My newbie take on 64bit Vista.

So I decided to do a fresh reinstall of Vista Ultimate, and choose 64Bit instead.

After complete install, I noticed is that it seemed to run a bit smoother and feel more stable, Ram usage is pretty much the same as it was on 32Bit.

It creates a "Program Files (x86)" Folder for the non 64bit apps. And I was able to Install Most of my basic used programs with no problem what so ever. SWEET ....... and at least I know what apps fall into what category.

This was surprising to me as all I ever heard about 64bit was compatibility issues.

There were very few issues:

When I installed Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional, I had to extract the AdobePDF.dllx64 file and rename it to minus the x64 at the end, the put it in the folder it's installing to.

TugZip installs and works, but it's right click options under 64Bit doesn't show. I'm just installed 7-Zip instead.

Another problem I had was the pop-up for install flash, I had to press it a thousand times and still nothing, so what I did was press the don't allow button and check don't ask me again box. Then I went to Adobe site to downloaded flash manually. Now flash plug-in is installed with no problems.

Thats the only minor problems that I had to fix so far. Other than that everything is working perfect.


Programs that I'm running at the moment are:

Browsers: FireFox2, Opera9, Safari Beta, AOL Explorer 1.5

Apps: Nero 7 Ultra, Google Earth, Office 2007, Trips & Streets 2007, Trillain Messenger, 7-zip, Limewire Pro, Azureus 2.5(3.0 SUCKS!!).

EDIT: CCleaner, Windows Washer, and Avast Home(Free) Version also work flawless.

I'm still installing more apps. But for now I really don't see that much of a Compatibly problem and I feel a slight increase of performance overall.




I would recommend 64bit over 32bit to anyone. Thats only on Vista of course, XP might be a differ story.

 

there aren't really any problems with vista 32 bit or 64 bit, except for driver support. that problem is amplified in vista 64 bit. if you can find all of the drivers for all of your hardware, there isnt much else holding you back from vista 64 bit (unless you are a gamer- the dx9 support in vista is not very good at the moment)

 

LIVEFRMNYC did you have any driver issues with your aspire 5102 when you went to vista 64, or did windows detect and find drivers for all the components? I know acer doesn't provide any 64bit drivers so this is why I am asking.

 

No problems at all with drivers, I just made sure to use the update drivers for Vista. Vista detected some drivers and/or Updates that were just for 64Bit, being it had x64 next to them.

Installing DX9 and Java wasn't a problem either.

I can't speak for gaming. As I don't plan to game on Vista period.

The minor hiccups I mention above is the only problems I had so far.

 

I run Oblivion flawlessly on x64. During the betas I had loads of driver issues with the 64 bit version. When the RTM version arrived, all of those problems were alleviated (for me). Vista x64 has been great for me!

 

Great news, guys. So as long as you're not running games you've been fairly crash free? Or completely crash free?

 

I haven't seen a crash yet. I take great care of the machine, and make sure everything is working the way it should. Basically, as long as Vista does its job as an OS, I don't mind the change behind the scenes.

 

You can run games without worry. 98% crash free, as no OS is crash free.

Most drivers/generic drivers are inside the OS for the basic hardware.

 

Been using Vista Ultimate x64 myself for a few weeks.

Adobe does not have a x64 flash plugin/codec yet. If you look closley at your internet explorer options you get BOTH a x86 (32bit) and x64 (64bit) version of Internet Explorer. The quick launch icon is default with 32bit.

I also put firefox 2 on there wich is 32bit.

I didn't catch this at first since I had flash installed on both the 32bit IE and FF2 and found that my quick launch was 32bit and wondered why it didnt use 64. So I replaced it manually and started to use the 64bit browser. Then I got the popup to install flash every time I was on a flash page and wondered why it didnt work. Went to go install in manually and thats when I found the documentation that there is no 64bit flash player yet. (there is for shockwave)

So thats not a big deal I guess, just use the 32bit browser. Im supprised to see there is no 64bit flash yet tho, you would think adobe would be right on top of that.

As for stability, its rock hard stable, no crashes or issues at all. All of my programs have worked so far. Using a x64 OS doesnt mean all of your drivers have to be x64. Most of the x86 drivers will still work if you dont have new x64 ones. Including windows xp drivers if there are no Vista ones avalible.

x64 also has one additional security feature that x86 doesnt have, be it good or bad. Thats kernal protection. If somthing isnt digitally signed and verfied it cant run in kernal mode and thus cant attack or mess up your system files.

