Vista 64bit compatible software?

Am making the change to 64bit, and have noticed that a lot of software does not specify whether or not it is 64bit compatible, some do many don't. Is it reasonable to assume that most software is now compatible unless it states otherwise?

 

Correct. Almost everything works with x64 now except sandboxing apps and HIPS tools. The only HIPS apps that work on x64 as far as I know is Comodo Defense+, Outpost's Host Protection, Prevx Edge. Safe connect also works but it's buggy and got lots of issues. Or you can just turn on UAC (if Vista x64) as it's pretty strong in the x64 version. Apart from this security jargon. Everything else work fine on x64.

A few apps being incompatible is not a reason to ditch x64's speed, security and reliability.

Being an extensive user of Vista/Win7 x64 myself you can ask me any anymore questions about this via private message

~Y

 

I will vouch for that also, I used Vista x64 for over 6 months with absolutely no issues or problems running either x64 or x32 software. All went fine. This is on Vista though, on XP x64 a few popular AVs refused to install. But on Vista I had no problems.

 

Thanx very much for your replies,

Yashau may take you up on that

Kerado, sorry, yes should have said it is Vista 64, keep forgetting XP had a 64

 

XP x64 is utter garbage. The whole Microsoft update system is totally different from the 32bit XP. It follows Windows Server 2003's update routines. There's tonnes of hardware/software compatibility issues with it. No person with the right mind should use XP x64 right now. If you want to run an x64 based OS it would be correct to say that you have a pretty good system. There's no reason for you to not install Vista/Windows 7 x64.

If you're adventurous, give Windows 7 x64 a go. It's incredible. I'm using it right now. So far only a couple of bugs but the whole OS is a lot more stable and lightweight than Vista.

~Y

 

Yeah windows7 sounds like msft may be on to a winner with this one, I normally never switch to a new OS until Sp1 has been released and a lot of the bugs have been ironed out. My systems are working systems so I don't have time to experiment with OS. For me an OS simply has to work well with my software, so when a system has proved stable I will upgrade to stay current.

 

Hey tradetime,
windows 7 is better than vista already and its only a beta. I may acually get windows 7 before SP1.
its faster,works work all my applications and i didnt have any issues with it.

 

Thanx for that lodore, unfortunately I am dependant on a particular software that will take sometime to get to grips with Windows 7 if past history is anything to go by. I realise it has a pretty good ability to be backward compatible, but as I say, my machines are working machines and I can't take the risk of any downtime.

If it had worked with FDISR I would have put it in a snapshot for a play, but having seen what the guys experienced on the fdisr threads trying it, I think I'll just wait.

 

I would have to disagree to some extent, most things ran fine on XP x64, even a few things had XP x64 versions and no Vista x64 version. However, as I mentioned, a couple of big name AVs would not install on the XP 64 bit system.

As far as performance goes, XP x64 blows Vista x64 away, it's much faster, snappier and better in general. Unfortunately, XP x64 is all but dead now, and never was much supported in general in the first place. I think MS would like to forget they ever made XP x64....

 

I switched to Vista 64 just over a week ago when I built a new pc. The only issue I encountered was that NIS2009 works but SONAR, tamper protection and right click scanning does not work in 64 bit - they recommend you install Antibot alongside it which I did but that wouldn't even update. So I ditched both and am now running KIS2009 which is working perfectly - everything works great.

Other than the NIS2009 issue, there's only a couple of programs I used all the time on 32 bit (The Ultimate Troubleshooter and Reg Organizer) which are only available for 32 bit systems - everything else works without any problems.

 

Guys, what size is Vista, when installed, can 17 GB be right?

 

Hello tradetime,
mine is 18gb atm.
That is with the programs shown as screenshot installed.

 

Hmmn I appear to have grossly mis-calculated, I imagined it might be double XP + a bit so allowing it about 8 GB, just installed FD-ISR and made a copy and it is 17 GB, that's just a bare OS which causes me a big prob as I only allowed a 40GB OS partition. Doh!!!!

My Nvidia drivers has no size listed against them, nor the audio driver

 

Hey tradetime,
have you turned off system restore and cleared all the restore points?
if you dont know how to i can guide you through it.
for vista i have a 50gb partition and so far its fine.


btw i think nvidia driiver must only be around 300mb. i think the add/remove programs miscalulated it.

 

I think Vista reserves a lot of space for system restore, about 10% of the HD size. So on a large HD, 500 gigs here for example, it was eating up 60 gigs total, the OS plus reserved space. Seems ridiculous, but I think that's what it does. You can probably control how much space it reserves somehow, I don't know how, but I'm sure it's configurable. Or turn it off altogether if you don't need it.

 

Thanx for that guys, I have disabled restore, now, it's a fairly new machine so there shouldn't have been too much space taken up by system restore, apart from possibly reserving space as Kerado said, so I will boot into the other snap and disable it there too.
Can't believe it's this big, XP was about 2.8 GB on a bare install, 17 GB is a monster.

 

Am I right in thinking I can install programs to another partition other than the OS partition?

 

I have a 60 gb partition for Vista 64 bit including all the usual programs I use (has about 38gb free on it). I've got a separate 400gb partition (f which is where I install all my games too. (Got 2x250gb drives running in Raid 0).

 

I have two 750 running in Raid 1 partition as 40 (OS), 500 and 160. The idea was to use FD-ISR to run 3 snapshots in the 40 gig. Had no idea the OS took up 17 gig, was thinking about 8 was more than enough since that would be nearly 3 times XP, maybe even more.

 

Seems to be a vast difference between people answering this question on the web, seems I am not alone in being a tad surprised at the size of the install, the odd thing is that the claimed install size seems to vary from as little as 8GB up to my 17GB which is a bit of a puzzle

 

Are there any "Cons" as in "Pros/Cons" to moving my page file to another partition?
I am running Vista 64bit, 4GB RAM, 2x Hdd in Raid 1 config, partitioned as C: 40GB, D: 550GB, and E: 120GB
My page file is 4GB, and thinking of there were no "Cons" to doing this I could move paging file to D: and free 4GB on the C: drive.
Does this make any sense?

 

Hey tradetime,
I have my paging file stored on my second hard drive Z:
works fine.

 

Nice one, I will look into moving that.

Great, thanx for the help, that's freed up 4GB on the system partition, up to 8.4GB free now, wonder if there is another 4GB in the other snapshot or does it just share and exclude from the copy, imagine it does.

 

Putting this thread back on topic since I've taken it round the houses ..Did I read correctly somewhere that there is a 64bit version of Firefox, or does the normal version run fine. For some odd reason I seemto have both 32 and 64bit versions of IE on my computer, not sure what that's about.

 

Yes, there is an x64 Firefox, it's called Minefield. There is also the IE x64 as you've seen. Problem is, there is not yet a Flash x64 for either of them, only an alpha for Linux. So that keeps me from using any of the x64 browsers in Vista or Win. Shame too, since the x64 browsers are definitely and noticeably faster.