Slight Rant!

[Lewi-G]

Ok Im fed up! Ive recently bought a brand new pc. All bells and whistles so I can work on my animation projects from home.

4 gig of ram, 2 geforce 7800GTX cards, 1 TB of hdspace and an AMD athlon 64 dual core 4800

The thing is I bought windows xp pro 64 edition! The theory was that with my new 64 chip I could maximise the amount of resources going to my animation software and speed up rendering and realtime particle calculations.

The problem is that nothing is compatable with this version of windows!!
Very few programs seem to work and lots of my hardware is glitchy at best with these beta win 64 drivers! Thankfully maya works but not much else!

This means I have no virus protection! I tried buying the latest Mcafee virus program off the net and it wont install! It doesnt recognise my version of windows! Now I have a virus! Thankfully the websites have stinger programs that do work with my version of windows but talk about frustrating!

So in a nut shell dont buy windows xp 64 edition unless you like problems!

[wacko]

That's kind of ironic, with like €2500 worth of computer hardware.
I thought WinXP 64 already had pretty good support by now?

[elmuerte]

The theory was that with my new 64 chip I could maximise the amount of resources

Uh... no... specially not when using Windows. A 64bit system just gives you ^2 more room. You can actually use more than 2GB of RAM in an x86 system and things like HDR actually run at fullspeed. Graphic tools can get an enormous speed-up when running on a 64bit system since they can directly use numbers above 2^32 without breaking them appart.

And who said WinXP 64 was a good OS. It's nothing more than a dirty hack to get WinXP running natively on a 64bit CPU.

But anyway "maximise the amount of resources" is a bogus statement, it will always do that, the question is, is it done efficiently

[Jasiek]

Originally Posted by Lewi-G

4 gig of ram, 2 geforce 7800GTX cards, 1 TB of hdspace and an AMD athlon 64 dual core 4800

Where do you guys get the money for that
I wan't a PC like this

[Lewi-G]

Apparantly not wacko

You right El Muerte thats what i was meaning.... Didnt explain it properly All I mean is that 64 makes my graphic programs and 3d programs run faster

Alas though your are right 64 edition is a dirty hack and I think just a test for windows vista so they can see what goes wrong.

Im very tempted to uninstall the bloody thing and use my other windows xp pro.

I guess only time will tell as other companies are trying to make 64 compatable programs. So it should be better as time goes on.

The thing i dont get is that windows 64 still has the 32 processes.... they only removed the 16 ones so in theory all 32 programs should still run??

[Echomote]

So getting a 64 bit processor isn't really too helpful yet?

I dont think you can run all 32 programs, like daemon-tools..

[Lewi-G]

Originally Posted by Jasiek

Where do you guys get the money for that
I wan't a PC like this

I managed to get £2000 of the £3500 from an animation i did for a go kart company. I did a 3d walkthrough of their new track they are going to build in the docklands. The rest I saved over the last year.

The new go kart track looks ace! Its a double decker indoors track. 45mph karts! I cant wait to go there!

[Lewi-G]

Originally Posted by Dan2552

So getting a 64 bit processor isn't really too helpful yet?

I dont think you can run all 32 programs, like daemon-tools..

No no def get a 64 bit processor! But not windows 64. The processor works really well and it allows more things happening at once.

Great for graphics, games and sound/video editing.

I didnt know that Dan...All 32 programs will run fine with a 64 chip i guess its just windows 64 that doesnt.

[Echomote]

the 32bit apps (like daemon tools) should work in 32bit windows don't let me get you mixed up

[elmuerte]

AMD64 (and Pentium with EMT64) is fully backwards compatible.
Windows XP 64 is partially backwards compatible. All 32 programs will still run. 16bit applications have the same, poor, support as they have in the normal winxp
The only problem is device drivers. They need to be compiled for 64bit WinXP. Therefor Daemon tools needs a special 64bit version to work with winxp64.

[the_angry_monkey]

Originally Posted by Dan2552

So getting a 64 bit processor isn't really too helpful yet?

I dont think you can run all 32 programs, like daemon-tools..

Nonono! 64 bit processors like AMD64s still have loads of benefits over 32bit ones even in 32 bit Windows!

[wacko]

You have to try really hard not to buy a 64 bit enabled CPU nowdays, especially AMD ones, so you might as well. It's not a huge transition, "64 bit CPU" is a bit of a weird statement anyway, they're just 32-bit CPUs with 64 bit instruction sets. Only CPUs like the Itanium are really 64 bit, and also utterly useless for consumers .

[Axx]

Lewi-G i had a similar problem (i tried to get win64 running with my AMD opteron) and it was fucked up.

In the end of the day, i gave up and moved onto linux (fedora core 5 x86_64) which is 64 bit, and uses a minimal amount of your computers resourses hence allowing you to render much faster And generally speaking maya dosnt seems to crash half as often as it does in windows. However setting it up is the problem...

[ChaosFish]

I have WinXPx64, and it's compatible with almost everything. It can run almost all 32bit applications, the only 32bit applications it can NEVER run are service applications (you know, the ones in "Administrative Tools").
And it can't run 32bit drivers.
And sometimes 32bit applications can't work together with 64bit applications and stuff like that.

