What just happened? This is the neglected official blog of the Electronic Punk - http://www.electronicpunk.com - The as-of-yet-undecided-title-el-presidente of OSNN.net. He totally promises to blog more than twice a year.
The WindowsXP x64 Experience
Posted April 8th, 2005 at 7:42am by Electronic Punk
WindowsXP x64 eh? Oh go on then, let’s give it a go. What’s the worst that could happen? If I format now I will be back up and running in around half an hour.
After the usual preparations - saving my documents, favourites to another partition, backing up a years worth of mail to what looks like a freakishly small .pst and anything I thought I might be able to salvage from my Program Files folder - I was ready to say goodbye to WindowsXP and the world of 32bit Operating Systems. Of course I am well accustomed to installing Windows so made sure I had as many drivers as possible available for that first boot into WindowsXP x64.
Due to a series of tragic efforts by me, installing Windows these days is not an easy task. Firstly, about a year ago as part of my mission to have a fantastic looking custom case I removed the floppy drive and to prove my dedication I also cut the floppy cable from the power supply but then who uses a floppy these days? SATA users would be a good example. The first stage of the Windows installer demands that you have a floppy drive to load additional devices and as if to tease me of my only alternative the USB floppy driver loads directly after you have pressed cancel and during the time your short yet sweet flurry of expletives hit the airwaves.
Never mind, I have a workaround - it involves a power cable, a power supply and a slightly less than new Pentium-2-based motherboard and a screwdriver (got to trigger the power somehow!). The bottom line is that I am providing external power to a floppy drive which I can then connect to my main system. It works beautifully, but sadly doesn't look like it. So I grabbed the latest driver from viaarena.com threw it on the floppy in complete ignorance and flew through Windows setup as I have many times before.
I won't bore you with the setup details; we see a few new tabs talking about the exciting new stability. I get prompted to accept an unsigned driver - surely must be my SATA driver thinking of installing itself ... it has got this far after all. Nothing else really notable in the setup although I am pleased it detects my network card in the setup program and like a true geek I enter my static IP address.
The first boot started, I almost saw the Windows x64 logo before the system crashed and rebooted. I could have cried but I am a hardened Windows installer, I went for the safe mode option. It loaded a long list of device drivers, no surprise there, stopped on acpitabl.dat and then rebooted. I held back the tears and not to be defeated by a single error I started again from scratch - but this time I didn't enter a static IP - same error. The swear words starting increasing from those acceptable in a PG-13 movie to an R.
I did a Google search. There was 1 hit, but it was for Windows 2003. I did some more research and did a forum search on http://www.planetamd64.com, this pretty much gave me the information I needed. The problem was driver decoration, the VIA SATA driver set does not have it, fortunately PA64 had some compatible drivers and using ERD Commander and a USB hard drive I was able to update my floppy. Driver decoration definatly seems to have its good points - ultimately it will completely avoid confusing by stopping users from loading 32bit drivers on to their 64bit OS, could cause various problems. For the early worms it can cause confusion as current 64bit driver releases are missing this new decoration. To summarise, 32 bit drivers won't work and neither will 64bit drivers that do not include decoration, you can check by opening the .inf file and making sure you can search and find an instance of "ntamd64" somewhere in the file.
This time in the installation I was told that my SATA driver package was also unsigned, I have no idea what that other device could have been. Apart from that setup was the same and the computer rebooted in the long straight to the first load of WindowsXP x64. I had both fingers crossed and it seemed to pay off.
The first boot takes you in as the Administrator, as this is a home machine I find it is best practice to create a new account (obviously home editions use to prompt you) and password protect the Administrator account (not too important for home use). So that’s what I did, followed by my usual routine of pinning My Computer to the desktop and installing the latest 64bit NVIDIA drivers (a resolution of 800x600 is so 1998!). Another reboot, two successfully completed in a row - I can start to relax.
Speed feels pretty good, but I can't really comment yet as it could of course be a mixture of electronic placebo mixed with the fact this is a fresh install, it does feel faster and I am pretty sure that things like copying files from one partition to another are somehow faster, but I don't have any evidence to support it.
I also installed the preview Creative drivers for my Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS, nothing impressive and while I recognise that most of the usual suite is absolute junk, there are a few bits that are needed such as speaker settings and a feature in the EAX console that will allow you to output a stereo signal through all of your speakers. But sound will do for now, I wear headphones anyway most of the time to be perfectly honest.
