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Microsoft Vista Beta 2, 64 bit

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by charles338

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I made the decision to do a trial of the New Vista OS and decided to do the 64 bit install, as when I upgraded my computer the last time, I went with an AMD 64 Bit CPU and my computer supports the 64 bit system. I tried the 64 bit version but never found enough drivers to get the system to fully operate correctly, essentially there are no drivers / software to use / run on the system. I also found that Microsoft has because of viruses and various software attacks, evidently set the software to mark a lot of files as read only. If you've ever worked with the old dos system you know that if your files attributes are marked read only you will have trouble installing software. You can not over-write a read only file. One piece of software that did install did not allow me to save a backup file, I found out that the directory and all sub directories were marked read only. I do not see how a company can expect to release an operating system if required drivers are not available. I am retired and if I had the software (I understand there is supposed to be software that will create drivers or take old drivers and update them for other operating systems)or learn how to write drivers I would be glad to do this for free just to get reliable 64 bit drivers out there for others to be able to access them. Is there any web addresses that focus on 64 bit drivers for Vista and / or 64 bit software? I can not even get the 64 bit version of Office 2007 to install on Vista. In my humble opinion Microsoft has a lot of work to do if they are ever able to release Vista. It is too complicated. Remember KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)Any help will be much appreciated.

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by hal 9000

That's a common problem for all the current 64 Bit versions of Windows too.

If there is not Native 64 Bit Driver Support in the Beta Version of Vista it's not likely to work just like the 64 Bit Version of XP or 2003.

I've only seen the 64 Bit version of 2003 ES used where there was one specific 64 Bit application that was required otherwise that box did nothing else. If you had of gone with the 32 Bit install of Vista most things would have worked and those that didn't you could use XP drivers for but most likely not the software that was with the drivers so the devices didn't work properly anyway.

From my experience of Vista the 32 Bit version sort of works and you are very restricted in the software that you can install the 64 Bit will run the computer but not run all the hardware. To me it looks like the 64 Bit version of XP which is sold here as a [b]Development Platform[/b] and not a real Mission Critical OS to use every day.

Eventually there will be 64 Bit pieces of software but there are very few here yet and even the new Sharepoint which will be 64 Bit isn't currently available in Beta Form. I actually gave up on the 64 Bit copy and turned to the 32 Bit version as it's more usable but till late last week there wasn't even a AV program that could be installed so I haven't done anymore than the most cursory of testing at the moment. On the same Drive split in half the 32 bit version picked up most of the hardware and the 64 Bit picked up almost nothing other than the very basic drivers for the M'Board and video and even the video wasn't all that great on a 256 MEG Video Card.

While both AMD & Intel have had 64 Bit CPU's available for quite some time now there currently is not the drivers or software available to make this a decent working platform yet.

Col

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