i call bullshit on XP64

TheWesDude

TheWesDude

Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
so my win2k has been going tits up for a long time so i decided to dust off the copy of 64bit XP i have and pull out one of my 36 gig 320 drives and format and install XP. so then i try to install my mouse driver. big popup saying its not a 64 bit compatible driver. look on MS for it cuz its a MS optical trackball... no drivers for 64bit.

no biggie... look up drivers for my MS sound system. no luck there either...

err ok... look up drivers for my wifi nic card, no joy there.

im getting slightly pissed here.

look up drivers for my MS keyboard, no joy there either.

now im really fucking pissed. 180$ for this OS and 3 MS devices do not have 64 bit drivers, nor my NIC card.

re-format and go back to win2k.

look it up and find that less than 50% of all hardware are there 64 bit drivers...

how long has this shit been out?
 
That's what happens with new technology. Although your example is extreme and rather unbelievable, the fact is that new technology requires a lot of adaptation, and as long as there is little demand, companies won't spend money on new technology. Really, live with it, a lot of software is already avaiable in 64-bit, and most drivers are as well. In fact, I had no trouble whatsoever configuring my current system under WinXP64, so it must be your really bad luck.

And I must say that switching to 64-bit is worth the trouble, the OS will run quite a bit faster and smoother.
 
im pretty sure every microsoft mouse has combatable win64 drivers... considering that the company made win64

I would first find all your win64 drivers you need, download them, burn them onto a cd and then switch to win64...
 
trackball explorer: everything but xp 64
natural keyboard multimedia: everything but xp 64
microsoft sound system 80: everything but xp 64

linksys wmp54g v4 is only one without at least reference drivers for xp 64

the microsoft items work in 64, just lack more than rudimentary use.
 
If you're having that many problems with basic hardware, just imagine the trouble you're going to have trying to get it to play a non-64bit game! Hope you like Far Cry, cause it's the only 64bit game out there.

Seriously though, that sucks. Hope you manage to get it all running smoothy.
 
oh i did. i went back to win2k.

i thought XP 64 had been out for a while and all this had been solved. i read msg boards going back as far as late 2003 with the beta and figured the driver geeks would have found solutions. or else my system is the exception.
 
Ugh, you can still play all your old games on WinXP64, mainly because it also has the option to launch programs in 32 bit mode, which is why WinXP64 usually isn't that much of a hassle to run, really.
 
you can run 32 bit software, although some of them take performance hits.

it just sucks there is no way to run 32 bit drivers.
 
Sander said:
Ugh, you can still play all your old games on WinXP64, mainly because it also has the option to launch programs in 32 bit mode, which is why WinXP64 usually isn't that much of a hassle to run, really.
Click to expand...

Then they must have done some MAJOR revamping because when I tried it a year ago I couldn't even install most software, let alone get it to run.
 
i still wanna know why they wont let you run 32 bit drivers even if it put up a big warning flashingthingee that said you would experience limited performance.
 
TheWesDude said:
i still wanna know why they wont let you run 32 bit drivers even if it put up a big warning flashingthingee that said you would experience limited performance.
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Because that's really hard to do, hardware-wise. Having a 64-bit kernel cooperate with 32-bit hardware is practically undoable because of a shitload of problems.
32-bit software is run in somewhat of an emulation under WinXP64, but this won't work for all software, mainly because things like virusscanners need to cooperate really closely with the Kernel.
 
Sander said:
Because that's really hard to do, hardware-wise. Having a 64-bit kernel cooperate with 32-bit hardware is practically undoable because of a shitload of problems. 32-bit software is run in somewhat of an emulation under WinXP64, but this won't work for all software, mainly because things like virusscanners need to cooperate really closely with the Kernel.
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*scratches head*

No...you just have to write the instruction in 64-bit FOR the 32-bit hardware, and that is generally the responsibility of the hardware vendor. Problem solved, at least for drivers, though executables are going to be offered a lot more leeway soon with proposed WOW64 developments. If you have hardware that has no firmware flexibility or driver flexibility to be accessed from different bit bases, then you're fucked, but you're also about ten years out of date or buying Chinese/Korean brands. It is quite possible to have that SB-16 run with WinNT.

