Windows 7 or Windows Vista?

Yeah, but I don't think you can use it alongside a pair of 512MB graphics cards?
May have been derailed though, just did a quick research and neither Returnil or Sandboxie support Vista 64 so likely it's XP for me.

 

32-bit supports SLi. Its motherboards that affect that.

I put my tutorial up that I just made in a matter of minutes. Its at: https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=1328887#post1328887

 

Hello tradetime,
well standardly a 32bit OS will see around 3.5gb if you have two 512mb graphics cards its already down to 2.5gb that windows can see.
sandboxie will only support xp 64bit if you dont install some of the windows updates. people are already wondering what will happern if you try to use two 2gb graphics cards on a 32bit operating system. all the 4gb address space limit would of been taken up by the graphics cards alone. so the operating system would be forced to use virtual memory only. no one knows what would acually happern but i think nvidia and ati should warn people since more adverage joe's are buying expensive graphics cards and know nothing about computers and could cause alot of damage.

sandboxie modifys the kernal to run i think which is why it wont work on vista 64bit which has patch guard. windows xp 64bit has some protections that with all the windows updates wont allow sandboxie to be installed and run properly.
see this page for more info
and this

your less likely to need sandboxie on 64bit operating systems anyway.

 

Ok, you're over my head here, I thought a 32bit OS referrenced a max of 4GB of memory, graphics and any other memory is subtracted and whatever is left is the amount of RAM it will be able to use. Obviously I may be talking drivel

Thanx for the tutorial though, will check that out.

 

Yeah thanks Lodore, I saw the sandboxie link, that's where I found out it wouldn't run on Vista 64

As regards the RAM, that was my take so not worth installing more than 2GB with that setup, and to stay with 32bit OS, I have no real need to switch to Vista.

 

There is a patch that Windows has released for Vista that will allow the 32-bit OS to use and see 4Gbs of RAM. GPU VRAM is not taken from that. The GPU has its own memory and is on the GPU that goes in an expansion slot on the mobo.

 

Interesting, ok dumb question, you mentioned sli, I do not use the cards in sli mode I run a quad monitor setup for work, will that make a difference.

 

sometimes the graphics card memory is taken out of the memory address space limit of 4gb which means less memory will be able to be used by windows. example
vram remains unaffected with this. aka virtualram for those people who dont know what vram stands for.

tbh im surprised that 32bit operating systems are still so widely used. with ram so cheap more and more compuers will use a 64bit operating system. which will mean better 64bit drivers will be released.

 

Because the other components required for a 64-bit OS and more than 4Gbs of RAM is expensive.

 

I was kind of apprehensive at first when I decided to put Vista x64 on my desktop. I once helped someone install XP x64 and we had a time finding drivers for it (this was not too long after it's release). This was in my mind when I installed x64.

Surprisingly it was pain free. After the install there were 3 hardware components that Vista had no drivers for. But Problem Reports and Solutions gave me links to find these particular drivers thus no driver hunting for me. So PRS gets a from me. As far as software goes the only thing I have run into was when I bought a Hauppauge HVR-1800 TV tuner card. I found out that the WinTV2000 program was not 64 capable but Windows Media Center works just great. Most programs will work in x64 in 32 bit mode.

In my observations about RAM usage, on both my 2GB laptop and 4GB desktop ~1/3 of RAM is actually used (though most of the rest is used in caching).

As far as the patch that was mentioned (included in SP1) it only reports the correct amount of RAM installed not the amount that is actually used. While everything else reports 4GB the Performance tab in Task Manager will still report ~3.2GB. This was discussed in this MS KB article. x86 still cannot address more than 3.2 GB RAM without using the /PAE switch (this may or may not work in all cases). This is explained in more detail here.

 

I have not had any problems so far on Vista x64 as far as running 32 bit apps, they all seem to work fine. Also have no issues in general, so I'd say I'm satisfied. If you go Vista, go with x64, that's all they are selling now, and it's the future.

 

Midway40, Thanx for the input and the links, I wll look at them.
Kerado, it was my intention to move to x64, however having seen that both Sandboxie and Returnil don't / can't support it, two programs I have come to like a great deal, it may simply not be for me.

 

You're welcome, TT

I have Sandboxie installed on my 32bit laptop but only used it once to purposely infect my machine with XP Antivirus 2008 to see how it was done. Protected Mode/UAC/DEP and my AV HTTP scanner has been handling the baddies I have come across. I have not used Returnil before but rely on image backups my Windows Home Server performs every night.

