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Windows 64 bit - the challenge...

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
I want to be able to use more RAM than just 3GB. Currently running XP Pro. RAM is stupidly cheap at present, I can upgrade to 8GB for almost pocket change.

I did try it a while back to find out that my scanner and printer didn't have 64 bit drivers and neither did my spyder. Have to admit it was the faffing with the spyder that drove me back to 32 bit. I had tried XP 64 bit but I assume it would make more sense if I were to do it properly, to try for Vista 64 bit which is currently supported and for which far more drivers are available. Please let me know if I'm making a mistake!

I think the best solution at present would be to partition my hard drive and load the 64 bit OS with the option to choose which to boot into (anyone suggest how to do that, I'm very rusty on software these days) at least to keep me going until I've worked through any issues and not to loose my extremely streamlined and decent current windows setup.

Any suggestions, pointers, people telling me to buy a mac :salute:, etc?
 

MrSlezak

New member
64-Bit Vista has a greater coverage than 64-Bit XP but it still isn’t driver for driver lined up with 32-Bit XP. There are a couple technical differences that driver writers need to consider when moving to 64-Bit OS’ and remember that XP is close to eight years old – so some of the devices that people are looking for support in 64-Bit OS’s have long since been replaced/end of life’d by the peripheral maker.

There is no return on investment for any peripheral maker – scanner or otherwise – to build up new drivers for products have they no longer sell. The peripheral maker sees no money for driver updates once the device is in the hands of the customer, and most, if not all, peripherals are on an 18-month retail cycle before they are updated or deemed obsolete by their makers.

64-Bit Windows has been around for the last four years but Windows XP Professional 64-Bit Edition did not get a huge commercial uptick and there are not as many drivers for that ‘flavor’ of Windows. But almost two years ago, when Vista came out it was released with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions at the same time.

Even with all the 64-bit capable CPUs in people's systems today, 64-bit OS was still not a mainstream thing in retail. That is shifting however, the same low prices on RAM that you’re seeing caught the eyes of folks in the retail channel. With 32-bit OS you can’t up sell RAM, but with 64-Bit you can offer ‘upgrades’ before you leave the store to more than 4G of RAM.

Will the push of x64 Windows from retail lower the number of drivers that are ‘not found’ in the marketplace? The ones for newer devices I think will get caught up. But, I’d guess not really for peripheral that is older than two years.

What I was doing to work around this for the Nikon CoolScan was use a dual boot system with both Vista 32-bit and 64-bit on it. When I have something I want to scan, I drop in to 32-Bit and do the scan and move back in to 64-bit to do the editing. This worked great until I needed to do large volumes of scan. When I took on the family archive job, I ended up with thousands of images from my family to scan/tag/etc… and with a volume that high, I just decided to put a small little system together for nothing but scanning.

I think the cost was under $200 to build this Shuttle system – read more – but I had a spare drive and extra copy of Windows so your pricing might not come out as low as mine. Took me more time to wait for the parts to show up than it did to build it and it sits here chugging away as I scan slides and then I use my normal desktop for editing. I liked the Shuttle system so much its price point that I built another as the Home server (and packed it with 1.5TB drives) so I get something a little more functional than a NAS.

One other gotcha if you are moving to 64-bit is Photoshop plug-ins. There seem to be more than don’t work in 64-bit Photoshop than do, at least out of the few plug-ins I use. To work around this I just drop in to 32-bit Photoshop to use the plug-in and then back to 64-bit Photoshop. This is a different issue than drivers and I would expect that as plug-ins get refreshed/updated that more of them will move to native 64-bit support.

Hope this helps some
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
The only plug in I use extensively is PTLens which is 64 bit enabled, I think/hope that PK Sharpener is as well but I use it rarely so wouldn't mind dropping back to 32bit to use it.

I've been reading up and it appears that running a dual boot system is relatively easy, at least enough that I might try it. Still going to find an easy way to ghost my c: drive before partitioning it and messing about.
 

Don Libby

Well-known member
I switched over to Vista Ultimate 64bit last year on my studio computer and have had no problems for the past 12 months (made the move from Win XP Pro 64bit). I had to replace my laptop a couple months ago and have been running Vista Ultimate (32bit) without problems.

I run CS4 and C1 on the studio computer both in 64 bit and both programs run great; likewise I’m running CS4 and C1 on the laptop without problems.

don
 

MrSlezak

New member
Like Don I have Vista on all my laptops, and x64 on the systesm that can take it.

Honeslty if you are thinking about x64 then there is little reason to look at x64 XP - Vista is a much better choice between those two.
 

etrigan63

Active member
Hey all, I happen to run PlanetAMD64 and PlanetX64, two of the largest 64-bit support sites in the world, and you are welcome to come there and ask any questions you like. Both sites are free and PlanetAMD64 has an extensive database of drivers for both Windows XP x64 & Vista x64 as well as Linux and Mac.