The only limitation is in what is written, and hardware developers have already been jerked around by Microsoft, so driver development for experimental software (which is where 64-bit basically is at now) is rather limited as Microsoft itself can't EVER keep to a set of standards. Quite frankly, since Microsoft fucked up by allowing worms to gang-rape millions of XP users through crappy security (the moronic little XP firewall or not, and DEP is a fucking JOKE), more people are interested in making XP last and work well, instead of following the hype train into the next WinCE/ME/NT 2000 development/release cycle. Microsoft still has challenges getting 32-bit to work how it should, and yet people are going to try the new, unfinished work from the D.W. Bradleys of the OS development world? Ouch.

AMD has been looking into this very problem, and until that is set into proper legacy architecture, a move to a 64-bit system without any support would be rather foolish. It all still boils down to the drivers, still, requiring that someone write them with 64-bit instructions.
 
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It is quite possible to have that SB-16 run with WinNT
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it even works with NT 4.0, 5.0, and 5.1...

it just wont work with NT 5.1 64bit.
 
TheWesDude said:
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It is quite possible to have that SB-16 run with WinNT
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it even works with NT 4.0, 5.0, and 5.1...

it just wont work with NT 5.1 64bit.
Click to expand...

I still chalk that one up to nobody wanting to write drivers for it, as there isn't even a Vista 32-bit driver for the SB16. Creative doesn't have a standardized set of drivers, instead writing a driver specifically for a piece of hardware, so legacy upgrades fall dead to the wayside.

A shame, too, since the SB16 is still quite a usable piece of hardware for most applications. Unless you need EAX, then it should work.
 
Robot Santa said:
*scratches head*

No...you just have to write the instruction in 64-bit FOR the 32-bit hardware, and that is generally the responsibility of the hardware vendor. Problem solved, at least for drivers, though executables are going to be offered a lot more leeway soon with proposed WOW64 developments. If you have hardware that has no firmware flexibility or driver flexibility to be accessed from different bit bases, then you're fucked, but you're also about ten years out of date or buying Chinese/Korean brands. It is quite possible to have that SB-16 run with WinNT.
Click to expand...
Ugh, you're absolutely right. I meant to say that a 64-bit kernel can't cooperate with 32-bit drivers that aren't adapted for it.

Executables are a bit more interesting, though. The AMD processors should be able to run 32-bit code anyway (although the Intel processors can't), since they're almost fully backwards-compatible. So if you're running an AMD64, the only problem you will have, will be with kernel-driver-software cooperation, not with emulation.
 
Sander said:
Executables are a bit more interesting, though. The AMD processors should be able to run 32-bit code anyway (although the Intel processors can't), since they're almost fully backwards-compatible. So if you're running an AMD64, the only problem you will have, will be with kernel-driver-software cooperation, not with emulation.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it appears that the article was a bit out of date, but it was the best quick explanation I could find. So it appears that the technology is already in place in regards to WOW64. TheWesDude, can you check in your help files for something about that, see if it has any more info on that?

I have a feeling we will be giving some input to some development team, to write a proper emulator for 16 and 32 bit Windows applications and the other hybrids as well. Which suits me just fine, because akin to DOSBox, it would undoubtedly give you the ability to set your own emulated settings. That includes fine control over DirectX settings and the ability to create alternate settings to bypass problems like the refresh error in Fallout 1/2.
 
help files for what?

since there are no drivers, there are no help files. and every time i have tried installing a 32 bit driver all i get is its not compatible...

and for the NIC card all there was is reference drivers from the designer of the chipsets but those are extremely hit or miss as to weather or not they work and unfortunately they dont work for me.
 
Help files for anything regarding WOW64 capability, compatibility, etc. 32-bit drivers, unfortunately, are not going to be avilable unless the vendor creates them. And then they won't bother to write them in 64-bit instructions, to hype out their latest revision that is almost useless to someone with existing hardware.
 
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