Asus U6Sg and Vista Business 64

Step 1

I finished my hunt for drivers and went for it, so I thought . I backed up my laptop, made sure I did not forget anything and rebooted. On reboot, I plugged in the DVD9 Vista MSDN SP1 Integrated Disk I have with every possible version. I chose x64 Business and went ahead. My first shock was the size of the thing. I was cleaning up my old partitions and it said that Vista needs over 20 GB to install. I said, hang on skippy, will give that space, let me format . So I format, and wait for the installer. I must say it took way longer than 32. I think it took 50 % longer. I was thinking why. Then I realised it needs to add an extra 8GB of data compared to the old one.


Step 2

Set up was finished. Reboot laptop set it up, it looked bad. I was still an optimist. I hook my 1 TB external USB drive, browse to my 64 bit folder and start running apps:

1. ATK drivers. Borrowed from U6Vc
2. Intel Sata Storage (intel.com)
3. Wi-Fi driver (intel.com)
4. Power4Gear (asus, U6V)
5. GPU from Asus website.
6. Touchpad, epic fail. The 64 drivers I found gave an error message that OS component was missing. No worries, went on the synaptics website, downloaded the right one.

Note:

I had some difficulties downloading the GPU driver and because of this my fn+f5 and fn+f6 keys were disabled. You need the driver to be able to use it.

Similarly, the touchpad fn shortcut is disabled if there is no driver.


Step 3

Go online and update windows. I had no AV so, I was desperate. Look through my discs and found Norton x64Vista Corporate latest version.( I have it from work). Put it up, as soon as I connect windows downloads over 130 MB of updates.

1. Install Office 2007. No problems with it. It took less time than normal.
2. Install Adobe CS4 Master. This took roughly the same time it takes on 32. I could see 64 bit components being installed. I ran Photoshop CS4 at the end and it talks half the time to load than on 32. I was stunned.

3. Install Creative. If sound was bad on 32 Vista wait till you get to 64 Vista. OMFG! Creative simply gave up on proper drivers. The latest drivers for Vista 64 are old. Anyways, it sounded bad on 32, it won't bother me on 64. I use my Platinum on XP for quality.

Step 4

What's in the bag?

1. 64 bit OS working with the current 32 bit Key. I used the ABR tool. Probably the best invention after the wheel .




2. Proper 4GB usage. No more, tweaks and random PAE commands on Vista 32 to force 36 bit usage. My Vista kept reporting different numbers. Either 3.12 either 3.55 GB. Anywho, 64 bit . In this shot I was doing some updates that is why I am using so much. Both 64 and 32 bit tasks are shown.





3. Windows Explorer has some changes on drive C. There is a new folder in there and every 32 bit app installed has an (x86) identifier. So far all my 32 bit apps work fine on Vista 64.




4. Some Asus apps don't work. Asus Copy Protect always gives and end task message at start-up. Uninstalled and cleaned the trash from it with CC Cleaner. Message gone.



Stay tuned, will update this as soon as I have more info on stability, crashes, and of course, BSODS with some drivers .