Windows XP 64, thanks for the misery Microsoft....

[James B]

Ok I debated on a PentiumD or a Pentium with EM64T and decided due to some
of the task I wanted to do and the price to go for the P4 with EM64T and
Windows XP Pro 64, MISTAKE!

I have never in my life had such a miserable time trying to find the right
set of drivers to get some very basic hardware to install. I spent 4 hours
just on my raid and ended up combining a 32bit installer package with the
64bit Beta drivers just to get an OS loaded, great my OS is on disk being
ran by Beta drivers. Once I finally got XP loaded it failed to find even the
most basic board hardware and so off I go to find NIC, Video, etc drivers.
Finally after I get the system itself up and running I find out that my TV
Turner card has no drivers and the vendor has been promising drivers for 3
months to other users so no TV for me I guess.

So ok, screw it I'll deal with the TV card later, maybe stick it in another
PC for the time being and off I go to install my apps, oh crap here come
more problems. Right off the bat I go for Office 2003 which installs just
fine it seems however the MS Document Imaging printer driver won't install
and I've become pretty attached to that so oh well I'll just do Adobe PDF,
NOT!

So after 3 days of build work (ok not 24hrs a day, a few hours here and a
few hours there) I've got my PC sitting on the floor with the case open
still, no TV card and about 3 apps installed including Office.

So for any of you out there thinking about Win64, Don't! Unless you need it
for certain apps or testing spend the extra $100 and get a PentiumD and
XPx32.

 

[Kevin]

What advantage are you thinking you can have with a 64 bit operating system
when there are less than a dozen applications that can use it?

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

James;
Did you research your hardware compatibility with 64 bit in advance?
That would have prevented the driver surprises with the new OS.

Microsoft is not the cause of your driver misery.
The hardware manufacturers provide all hardware drivers including those
distributed by Microsoft.
Hopefully you are communicating a similar message to the hardware
manufacturers.

 

[James B]

Many apps will run faster under Win64 even if they are not 64bit. This is an
old topic which has been discussed on many a web site. Encoding of media
files for one is faster on Win64. On top of that that I'm testing R2 of
Virtual server which is 64bit.

 

[James B]

James;
Did you research your hardware compatibility with 64 bit in advance?
That would have prevented the driver surprises with the new OS.

Microsoft is not the cause of your driver misery.
The hardware manufacturers provide all hardware drivers including those
distributed by Microsoft.
Hopefully you are communicating a similar message to the hardware
manufacturers.

Yes I researched it to a point. I didn't check the TV card as it's a primary
hardware manufacturer and using a standard chipset however other items like
my Intel 945 chipset and Intel Graphics I certainly did expect to work. Both
of which acted up during install and the Intel graphics driver installed but
did not show up until I rebooted multiple times so I would not count either
of them as "ready for prime time". I had contacted the motherboard
manufacturer (again a primary manufacturer using Intel reference designs)
about the driver support prior to purchase and was told all was ready so yes
I was a bit surprised when I went to install the raid drivers and found they
were listed as Beta.

I would point out that MS has not released a printer driver for Office Doc
Imaging and if MS can't or won't provide that simple function for their own
market leading office product it's no wonder other groups are dropping the
ball. If a year after the Beta was released and what several months after
full release you have major manufactures still releasing Beta drivers for an
OS from the likes of MS then there is certainly a problem with the process.
It tells me that either there is something in the OS creating problems for
them, something in the process of certifying the drivers or they see no use
in developing drivers for a product with limited market.

Yes I did give the likes of Gigabyte, Intel and Leadtek a good yelling, not
that it matters to them. This post was just an FYI to anyone else thinking
of going down this road that they may find themselves better off waiting.
I've been building systems and servers since the 286 so I certainly did not
expect the amount of trouble I ran across, heck it was easier getting Win3.1
to run 4 modems than this system has been....

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Ok I debated on a PentiumD or a Pentium with EM64T and decided due to some
of the task I wanted to do and the price to go for the P4 with EM64T and
Windows XP Pro 64, MISTAKE!

I have never in my life had such a miserable time trying to find the right
set of drivers to get some very basic hardware to install. .....

Gee, anyone with a lick of sense would have checked on the availability
of device drivers *before* deciding to buy a new OS. Is there any
particular reason that you feel the need to blame Microsoft for *your*
lack of fore-thought?


--

Bruce Chambers

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