FAT 32, and FAT (which Windows does) then it can read any properly written file in that file system, so yes, it does not matter if it's 32 or 64-bit, it can read files made by the other one.
Windows 7 is a pretty good OS overall, and most quirks are distributer-related. There are a lot of changes, and gpedit is only available in the Professional version.

Sincerely,
Jacob Smith

> On May 4, 2014, at 1:45 AM, Yoke Lim Chew <[log in to unmask]> 
> "Final general note: Any advice in general for things to consider or to look
> out for in the installation of 7 64-bit will be gratefully accepted."

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