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The CD key should be on the bottom of the laptop, you should also be able to create an install CD from the files on the machine, most OEM laptops have this option buried away somewhere, which brand is it?
32bit means you only see 3.25GB of your 4GB of RAM, so if you don't need that extra half a gig or so, and have no intention of adding more RAM you can stick with 32bit.
As for things to watch out for, if you can't make a CD of the install from your current machine, get the SATA drivers ready ahead of time in case you have to load them during install. Especially if installing using AHCI for the HDD. Much easier to download all the drivers for your machine now and put them on a CD.
Especially the network drivers, as you will need them before you can connect to the internet to download the rest!
I tend to download all the drivers ahead of time, that way if it takes a while to find one, you are not trying to do so on a half-functioning machine.
Other things are the usual, make sure you have you internet and mail logons and passwords, use a disk image program to back up to an external drive so you can do a full restore if it all goes pear shaped, and get together a list of the software and their codes etc. that you need to do your reinstallations.
I usually also download the latest versions and have all my utility software ready to install from a CD so they are all in one place (winrar, foxit PDF reader, browser install etc.)
That is about it really!
-P
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