Moving to 64-bit Vista...
I've been using Vista for a long time, since fairly early in the beta process. After the relearning associated with the various changes in menus and the start menu, I've had good luck with it. I'm one of those rare folks - I really like Vista.
My main complaint has always been about it being sluggish compared to Windows XP.
As many of my regular readers know, I recently became an independent consultant. For the first time in many years, I had to go out and purchase my own laptop and software. I was very careful, of course, about spending my own money. :-)
I got a Vista laptop, with 2 GB RAM and a 64-bit capable processor. However, I stayed with the standard 32-bit version of Vista.
Being a consultant, I often need to build virtual machines and have multiple virtual machines open at the same time. When you are doing that, 2 GB of RAM doesn't go far! So, I upgraded my laptop to 4 GB.
However, I was immediately disapointed - Vista only saw 3.2 GB! While that was an improvement, I wanted that 800 MB back!
I won't go into the various reasons as to why a 32-bit OS will probably not recognize all 4 GB of available RAM. It has to do with I/O space, page remapping, user space vs. kernel space, and loads of other esoteric items that I'm not sure I completely understand myself. However, suffice it to say that I expected some loss, but I was only expecting a loss of around 250 MB, which is pretty typical for an Intel server grade chipset and 4 GB RAM.
However, in the new laptop, I went with an AMD Turion, which is a 64-bit consumer grade chipset, with loads and loads of expansion capability - all of which uses up I/O space. Bah.
So, a couple of days ago, I gritted my teeth, downloaded Vista 64-bit and went for it.
As you may or may not be aware, there is not a real "upgrade" from 32-bit Vista to 64-bit Vista. You must boot from a 64-bit CD-ROM. All of the user profiles are moved, the Windows directory is renamed to Windows.old, the registry is re-initialized, Program Files are renamed and removed, etc. It is effectively a completely new installation of the Operating System, with some pieces saved. You have to re-install everything. Much more of a migration than an upgrade.
So, before I "went for it", I made some fairly extensive preparations:
- I made a list of all installed programs
- I made a list of all installation keys
- I checked all of the programs and downloaded new copies of them, paying special attention to those having 64-bit editions
- I went to the laptop vendor site and downloaded all of their 64-bit drivers
- When I couldn't find drivers there, I went to the part manufacturer's site and got the drivers there
- When THAT failed, I searched until I found a missing driver (my laptop is not a Dell, but in one specific case, the only place I could find a 64-bit version of a driver I needed was on the Dell support site - and it worked fine!).
- I cleaned up my laptop, removing unused programs and various other junk
- I made multiple backups of my data - including my user profile (which contains Documents and Outlook OSTs and other stuff)
Then, I stuck the CD in and followed the bouncing balls.
Vista 64-bit came up about an hour later. And then I started installing drivers. After about another hour and a half of installing a driver and then rebooting (lather, rinse, repeat), I had all of my hardware back and I was back on the Internet. Another hour of installing Office Professional, Project, Visio, Daemon Tools, PowerShell and OneNote - and I was back and could work.
The most stressful moment came when I renamed my old profile \Windows.old\users\michael to \Users\Michael and then rebooted. Would everything come back? And yes, it did - with one notable exception.
Passwords. Passwords to everything (Outlook, Windows Mail, Internet Explorer, etc.) had to be re-entered. Not really a shocker. Since there is a new registry in the machine, and a new machine-key was generated during the installation, all of the old cryptographic information that was stored was invalidated.
Was it worth it?
A resounding yes!
I have all my RAM - and you know what? Vista is NOT sluggish anymore. It is as responsive as Windows XP ever was. I wish I had done it when I first got the laptop. It's great.
Everything I want to do seems to work fine. Granted, it'll take a week or two until I actually install everything I use; but all of my main tools work.
Try it - you might like it too!