Anyway I never tried a x86 Windows version on this computer so I have no idea if it really makes anything faster.

Originally Posted by El_Muerte

16bit applications have the same, poor, support as they have in the normal winxp

No that is wrong. 16bit applications don't work _at all_ on WinXPx64.

[elmuerte]

what? they remove that completely? how stupid

[ChaosFish]

Actually the only 16bit application that does work on WinXPx64 is Microsoft's 16bit installer that is still used sometimes.

Here, from the README on WinXPx64 CD:

16-bit applications

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and x64-based versions of Windows Server 2003 operating systems do not support most 16-bit applications.

Most 32-bit applications that use 16-bit Microsoft ACME Setup versions 2.6, 3.0, 3.01, and 3.1 and InstallShield versions 5.x install correctly.

32-bit applications that are installed by other 16-bit setup programs are not supported. If you try to install one of these applications (other than the supported installers mentioned in the previous paragraph), the message "\Setup.exe is not a valid Win32 application" appears, a message is logged in the system event log, and the Setup program closes without installing or starting the application. If this occurs, contact the application vendor to obtain a software update that is compatible with x64-based versions of Windows Server 2003 operating systems and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

[Lewi-G]

Originally Posted by Axx

Lewi-G i had a similar problem (i tried to get win64 running with my AMD opteron) and it was fucked up.

In the end of the day, i gave up and moved onto linux (fedora core 5 x86_64) which is 64 bit, and uses a minimal amount of your computers resourses hence allowing you to render much faster And generally speaking maya dosnt seems to crash half as often as it does in windows. However setting it up is the problem...

Ive always wanted to go to linux as they use it at my work. But I dont have the technical knowledge to install it/programs on it.

Also I would need to find a version of maya that is installable on linux.

Chaosfish did you have any problems with installing programs like adobe photoshop? When I double click on the setup icon it doesnt install. It doesnt give any error messages but when i look in task manager the process is running...

Have you had anything similar to this happening with any programs youve installed?

[Darkflame]

No that is wrong. 16bit applications don't work _at all_ on WinXPx64.

*me gives microsoft a slow clap*

[ChaosFish]

Originally Posted by Lewi-G

Chaosfish did you have any problems with installing programs like adobe photoshop? When I double click on the setup icon it doesnt install. It doesnt give any error messages but when i look in task manager the process is running...

Have you had anything similar to this happening with any programs youve installed?

I still haven't installed Adobe® Photoshop® software, but Paint Shop Pro works just fine.
I couldn't install any 32bit programs that install "services". (like 32bit anti-viruses, etc.)

[Axx]

Originally Posted by Lewi-G

Ive always wanted to go to linux as they use it at my work. But I dont have the technical knowledge to install it/programs on it.

Also I would need to find a version of maya that is installable on linux.

Chaosfish did you have any problems with installing programs like adobe photoshop? When I double click on the setup icon it doesnt install. It doesnt give any error messages but when i look in task manager the process is running...

Have you had anything similar to this happening with any programs youve installed?

Its not very difficult to get working if you have a helping hand. You will need to discover quite a few things by experimenting. Suse, and Fedora Core are compatible with maya. I would go for SUse (which includes Yast which is far better than Yum, or Up2date imo).

Id be happy to help you set it up if you want to give it a go

[Lewi-G]

Originally Posted by Axx

Its not very difficult to get working if you have a helping hand. You will need to discover quite a few things by experimenting. Suse, and Fedora Core are compatible with maya. I would go for SUse (which includes Yast which is far better than Yum, or Up2date imo).

Id be happy to help you set it up if you want to give it a go

Nice one I may take you up on that offer

Got another question for everyone. Are there any bloody anti virus software around that works with this version of windows??? Somehow my pc has been infected! Quite a few trojan horses and also now my windows firewall has been disabled!

And no El Muerte I havent been to any dodgy sites

[ChaosFish]

Originally Posted by Lewi-G

Got another question for everyone. Are there any bloody anti virus software around that works with this version of windows??? Somehow my pc has been infected! Quite a few trojan horses and also now my windows firewall has been disabled!

Then I suggest you reinstall Windows if you want to enjoy your specs to the max. You can usually never get rid of all those viruses completely.

I use NOD32 which is compatible with WindowsXP x64 (the irony...). It's a really good anti virus, much much better than Norton for example.

They say AVG Anti Virus is also good, and it also has a free version. But it's less user-friendly.

[Lewi-G]

Nice one.. Will def give them a go.

If i just reinstall windows over the top that should sort it shouldnt it? Or do i need to format the hd?

[ChaosFish]

You can install Windows over the top, only then some folders already taken by the old installation may gain new odd names (like instead of "All Users", "All Users.Windows" and stuff. No biggy that one I guess. And you'll have to reinstall most of your programs because your registry will be deleted. It would be a little messy.

Maybe you should just use the "repair" function in Windows Installation (the cd bootable windows installation). It should only fix the installation and not remove your existing settings. But I don't have any guarantees on that...

[Lewi-G]

Ill try the repair first but if i have to ill just wipe the hd and install windows again.

Cheers dude