I recently chose Ubuntu MATE for my desktop. Windows had been crashing frequently, and I have been unable to connect to the internet after a ‘reset’ of Windows 10. My Dell XPS Studio 8000 is 7 years old, so I chose the 32-bit install because it was recommended for older machines. I found out later it is a 64-bit machine. Is there a way to convert the 32-bit install to 64-bit without wiping the partition and starting over? Thanks for your help.
Why dont you want install a fresh 64 bit installation ? Have you show much software installed or why ? I think you can use Aptik -software to backup your software installations and restore with it to new installation. But I not sure does it work from 32 bits Ubuntu to 64 bit version 
I’ve always heard it’s not impossible, but highly impractical. Too much has to change. An expert could probably do several fresh installs in the time it would take to figure it all out - that sort of thing.
I was wondering if the conversion could be as simple as downloading the latest release. I have been running regular Ubuntu on my laptop for about 10 years and the updates have been easy to manage. My 10-year-old laptop started showing significant signs of strain (swapping with the hard drive) after the update to 16.04 LTS, so I switched to Xubuntu for that machine.
Doing a fresh install is not a major challenge, I was just thinking there may be an easier option. Thank you, gentlemen!
Following on with what @Bill_MI said – technically possible but highly impractical. There’s a detailed answer here:
A fresh install will be the quickest and least hassle for the long run 
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Looks like it’s a new thing to play with for the experienced users
It’s called crossgrading… I recently learned this word when I looked at this bug report.
There’s a couple of links to the instructions inside, but I have no idea if the process would be different in Debian and Ubuntu. One thing I’m sure about, you better have a backup before trying it out 
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