Doubling the Bits, Tripling the Memory, It's Upgrade Time! »
After my last memory upgrade, things were going along pretty well. The Crucial 2GB Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory was doing well. But naturally, I decided that it was time to play again. I'll get to that story shortly. Actually I have two stories to tell - the first is in upgrading the CPU (3GHz, here I come!) and the second is in replacing that Crucial memory). But that will have to wait.
I knew before I ordered the Crucial memory that I'd be stuck at less than 4GB of memory. It's a problem with any 32-bit operating system - you just can't get over the virtual address space, inherent in any 32-bit OS. Yet I had a monstrous 8GB now loaded in the box. What was I to do? I had to figure out a way to access this memory, and there was no way I was going to install Vista. Luckily, it's spring, which means that I am in the process of cleaning things, and during that never-ending horror, I came across a disk that contained
Microsoft Windows XP Professional 64Bit SP2C
. That's right - not just Windows XP Professional, but the 64-bit edition. Yeah, baby! It's time to have some fun.
So I loaded up the disk and started the installation. Naturally, I had to reboot with the CD in to make it work. That worked. But then I get all sorts of ominous warnings about overwriting the partition, removing user accounts, and generally rendering the previous version of Windows useless. Yada, yada, yada. Let's get on with it. I've been chomping at the bit to use some more of this memory already, let's just do it. I start it up, and promptly witness it actually removing the prior Windows directory. That's cool. I'm actually good with it, makes things work better I figure. Then the install takes off in earnest and I go have dinner, only to come back and see that the system can't connect. To anything. I scrounge up a CD for the motherboard drivers and manage to get back online after I figure out how to manually reinstall the 64-bit version of the necessary drivers. Probably should have had those ready in advance. But it wasn't too bad.
Then I install the mouse drivers, ignoring the warnings about digital signatures. It's getting late. And the mouse dies. Crap. Guess I'll just watch some television.
This morning, I decide to plug another mouse in, which reverts to old mouse drivers, and I notice that there are still a bunch of old programs installed in Program Files. This is the biggest problem that I've noticed to date. The x64 programs are installed in Program Files, while the x86 programs are installed in Program Files (x86). It really makes sense, but if you install over the top of an old computer, you end up with 64-bit programs (or drivers, as is the case here) intermingling with the old 32-it drivers in the same location. So after running all the updates, I wipe out the Program Files directories, reboot and reinstall. Guess what? The mouse works fine.
My big advice? Don't install over the top. What should have happened is that Program Files should have stayed as it was, and the x64 programs should have had a new place to live - like Program Files (x64). That way, those new drivers wouldn't have clobbered any old ones lying around. But that would have been too easy, huh? Anyway, after cleaning up that mess, everything else really went pretty well. I had to download a couple other things like plugins and whatnot, but it's been nice, working from a bit of a clean slate.
Since I'm rather anal about that sort of thing, when I install a program that's going to (x86), I look to see if there's a version in the old Program Files directory, and rename it there, so that I can have it for backup (and later) cleanup later.
As to the memory? I'm happily humming along at 8GB (just about triple the RAM that I had, at least as to what was recognized). And the CPU is at 3GHz - currently not overclocked, as I'm waiting on an RMA. But both of those are stories for another time.
Do you have any experience on upgrading to the x64 platform? Vista or XP? Clean install or upgrade? How did it go? I'm seeing what seems to be an overall smoother performance, presumably because there's so much headroom in here.
Comments (2)
You thought Vista x64 would be a headache, so you went with XP x64? That's weird. I did the same upgrade as you a month or so ago: I was blown away that 8GB of RAM was a whopping 140.00. What a bargain.
http://loytty.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!D38B786E8EA7A572!37645.entry
The driver situation on Vista x64 is a lot better than xp64, mainly because in order to get logo certified, vendors have to supply drivers for both 32 and 64, and 32 bit apps have to work on both.
Good luck...
Posted by Bill on May 20, 2008 4:51 PM
Hey Mr. Microsoft -
Yeah, well I really don't like Vista, even though you keep going on and on about it... I spent just $130 on the Crucial RAM I mentioned here (though I'm actually using some G.Skill at the moment, that was a tad bit more expensive, and runs better overall).
I feel way more comfortable in XP, and the only problem I have had thus far was the Logitech mouse driver, and that was only because of my own mess with the 32-bit driver that was still there, as mentioned above.
Everything else has run just fine. I did have to manually point at the network drivers on the motherboard CD, but that wasn't difficult, and I would have had to do that for the 32-bit drivers anyway!
Posted by Chad Everett on May 20, 2008 5:34 PM