any experiences with XP x64

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Marin85 · #1 Post by **Marin85** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 9:36 pm

Hi,
since Vista is stil not the supreme choice among OSes and any(?)x64 OS could generally support 4 GB of RAM on the new Intel chipsets (I´m particuliarly thinking of T61(p) ), XP x64 seems to me to be a very good alternative. As far as I know, the 64bit XP is faster than the 32bit version and 64bit systems are theoretically a bit more stable and not that vulnerable (viruses, trojans, etc.). The only thing that bothers me is to what extend the 64bit version of XP is supported by Lenovo. Any experience or thoughts?

Marin

Six_Shooter · #2 Post by **Six_Shooter** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 10:42 pm

Only sort of related to the topic at hand:

Is there anywhere that shows what the differences are between these different version of XP and why someone may or may not need to use one over the other?

ThinkPad R · #3 Post by **ThinkPad R** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 7:29 pm

Is Windows Vista 64 bit? Thanks.

Marin85 · #4 Post by **Marin85** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 8:30 pm

Hi,

@Six_Shooter: Well, as far as I know there are several differences between 32bit and 64bit OSes, particuliarly you could experience some vital problems when trying to run 16bit apps under XP x64 or Vista x64... For the same reason there are very few viruses, trojans and other malware that could damage your system under 64bit OS. What is more, 64bit OSes are supposed to be significantly faster than their 32bit brothers and sisters as they "communicate" with the cpu through 64bit words, which is pretty the double of a 32bit word

However, this depends very much on the processor, and in our case (Intel Core 2 Duo) I´m not very sure to what an extend this speed improvement is granted as Core 2 Duo is not exactly what you would call a 64bit processor. They are actually a kind of "extended-to-36bit", which makes it possible to implement a Core 2 Duo as so to say 2x32 (not equal to 64

) processor, so that it is 64bit-capable. For instance, this won´t be the case with a Core Duo, although it also has two processing kernels. I believe there are techies in this forum that certainly could explain this better than me

This should bring some insight in the matter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit

@ThinkPad R: As far as I know, Vista OS is available in 32bit and 64bit version (as for Vista Home I´m not very sure, but certainly Vista Business is).

@Six_Shooter: if you have T/X 61 with 4GB of RAM which you certainly want to fully utilize and/or you are a geeky programmer

and/or you´re doing hard computing and simulations, you may want to have a 64bit OS. Now, if you prefer XP more than Vista, you may want to have XP x64

Apart from all said above, you may not want to have a 64bit OS if you have some very nice 16bit applications you cannot live without and there is no way to adapt them to work under that very questionable 64bit OS. Also, driver support for 64bit OSes could be pain in the a%& and this is what my question was referring to

Six_Shooter · #5 Post by **Six_Shooter** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 9:49 pm

I'll read the link later, but just based on what you said about the 64 bit OS, it's not for me. I do have some older programs which I'm sure are 16 bit, that I do use from time to time.
At this time I don't have a machine capable of running a 64 bit OS anyway, I was just more curious if it may be something to be a requirement in future upgrades.

Marin85 · #6 Post by **Marin85** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 12:11 pm

I hope, I didn´t mess the hardware part a lot

, but as for software I can understand you very well. When I moved from XP to Vista, I had to run a few apps in compatibility mode, which was terribly slower than with a real XP. And now I simply don´t use those apps anymore

but this is not a solution. I think, the same applies when you have some very nice 16bit apps as in your case and you want to move to a 64bit OS as in my case

, unless someone recompilate (?) them

As for future upgrades, I would be very happy to have a TP that can utilize 4 GB RAM

, but then it´s a requirement to have a 64bit OS. That brings me back to my initial question: Is there anyone out there who has positive ot negative experiences with XP x64 on TPs and driver support and wants to share them here???

Cheers

Marin

karlnapp2 · #7 Post by **karlnapp2** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 4:29 am

Marin85 wrote:Is there anyone out there who has positive ot negative experiences with XP x64 on TPs and driver support and wants to share them here???

Tried XP64 on my X61s last weekend and ended up with Vista64 as I did not get any drivers installed / working.

But jketzetera down some posings here [link] http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... &start=690 [/link] says he managed to get the drivers working he needed for the internal hardware with his X61s. Maybe he can shed some light on this issue in a new thread?

Best
KN

karlnapp2 · #8 Post by **karlnapp2** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 4:34 am

[quote="karlnapp2] Vista64 [/quote]

As I am having my first steps with Vista at the moment I can only state that it is way slower than XP. Especially, Vista64 is much slower than Vista32 - which runs quite fast if the beta SP1 is applied; regrettably, this does not seem to be true for Vista64 with beta SP1 applied.

Nonetheless, I like toying around with speech recognition and other features on Vista so i might stay here for some time (maybe till the eval of Office2007 runs out)...

