Windows Vista Re-installing Vista, then upgrading to Win 7

I've been "playing" with this activity for 18+ months, in my head and reading about "WHAT TO DO "!!! Haven't pulled the trigger, yet, and wanted to verify with the experts, first!!! My Vista Ultimate- 32 bit, is sick and I haven't been able to install "fixes" or various "new" apps., for this period of time.

Here's my main questions:

1. Should I use the "recovery" partition to go back to day 1, or reinstall from the DVD that Gateway provided? I have the necessary app. discs. to reinstall and Norton 360 backup on second internal drive.

2. Once step 1 is done, I plan to install Win 7 Professional - 64 bit and the necessary drivers. Is this sequence doable?

The desktop is about 3 yrs. old with 4 G of ram, 2 hard drives (250 G and 500 G), 4 partitions and a quad processor. Partitions are: (first drive) C "“ OS most apps, and whatever else Windows put on C. D - Gateway's recovery to day one. (second drive) E- data and all files from Office apps. F - Norton 360 backup, Adobe's Elements and all pictures.

Just happened to think, would it make sense to install more RAM before Win 7 or after. It may not matter.

Thanks for ANY ideas and help.

Downsized

 

Are you sure your PC is 64 bit? Is this an upgrade Win 7 or a regular? Don't know if on a clean install with an upgrade with Win 7 works like some of the other Windows OS did, but all you had to do on a clean install of an Upgrade OS was to have the old OS disc and the Key Code if I remember right.
Clean install with a format is in my opinion the best way. Gets rid of all the Bogey men and gremlins.