The only drivers I currently have missing are for my webcam and my NVIDIA NVTV card. I talked to NVIDIA about this and as far as I can tell there isn't even a beta driver at the moment. I will look into either nagging them until I get one or manually decorating a 2003 driver if possible (I still need to learn all about it!). There seems to be an issue with the 71.81 NVIDIA video drivers in the System event log about a failure in the auxiliary power supply - which in turn caused the clock speeds to apparently drop and the card to enter "Silent Mode", I am still looking into these issues.
WindowsXP x64 has two program files directories and during the beta testing I learned to accept this, but what still loses me is the need for duplicates. I do understand that we might well need two copies of Internet Explorer - some plug-ins may not work yet. But why do we need two copies of Messenger, Outlook Express and the misc. Program Files directories that never seemed to server any kind of purpose. The versions of Messenger both seemed to run in 32bit mode, as demonstrated by the new *32 that appears after the process in the processes tab of Windows Task Manager. I am a tidiness freak and really don't want duplicates. If I have to keep them separate I only want one copy of each program and it will only go in Program Files if it is a true 64bit application.
My time last night with the new Operating System was fairly limited, but just about everything I could throw at it worked. I did suffer a few issues where I had attempted to copy 32 bit applications that originally came from "Program Files" with my last 32-bit installation, to the new "Program Files (x86)", Trillian for example has "Program Files" coded into its .ini files, a simple search and replace sorted that out.
I did check out Windows Media Player 10, not checking for anything new, but in a blind panic as I realised I hadn't saved any kind of meta settings and thought I might have lost album details that I spent hours adding - fortunately it all seems to have been saved to the files themselves - I am sure I lost these details once and having just migrated from Media Center 2005, I spent a long time making sure all my music was in an organised state. I did notice that the option to show the application on the right side of the taskbar was gone, I will have to look into getting that back!
There are a few applications that I feel I should have installed, but just know they won't work. Norton Internet Security (which also comes with Norton Antivirus) - I recently got broadband and then shortly after did a spy ware scan using Lavasoft's Ad-aware SE and 350 items were found, it wasn't too long after that I had a firewall installed. The fact my current OS doesn't have either an anti-virus client or a firewall is currently pretty scary.
The word is that Perfectdisk 7.0 won't work, I don't know to what extent the problem is but it could be an issue with the two windows services it requires or simply a failure to perform an offline defragmentation of the C drive (which usually occurs during the boot process). I will do some testing of course and as if my coincidence I had an email from Raxco the other day that said "if there is anything we can do", so I will try and get some information on that.
I haven't yet had the chance to try out any 64bit applications from any third parties, but I have installed my favourite 32 bit applications (all into "Program Files (x86)" of course). All the applications I installed so far seem to be working, these include the latest versions of:
mIRC, Mailwasher Pro, Getright, Steam, FlashFXP, Enemy Territory, World of Warcraft and Shareaza.
The list of applications I have tested isn't yet huge, but it was already very late by this time. Mailwasher Pro was happy to check my POP3 account, but did throw an error out when checking my hotmail account, a feature that seems buggy at the best of times. I will get on to the author if I remember, as there is a new version coming and it would be great to see a true 64bit version, even if just for the sake of it. The other applications were fine.
Steam itself is only a little application, but has a big application behind it, Half-life 2 of course. I entered a Counter-strike game quickly and to be honest performance wasn't great with the default settings. I can think of a few reasons why that might have been the case:
- I was running quite a few applications in the background
- The weird error I am seeing in the System log about my graphics card clock speeds being reduced.
I will have to look into it, because of course - it's Counter-strike!
Well that was day one or the first seven hours (two in the actual operating system - stupid raid) of my experience with the release version of WindowsXP x64 and of course I like it so far even if I do feel as if I am wide open on the internet. Initially, as in a few months ago, I was expecting a ridiculous speed increase, but as I learnt about the technology I understood that only 64bit applications would be faster, but from what I have read some 32 bit applications are faster and have thought of a couple of reasons why this might be the case, one is easy the other is something that makes sense to me!
- Memory Management. WindowsXP x64 has the same memory management as Windows 2003, which is of course great.
- Faster background processes. This is where I confuse myself. Say you have quite a few programs open, running multiple processes. Well, there is no such thing as multitasking on a single core processor so little parts of different processes are running after each other so it seems like multitasking is happening. Suppose you are running a 32bit application on a 64bit OS and the OS is attempting to run it's own processes at the same time as your 32bit application, the 64bit application will run faster than its 32bit predecessor, leaving more CPU time for the 32bit process. It's thin I know, but it makes sense.