The greatest downside I have noticed so far is that no fan control software seems to run on Vista64, maybe even XP64. And the noise is driving me mad. Eventually, I start programming only to write a software to shut down that fan...

kn

Marin85 · #9 Post by **Marin85** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 1:53 pm

Danke for your reply

As I don´t use TPfancontrol at all, that´ll be not critical for me, but I fully agree the fan noise could be very annoying. I simply learnt to ignore it...
I found this new thread in the T6x section: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=52661
It actually answers all my questions. It´s a pitty that Lenovo doesn´t support the 64bit platform of XP (or at least not directly as XP x86 and Vista) but Windows Server 2003 seems to be a very good alternative.

Cheers

Marin

jketzetera · #10 Post by **jketzetera** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 7:06 pm

karlnapp2 wrote:
Marin85 wrote:Is there anyone out there who has positive ot negative experiences with XP x64 on TPs and driver support and wants to share them here???
Tried XP64 on my X61s last weekend and ended up with Vista64 as I did not get any drivers installed / working.

But jketzetera down some posings here [link] http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... &start=690 [/link] says he managed to get the drivers working he needed for the internal hardware with his X61s. Maybe he can shed some light on this issue in a new thread?

Best
KN

I managed to install drivers for all devices (did not try the SD-reader though) for Windows XP X64.

I downloaded Windows XP X64 drivers for the WLAN, LAN, Chipset and Storage subsystem from Intel's driver page.

Windowsupdate provided me with a portion of the audio driver.

The remaining drivers were downloaded from Lenovo's driver page. Usually the Vista X64 driver would install without problems in Windows XP X64.

Basically, I got everything working but still ended abandoning (I did save an image first though) Windows XP X64 after learning that the Thinkpad Fan Control software would not work in 64bit OS.

jketzetera · #11 Post by **jketzetera** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 7:13 pm

karlnapp2 wrote: As I am having my first steps with Vista at the moment I can only state that it is way slower than XP. Especially, Vista64 is much slower than Vista32 - which runs quite fast if the beta SP1 is applied; regrettably, this does not seem to be true for Vista64 with beta SP1 applied.

Nonetheless, I like toying around with speech recognition and other features on Vista so i might stay here for some time (maybe till the eval of Office2007 runs out)...

The greatest downside I have noticed so far is that no fan control software seems to run on Vista64, maybe even XP64. And the noise is driving me mad. Eventually, I start programming only to write a software to shut down that fan...

I found Windows XP X64 to be fast and did not notice any difference compared to Windows XP 32bit on my X61s. If only the fan control software would have run, I would have stayed with X64. Unfortunately I cannot program a single line of code. If you start your 64bit fan control project, I would happily beta test the software on my system.

karlnapp2 · #12 Post by **karlnapp2** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 5:28 pm

jketzetera wrote: If only the fan control software would have run, I would have stayed with XP64.

There is one software that apparently *runs* under Vista64 and as such should also under XP64:

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

The downside is the developer did not yet implement support for Thinkpads. So I am writing him an email now and maybe he is willing to either help us with a driver that accesses

a.) the *one byte* in the BIOS memory that controls fan speed

plus eventually

b.) the two bytes showing the fan's RPM and
c.) the temperature sensors' values

or he integrates it into his tool. We will see what happens if he sees there is interest in the community.

Regrettably I can't code in C++, though I can write C# - but how to access the BIOS / ACPI memory I have no clue...

KN

edit: fixed quote

jketzetera · #13 Post by **jketzetera** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 6:58 am

karlnapp2 wrote: The downside is the developer did not yet implement support for Thinkpads. So I am writing him an email now and maybe he is willing to either help us with a driver that accesses

That would be really nice. In general I really like my X61s with one exception. I cannot stand the fan noise, which I find very irritating. Therefore I am even willing to trade 1GB of RAM (which I currently cannot use due to 32bit OS) in return for software that can control the fan speed.

Please update this thread with the response from the developer of Speedfan.

karlnapp2 · #14 Post by **karlnapp2** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 8:13 am

Well, so far there has been no reply by Alfredo.

Maybe it is helpful if you also shoot him an email? If he sees the need he might start helping us

Best
kn

jketzetera · #15 Post by **jketzetera** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 5:45 am

karlnapp2 wrote:Well, so far there has been no reply by Alfredo.

Maybe it is helpful if you also shoot him an email? If he sees the need he might start helping us

Best
kn

I will do so.

karlnapp2 · #16 Post by **karlnapp2** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 9:02 am

There is now an early build of tpfancontrol for x64. See troubadix' posting here:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... &start=720

Get the program directly:
http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~schmitzr/tpfc64.zip

-- take care, this is the old .18 version from shidomax quickly ported to the new ioport driver. nonetheless it works properly on my machine

best
kn

any experiences with XP x64

any experiences with XP x64

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