Win64 is up and running

After a fight that started this morning and went off and on all day, I can finally say with a smile that my AMD64 bit system is up and running.  Here is a list of the trials and tribulations that I had to overcome to get things to work.

  1. I did not order a floppy because I haven't used one on my laptop for at least a year. 
    1. When you want to install third-party drivers that don't come with the Win2k3 Server for Extended Systems, you pretty much have to have one.  I went out and bought a USB floppy.
    2. Had to reset the BIOS to get the floppy working.
  2. Video drivers.  The system came with drivers for the NVidia video drivers.
  3. Chipset drivers.  NVidia has some Win64 drivers available on their web site.  These drivers are not listed on AMD's site.
  4. Network drivers.  Nothing seemed to work.  I went into the BIOS and found that my onboard network card was disabled.  I re-enabled it and bang, the network connection was up and working. 

Great, so what do I do now?  It is WHIDBEY TIME, baby!!!!!!!!!!

Wally

8 Comments

  • Very Cool. I wanna, too. What did you pay for the basic 64bit box, and what are the specs (mhz/memory).



    When you've done some testing, let us know the "real world" benchmarks -- like how long it takes Visual Studio to load/rebuild a large solution on 32 vs 64.

  • Sorry, but I don't think I can do any benchmarks. I would need two things:

    1. Hardware that was constant to compare the same framework versions on Win32 & Win64.

    2. A change to the license of .NET. Most licenses disallow any type of benchmarking that is made public with specific numbers.



    Wally

  • Yea, I disagree with the whole "no benchmarking" portion of the license. Symantec tried that, sued someone who did it, and lost, so I guess if you can afford to fight a lawsuit you could probably post the numbers anyway. Dunno. (I understand you're a Microsoft employee and willfully violating a software license would probably end you up in legal and employment trouble. :))



    I'm glad to hear you got it up. I had the same problem with the floppy drive on my system with Win32. The problem goes further than just Win2K3/Win64. Worse is the fact that most of the earlier operating systems -- I want to say Windows XP included - won't recognize a USB floppy attached to them, unless the laptop or computer is pulling drive emulation duty for you. (Some do, ala keyboard/mouse support.) I ended up opening my box, laying it sideways, and tagging in a floppy drive for the first boot up.



    Sad, in a way. =)

  • Well, my AMD won't install longhorn .. did you have any success with that?

  • Didn't try to install longhorn. Someone else told me that they installed longhorn on x64 and it worked.



    Wally

  • Yup, intel everything works good .. it's AMD that cries. Also try installing it with All in wonder.

  • The problem is that drivers for Win64 Extended Systems just don't exist. If I had installed 32 bit Windows, I would have had no problems, inspite of the fact that I installed it on an AMD system. Until more device makes support Win64 extended systems, we will continue to have this problem.



    Wally

  • Yea, chicken and the egg. It seems like manufacturers are making the move, but they're taking their time. Most of the majors have them available for semi recent products, but they proliferation just isn't to the 32 bit level.

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