Well that was my first blog, if it was even a blog as I have no idea what a blog is. It seems to be like a review but continuous which sounds lovely. Obviously I don't have too many details yet as I only got to play with it for two hours before my brain starting shutting down, so hopefully I will have a lot more to post later! So the exciting preview of my next update where I will be installing Office 2003 and hoping that my .pst file still contains all my important e-mail from the last year, until then!
After the usual preparations - saving my documents, favourites to another partition, backing up a years worth of mail to what looks like a freakishly small .pst and anything I thought I might be able to salvage from my Program Files folder - I was ready to say goodbye to WindowsXP and the world of 32bit Operating Systems. Of course I am well accustomed to installing Windows so made sure I had as many drivers as possible available for that first boot into WindowsXP x64.
Due to a series of tragic efforts by me, installing Windows these days is not an easy task. Firstly, about a year ago as part of my mission to have a fantastic looking custom case I removed the floppy drive and to prove my dedication I also cut the floppy cable from the power supply but then who uses a floppy these days? SATA users would be a good example. The first stage of the Windows installer demands that you have a floppy drive to load additional devices and as if to tease me of my only alternative the USB floppy driver loads directly after you have pressed cancel and during the time your short yet sweet flurry of expletives hit the airwaves.
Never mind, I have a workaround - it involves a power cable, a power supply and a slightly less than new Pentium-2-based motherboard and a screwdriver (got to trigger the power somehow!). The bottom line is that I am providing external power to a floppy drive which I can then connect to my main system. It works beautifully, but sadly doesn't look like it. So I grabbed the latest driver from viaarena.com threw it on the floppy in complete ignorance and flew through Windows setup as I have many times before.
I won't bore you with the setup details; we see a few new tabs talking about the exciting new stability. I get prompted to accept an unsigned driver - surely must be my SATA driver thinking of installing itself ... it has got this far after all. Nothing else really notable in the setup although I am pleased it detects my network card in the setup program and like a true geek I enter my static IP address.
The first boot started, I almost saw the Windows x64 logo before the system crashed and rebooted. I could have cried but I am a hardened Windows installer, I went for the safe mode option. It loaded a long list of device drivers, no surprise there, stopped on acpitabl.dat and then rebooted. I held back the tears and not to be defeated by a single error I started again from scratch - but this time I didn't enter a static IP - same error. The swear words starting increasing from those acceptable in a PG-13 movie to an R.
I did a Google search. There was 1 hit, but it was for Windows 2003. I did some more research and did a forum search on http://www.planetamd64.com, this pretty much gave me the information I needed. The problem was driver decoration, the VIA SATA driver set does not have it, fortunately PA64 had some compatible drivers and using ERD Commander and a USB hard drive I was able to update my floppy. Driver decoration definatly seems to have its good points - ultimately it will completely avoid confusing by stopping users from loading 32bit drivers on to their 64bit OS, could cause various problems. For the early worms it can cause confusion as current 64bit driver releases are missing this new decoration. To summarise, 32 bit drivers won't work and neither will 64bit drivers that do not include decoration, you can check by opening the .inf file and making sure you can search and find an instance of "ntamd64" somewhere in the file.
This time in the installation I was told that my SATA driver package was also unsigned, I have no idea what that other device could have been. Apart from that setup was the same and the computer rebooted in the long straight to the first load of WindowsXP x64. I had both fingers crossed and it seemed to pay off.
The first boot takes you in as the Administrator, as this is a home machine I find it is best practice to create a new account (obviously home editions use to prompt you) and password protect the Administrator account (not too important for home use). So that’s what I did, followed by my usual routine of pinning My Computer to the desktop and installing the latest 64bit NVIDIA drivers (a resolution of 800x600 is so 1998!). Another reboot, two successfully completed in a row - I can start to relax.
Speed feels pretty good, but I can't really comment yet as it could of course be a mixture of electronic placebo mixed with the fact this is a fresh install, it does feel faster and I am pretty sure that things like copying files from one partition to another are somehow faster, but I don't have any evidence to support it.
I also installed the preview Creative drivers for my Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS, nothing impressive and while I recognise that most of the usual suite is absolute junk, there are a few bits that are needed such as speaker settings and a feature in the EAX console that will allow you to output a stereo signal through all of your speakers. But sound will do for now, I wear headphones anyway most of the time to be perfectly honest.
The only drivers I currently have missing are for my webcam and my NVIDIA NVTV card. I talked to NVIDIA about this and as far as I can tell there isn't even a beta driver at the moment. I will look into either nagging them until I get one or manually decorating a 2003 driver if possible (I still need to learn all about it!). There seems to be an issue with the 71.81 NVIDIA video drivers in the System event log about a failure in the auxiliary power supply - which in turn caused the clock speeds to apparently drop and the card to enter "Silent Mode", I am still looking into these issues.