64-bit is the way to go for digital photographers. With DSLR RAW files pushing 50MB each, being able to manipulate hundreds, if not thousands, images requires RAM and lots of it. The 64-bit address space maxes out at 16 exabytes (16,000,000,000,000,000,000) which (assuming 4GB memory sticks) would require a motherboard 2.75 square miles in size and would consume 30 gigawatts of power (the Hoover Dam produces 2.8 gigawatts of power). We wont be hitting that limit for at least 10-15 years unless there is a quantum leap in memory densities.
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Thanks to all especially Carlos!

It's been a fun ride so far! Just pursuading partition magic to partition my C drive took a couple of hours. I downloaded Norton Ghost and did a full ghost of my C drive prior to any messing around, quite proud of myself for being so sensible! Loaded up XP X64, loaded up all the new updates including SP1, etc, so far so good. All my drivers have worked except for the scanner (so far) and my Spyder.

I'd been in touch with Datacolor who now own the spyder, they said that there was no 64bit driver for my ancient spyder (fair enuf) but gave me a key for the latest software (taking no resposibility) and a 20% discount on a new spyder. Well, the newest software wouldn't accept my hardware and the discount brings their price to almost cheaper than the high street so I managed to run the Spyder startup script from the partition with the regular XP 32 bit and hey presto it calls up the profile and applies it beautifully! I know that the more modern versions are better but this one works perfectly with my CRT's and I don't want to mess up a winning combination. Have to say that the Datacolor people were very helpful though.

The next hurdle was PTLens which is my only essential plug in, the 64 bit version specifically states not for XP Pro but works perfectly, sigh of relief.

CS4 and Bridge seem to work fine in 64 bit mode. Long may it continue! :D

There are a lot of resources out there to help people like me, silly things like a Tweak UI for X64 and a windows messenger for the same. Neither of which technically should work.

I think my order for 8GB of RAM will be going in tonight, all I need to do is take Jacks idea of running the scratch disk off a raid 0 and we should be really smoking!
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Aaaah, just realised that my webcam won't work, drivers for vista 64 but not XP 64. Uurgh. Keeping regular 32 bit windows on a different partition was a very good idea, I use the webcam to talk to my wife when I'm abroad working which is very often. Silly little thing, they don't cost much, but still an annoyance.

I learnt that flash player doesn't work in 64 bit IE but does with the 32 bit IE, not sure really what the point of 64bit IE is in the first place, it's not exactly hugely RAM or processor dependant is it?

Could also do with a good freeware spyware program, my antivirus is good at viruses but rubbish at spyware. I was using Spyware Doctor, but doesn't do 64 bit.
 
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etrigan63

Active member
Don't bother with 64-bit IE, the 32-bit one is fine under XP x64. Check my site's driver database for your webcam drivers. Sunbelt Counterspy is available for 64-bit.
 
K

karrphoto

Guest
I've been running XPx64 (HATE that V product.. Ugh.. Ick.. Blah) and have had no problems. Hell, I just plugged in my HP 5370C scanner, installed the 32 bit drivers and vuescan is scanning it's little heart out with no problems. I run 2003x64 server with my RAID box, no issues there either. Areca has 64 bit drivers for their cards as most do. As mentioned, the problem has been 64 bit plugins for photoshop. If I'm doing plugin heavy work I run the 32bit, if I am just editing, I run 64, much faster response on my Dual Quad Machine.

Next I'd like to update to the full 32GB of memory....
 

Lars

Active member
My desktop dual-boots Vista Utimate 64-bit and XP 32-bit. The one software I cannot run on Vista is drivers for my Adaptec SCSI card that I use with my Howtek drum scanner and the old Nikon LS2000 scanner.

In general I think it's a good idea for anyone migrating from XP to Vista on the same system to set up a dual boot on separate partitions.
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Aah, nothing showed up till I registered, thanks Carlos. Unfortunatly there doesn't seem to be drivers for either my scanner or webcam. Oh well, I'm busy fighting my anti virus software at present, peripherals can come later!
 
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Don Libby

Well-known member
Aah, nothing showed up till I registered, thanks Carlos. Unfortunatly there doesn't seem to be drivers for either my scanner or webcam. Oh well, I'm busy fighting my anti virus software at present, peripherals can come later!
Ben - take a look at avast.com. I used to use nothing but Norton however they didn’t support 64bit (don’t know about now) and moved to AVAST over 2 years ago and never looked back. S good if not better and much much cheaper.

don
 

etrigan63

Active member
NOD32 has a 64-bit version and is possibly the best antivirus system on the planet. Very fast and has earned the Virus Bulletin's 100% Score for the last 30+ quarters running.
 
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