So for things like... say the xbox xbcd drivers that are unoffical drivers for the microsoft 360 controller they have to enter kernal mode to install... and vista wont let it. But you can manually overide it. So its a safty feature that will prefent a virus or somthing from getting to your kernal if you run somthing on acident or it auto exicutes. but at the same time if you know somthing is safe you can overide it.

I have not used x86 vista yet, I have dual boot xp / vista ultimate x64 and have done various benchmarks with diffrent games for performance and despite the fact that vista is running much faster, and loading things faster, and even web browsing faster. Game performance is down for me in every game so far by about 10fps.

I dont know if its vista and somthing its doing, or because the video drivers for x64 vista are behind the xp drivers. But it sucks.

The ONLY issue so far is battlefield 2142 crashes to desktop somtimes at round end, and thats an issue with the game not vista, and that game has ALOT of errors/crashes on every OS.

Shadowrun also is barly playable on my machine one of the new Vista only games, there is a crack out to let you play it on xp so when I get my hands on that I'll see if it suddenly becomes playable on XP.

Oh yeah actully a few things I forgot about.

> I have not gotten fraps to work on Vista Ult x64. The program runs fine and installs fine but the actual functions are not working.

> In Azurius somtimes my first torrent in a list just vanishes from the upload/download list. Its still there but its not showing up. To fix it you just have to close the "torrents" window and open it back up and it refreshes and you can see it again. This I dont know if its a program issue or a vista issue because I have experience a strange issue similar where I uninstalled a program or deleted some files and the folder or icon stays visible but its not actually there anymore. So if you go to delete it again because you can still see it "file not found" pops up. If you close the window your in and reopen it, it refreshes and its gone. If it happens on the desktop, loging off and back on fixes it. This has not happened to me recently tho.

Since I have a good feel for vista now and dont see any real NEED for xp anymore when I get my notebook I think I will set up a dual boot for vista x86 and vista x64 intead of XP/Vista and then do various benchmarks between the two and see if there is a diffrence.

Maybe that performance kill I am experienceing in games will be gone, or I fill find x86 to be just as good as x64 and move to it. Because there is no real big reason to use x64 unless you want 4gb of ram, or happen to use a native x64 program that gets a good boost in x64 mode. However if x86 shows no advantage to x64 I will stick with x64 and be more ready for the future.

 

Interesting read. I'm getting a new hard drive soon, and that means reinstalling. I was playing with the thought of trying x64 at the same time, maybe I'll do that now.

EDIT: And I hear you about BF2142. Man, that game can be incredibly unstable at times.

 

Yeah thats why I cant blame it all on vista because it has issues on every OS. I personally never had any on XP tho.

The only error I can tie it to is people saying there is a memory leak in x64 vista that causes a crash at round end. Thats when mine crashes but i dont get a memory error just a bf2142pace.exe error.

The game runs good for me in vista, but the loss of probably about 10fps is the diffrence of when im pushing my system to the max in xp with alot of combat inside of a titan and still having no lag or skiping and giving me a bad experience when in the same situation in vista.

For the other times like outside and stuff tho its just fine.

I am playing at 1920x1080 with every setting at the max tho, so I think im lucky for it to run as smooth as it does.

 

And people say we Linux guys are nuts because we have to do work-arounds to make stuff work....

Anyway, 64bit Windows actually has two copies of the registry, one for 64bit programs (and running the desktop, etc.) and one for 32bit programs. TugZip probably just installed it's right-click options into the 32bit registry and they aren't loaded or something. But 7-Zip is open-source which I've found is less sketchy, so I wouldn't worry about it

 

I'm thinking about switching to 64Bit Ubuntu too. Would you have any experience with that? I'd figure it'll be an even better improvement than Vista since it uses less RAM. But I'm worried about the driver issues.

At the time of the TugZip problem I was thinking of install it in the regular programs folder, instead of the programs(x86) folder. But that would chance it to the 64bit reg, would it? I didn't know about the two reg copies. Good info.

 

See the sig I'm running 64bit Kubuntu on my laptop. Wine will not work natively under the 64bit version, so you'd have to install 32bit libraries, etc. to get it running. But if an open source driver works under 32bit Linux, it will work fine under 64bit Linux. I don't know about your Radeon, though... the fglrx drivers are the only thing I don't have experience with. You'd have to research that. Everything else would be fine, though.