Hopefully one day the makers of Sandboxie and Returnil will provide 64bit versions and then we can welcome you to Club64

 

Well, if there is no way to do without them, then yes, it may be best to hang back and wait, and hope that they produce an x64 version sometime soon. I am wondering if they would run on x64 anyway, as virtually all of the x32 apps I have used here have run on x64 so far. However, given the nature of those 2 you mentioned, I'd have to see proof first as well.

 

Kerodo, just for the hell of it I tried installing Sandboxie and Returnil on my desktop. Sandboxie refused outright to install on a 64 bit system. Returnil went through the installation process (I even installed it into the Programs(x86) folder) but the program would not launch after reboot.

Given the growing popularity of 64bit, they need to address this.

 

Yep, I think so too. x64 Vista is about all they sell in stores anymore.

 

The problem with Vista 64 and Sandboxie (even to a lesser extent XP 64) is laid out here.
Returnil is probably a case of, haven't got round to a version yet, will wander over to whatever forum Coldmoon runs the official support on and ask. Am still undecided as yet

Do all, or at least most of the popular imaging apps work on x64? I know TI does, but would not be my primary choice. Fortunately fd-isr does and even supports the added complication that I will be adding of Raid 1

 

Thank you for trying that above and beyond the call. Hopefully Returnil will address the absence, from the Sandboxie site, they may have more of a problem, but since I don't really understand the "under the hood" stuff I have no idea how complicated this is.

 

The only returnil like program i've seen that supports 64-bit is comodo diskshield. However i have yet to test it out on a 64-bit system so i don't know how well it performs.

 

Thanx for the info farmerlee, I may just go x64 anyway and hope Returnil catches up, hadn't heard of the Comodo product, will look into it.

Been over to their forums and noted a somewhat heated (only on the part of one poster) debate, looks like that one is a beta and far from battle worthy. But one to watch.

 

there is one thing that really annoys me and has stopped me from using a limited user account.
if i use a limited user account and want to install opera 9.60 and have opera 9.52 installed it was come up with a uac prompt and ask me for password which is fine. but the issue is that it then wants to install it on the administrator account which means i dont get the upgrade options so if i carried on with the install i would lose my settings. so i have to change account to admin account log off. install opera upgrade install. change account back to limited user logg off and back on. why cant it just up the rights for the current account?

in linux during install you are asked to type in a password for root and then you setup accounts on the next screen.
so the account has limited rights and you type in root password if you need to such as partitioning,updater etc.

 

No problem. It is amazing at some of the things you do when you are bored Anyway I had no ill aftereffects from the Returnil install which may be credited to 64's stability.

Ah, Patchguard. In theory it is supposed to protect the kernel from malicious software but a lot of legitimate programs such as Sandboxie and AV programs need to modify the kernel for them to function. I remember Symantec and McAfee crying foul when PG was first announced since their antivirus deeply modifies the kernel and there was some FUD going around saying that MS did it on purpose so only OneCare could run on the system. Of course later other AV makers found a way to get their protection to run without hooking into the kernel though they may lose some features from the 32bit version (for example, NIS).

As for the effectiveness of PG the jury is still out on this, at least for me. I have read it has already been circumvented by a security firm (this was in '06, don't know if since then PG got patched, lol).

 

I think vista ultimate is the exception. When i bought my retail copy it came with both 32-bit and 64-bit install disks.

 

Came across this on another thread which does raise slight concern given that it is such a recently written article. I doubt any of you who have repiled here and use Vista64 have experienced these sort of problems, but if you have spoken with a lot / wide circle of other x64 users would you be able to say that this is a minority experience, or can only speak for you own personal experience?

 

thats one of the reasons im trying different linux distros in virtual machines until i find one that will do everything i want it to. each linux distro gets better every new release. so far the best ive found for my needs is fedora 10. its currently in beta.

im also looking at the new mac's coming out on the 14th. if they are cheaper and have the option of a seprate video card from ati or nvidia it becomes an attractive option. i hope apple release a base unit on its own. imac's start at £799 use laptop componants and have intergrated video. if apple made a scaled down mac pro with just cpu socket,less memory upgrade possible and decent video card selection i would strongly concider buying one.