WindowsXP x64 has two program files directories and during the beta testing I learned to accept this, but what still loses me is the need for duplicates. I do understand that we might well need two copies of Internet Explorer - some plug-ins may not work yet. But why do we need two copies of Messenger, Outlook Express and the misc. Program Files directories that never seemed to server any kind of purpose. The versions of Messenger both seemed to run in 32bit mode, as demonstrated by the new *32 that appears after the process in the processes tab of Windows Task Manager. I am a tidiness freak and really don't want duplicates. If I have to keep them separate I only want one copy of each program and it will only go in Program Files if it is a true 64bit application.
My time last night with the new Operating System was fairly limited, but just about everything I could throw at it worked. I did suffer a few issues where I had attempted to copy 32 bit applications that originally came from "Program Files" with my last 32-bit installation, to the new "Program Files (x86)", Trillian for example has "Program Files" coded into its .ini files, a simple search and replace sorted that out.
I did check out Windows Media Player 10, not checking for anything new, but in a blind panic as I realised I hadn't saved any kind of meta settings and thought I might have lost album details that I spent hours adding - fortunately it all seems to have been saved to the files themselves - I am sure I lost these details once and having just migrated from Media Center 2005, I spent a long time making sure all my music was in an organised state. I did notice that the option to show the application on the right side of the taskbar was gone, I will have to look into getting that back!
There are a few applications that I feel I should have installed, but just know they won't work. Norton Internet Security (which also comes with Norton Antivirus) - I recently got broadband and then shortly after did a spy ware scan using Lavasoft's Ad-aware SE and 350 items were found, it wasn't too long after that I had a firewall installed. The fact my current OS doesn't have either an anti-virus client or a firewall is currently pretty scary.
The word is that Perfectdisk 7.0 won't work, I don't know to what extent the problem is but it could be an issue with the two windows services it requires or simply a failure to perform an offline defragmentation of the C drive (which usually occurs during the boot process). I will do some testing of course and as if my coincidence I had an email from Raxco the other day that said "if there is anything we can do", so I will try and get some information on that.
I haven't yet had the chance to try out any 64bit applications from any third parties, but I have installed my favourite 32 bit applications (all into "Program Files (x86)" of course). All the applications I installed so far seem to be working, these include the latest versions of:
mIRC, Mailwasher Pro, Getright, Steam, FlashFXP, Enemy Territory, World of Warcraft and Shareaza.
The list of applications I have tested isn't yet huge, but it was already very late by this time. Mailwasher Pro was happy to check my POP3 account, but did throw an error out when checking my hotmail account, a feature that seems buggy at the best of times. I will get on to the author if I remember, as there is a new version coming and it would be great to see a true 64bit version, even if just for the sake of it. The other applications were fine.
Steam itself is only a little application, but has a big application behind it, Half-life 2 of course. I entered a Counter-strike game quickly and to be honest performance wasn't great with the default settings. I can think of a few reasons why that might have been the case:
- I was running quite a few applications in the background
- The weird error I am seeing in the System log about my graphics card clock speeds being reduced.
I will have to look into it, because of course - it's Counter-strike!
Well that was day one or the first seven hours (two in the actual operating system - stupid raid) of my experience with the release version of WindowsXP x64 and of course I like it so far even if I do feel as if I am wide open on the internet. Initially, as in a few months ago, I was expecting a ridiculous speed increase, but as I learnt about the technology I understood that only 64bit applications would be faster, but from what I have read some 32 bit applications are faster and have thought of a couple of reasons why this might be the case, one is easy the other is something that makes sense to me!
- Memory Management. WindowsXP x64 has the same memory management as Windows 2003, which is of course great.
- Faster background processes. This is where I confuse myself. Say you have quite a few programs open, running multiple processes. Well, there is no such thing as multitasking on a single core processor so little parts of different processes are running after each other so it seems like multitasking is happening. Suppose you are running a 32bit application on a 64bit OS and the OS is attempting to run it's own processes at the same time as your 32bit application, the 64bit application will run faster than its 32bit predecessor, leaving more CPU time for the 32bit process. It's thin I know, but it makes sense.
Well that was my first blog, if it was even a blog as I have no idea what a blog is. It seems to be like a review but continuous which sounds lovely. Obviously I don't have too many details yet as I only got to play with it for two hours before my brain starting shutting down, so hopefully I will have a lot more to post later! So the exciting preview of my next update where I will be installing Office 2003 and hoping that my .pst file still contains all my important e-mail from the last year, until then!
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