XP64 Pro Thoughts / experience
deicist
Manchester, UK
Just installed the latest version of XP64 Pro corporate, I assume it's the finished version.... anyway, just thought I'd share my experience.
Install seemed much faster than XP on the same machine, don't know if that's just subjective but I definately thought the install time was much lower.
Messed up my boot.ini settings, I did have 1 partition with Longhorn on it & one with XP, then I deleted the longhorn partition and installed XP64 instead.... now I don't get a boot menu, my original XP partition seems to have vanished. I know I can get it back by setting up a a boot.ini myself, and the problem was more than likely the Longhorn Boot loader, but still....
First boot takes you straight to the Administrator log in screen, doesn't set up additional users during install as with XP, you have to log in as admin and then create them. No biggy though.
After logging on I checked the device manager since I was convinced there'd be something that I'd need to scour the internet for. Imagine my surprise when I saw not a single exlamation mark! Graphics card? check. USB joystick? Check. Sound? Check. wireless network connection? Check. fantastic. (note: After toodling along to the ATI site I downloaded the new drivers for my 9700 pro, but that was purely for game performance, it was detected on install)
On to the desktop..... and oh my god it's quick! Everything seems to be just a little bit more...snappy with XP64. Again, this may be entirely subjective but in my mind at least it seemed much more responsive. Explorer windows pop up almost before you finish double clicking, start menu springs into life at your command.... overall it just seems to be a much quicker experience.
Applications wise the only difference over XP is the inclusion of 2 Internet explorers... A 32 bit & a 64 bit version. For some reason though if you elect to place an internet explorer icon on your desktop the one windows puts there is the 32bit version. Strange. Anyway, I guess most people reading this are doing so with firefox anyway so it doesn't really matter.
Ah, just thought of another difference, media player 10 is installed as standard...never really played with this version of media player so I can't comment on how it performs vs how it did perform on XP. it catalogued my 2000+ MP3s on a network share in about 3 minutes though, which seems reasonably quick to me.
Speaking of applications it seems a bit hit & miss which applications will pick up the right 'program files' path. In XP64 you now have two to choose from, the default 'c:\program files', which is for shiny new 64bit apps, and a new 'c:\program files (x86)' which is for old school 32 bit apps. However some 32 bit apps default to the standard 'program files' folder. Avast anti-virus did that for example, whereas firefox picked up the correct folder. I'm guessing it has to do with how the developers parsed the program files location.
Anyway, since I've already mentioned firefox twice you'll be pleased to know it works fine in XP64 although it seems a bit slower than both the native 64 bit version of IE, and the 32 bit version. Maybe it needs optimizing or something.
After installing Avast anti virus (which worked flawlessly) I decided it was time to try some gaming, so I fired up HL2. Now I wasn't expecting anything spectacular, if it managed the same level of performance I managed with XP I'd be impressed. so you can imagine how impressed I was when I found HL2 actually ran faster on XP64. Now, this could be purely because it was a clean install, or again it could be a wholly subjective thing, but I swear HL2 runs much smoother on XP64 than on the same PX running XP.I managed to nock the resolution up a couple of notches and it still looked smoother.
Finally, you'll be glad to know that folding @ home installed and ran as a service perfectly. Not sure if it's churning through frames faster, should perhaps have checked that by timing frames before I installed XP64 but meh...
So there you have it, my first day running a 64 bit OS of the future!
Install seemed much faster than XP on the same machine, don't know if that's just subjective but I definately thought the install time was much lower.
Messed up my boot.ini settings, I did have 1 partition with Longhorn on it & one with XP, then I deleted the longhorn partition and installed XP64 instead.... now I don't get a boot menu, my original XP partition seems to have vanished. I know I can get it back by setting up a a boot.ini myself, and the problem was more than likely the Longhorn Boot loader, but still....
First boot takes you straight to the Administrator log in screen, doesn't set up additional users during install as with XP, you have to log in as admin and then create them. No biggy though.
After logging on I checked the device manager since I was convinced there'd be something that I'd need to scour the internet for. Imagine my surprise when I saw not a single exlamation mark! Graphics card? check. USB joystick? Check. Sound? Check. wireless network connection? Check. fantastic. (note: After toodling along to the ATI site I downloaded the new drivers for my 9700 pro, but that was purely for game performance, it was detected on install)
On to the desktop..... and oh my god it's quick! Everything seems to be just a little bit more...snappy with XP64. Again, this may be entirely subjective but in my mind at least it seemed much more responsive. Explorer windows pop up almost before you finish double clicking, start menu springs into life at your command.... overall it just seems to be a much quicker experience.
Applications wise the only difference over XP is the inclusion of 2 Internet explorers... A 32 bit & a 64 bit version. For some reason though if you elect to place an internet explorer icon on your desktop the one windows puts there is the 32bit version. Strange. Anyway, I guess most people reading this are doing so with firefox anyway so it doesn't really matter.
Ah, just thought of another difference, media player 10 is installed as standard...never really played with this version of media player so I can't comment on how it performs vs how it did perform on XP. it catalogued my 2000+ MP3s on a network share in about 3 minutes though, which seems reasonably quick to me.
Speaking of applications it seems a bit hit & miss which applications will pick up the right 'program files' path. In XP64 you now have two to choose from, the default 'c:\program files', which is for shiny new 64bit apps, and a new 'c:\program files (x86)' which is for old school 32 bit apps. However some 32 bit apps default to the standard 'program files' folder. Avast anti-virus did that for example, whereas firefox picked up the correct folder. I'm guessing it has to do with how the developers parsed the program files location.
Anyway, since I've already mentioned firefox twice you'll be pleased to know it works fine in XP64 although it seems a bit slower than both the native 64 bit version of IE, and the 32 bit version. Maybe it needs optimizing or something.
After installing Avast anti virus (which worked flawlessly) I decided it was time to try some gaming, so I fired up HL2. Now I wasn't expecting anything spectacular, if it managed the same level of performance I managed with XP I'd be impressed. so you can imagine how impressed I was when I found HL2 actually ran faster on XP64. Now, this could be purely because it was a clean install, or again it could be a wholly subjective thing, but I swear HL2 runs much smoother on XP64 than on the same PX running XP.I managed to nock the resolution up a couple of notches and it still looked smoother.
Finally, you'll be glad to know that folding @ home installed and ran as a service perfectly. Not sure if it's churning through frames faster, should perhaps have checked that by timing frames before I installed XP64 but meh...
So there you have it, my first day running a 64 bit OS of the future!
0
Comments
1. Beta, not so stable, not so fast drivers
2. more memory requirements
There is a way to install 2 or more windows'es on one partition. This is just a little bit tricky. And some stupid apps don't want to install when you try to put them into "d:\winxp64\progsx64\something"
There are many differences for applications. Some progs will not run even on WinXP SP2..... well..... WinXPx64 is XP SP2 +
Some 16-bit functionality is lost
Some progs will run on WinXP SP2 and will not on x64 (but it happen very rarely).
There are not many apps for x64 but when you have one that supports x64.... difference is very big.
And as for IE.... there is no flash plugin for IE64 for now (or there is one but I'm not aware of it). Thus 60% of web pages will not work fully - you will have to run IE32