My experience with Windows XP Pro x64 Edition

[Paul Adams]

(Note, this is just an accounting of my experience, I am not vouching for the programs listed or presenting this as an exhaustive test)

After the RTM of Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (which I shall hereon refer to as XP64), I decided to install it on my Athlon64 system and see how things went.
This is a rough accounting of my experience, so you have some real-world information on this OS.

My system is a pre-built Hewlett Packard Pavilion t760.se, and consists of:
- Athlon64 3400+ CPU
- 1Gb DDR400 RAM
- 120Gb Seagate 8Mb cache 7200rpm HDD (ATA, primary master)
- Liteon DVD+/- RW (ATA, secondary slave)
- Samsung DVD ROM (ATA, secondary master)
- NetGear GA311 Gigabit NIC (PCI)
- SiS 900-based Fast Ethernet NIC (PCI, onboard)
- 6-in-1 card reader (USB, onboard)
- Powercolor Radeon x800 Pro (AGP)
- 2x Dell 2001FP 20.1" LCD monitors
- Sigmatel IrDA Adapter (USB)
- Logitech Trackman Marble (USB)


Clean Installation:
Exactly the same as my experience with the 32-bit version.


Drivers:
(Note: XP64 requires all system-level drivers to be 64-bit.)
I had no idea what to expect on this front, so I checked around before I installed XP64 and could only find a couple of 64-bit drivers for the SiS chipset and for my ATI graphics card, so they were all I had to hand.
XP64 detected all my hardware and installed working drivers, with the exception of the sound chipset (AC'97 onboard) which I had to download from Realtek.
NetGear do not provide 64-bit drivers for my NIC so I was a little concerned, but XP64 detects it as a "Realtek 8169/8110" worked perfectly.
Even though the graphics card was correctly identified as a Radeon x800 Pro, I installed the 64-bit Catalyst 5.5 drivers.
Also the SiS AGP driver was installed, being the only driver which appears to work for the chipsets in my system that they have 64-bit drivers for.

Edit: Upgrading Catalyst driver from 5.4 to 5.5 proved to be a nightmare - uninstallation of 5.4 did not remove all the necessary registry entries, and installation of 5.5 threw out a "failed to add install registry key" error.
Upshot is that the driver installs okay, but the ATI tabs are not present in Advanced Display Properties.


Slipstreamed Installation:
(Note: Exactly the same principle as with the 32-bit version, except winnt.sif goes in the AMD64 folder, not I386.)
Once I verified a "clean" install worked okay I went ahead and did my slipstreaming of the apps I wanted to install.
Part of my batch file uses pskill to terminate processes that start up after some automated installations - pskill did not work correctly so some pop-up windows had to be cleared manually.
(For those interested, it was after installaing SpywareBlaster and SpywareGuard silently.)


Application Compatibility:
(Note: 16-bit applications will not work run at all on XP64.)
To test application compatibility most strictly, I forced DEP to be enabled for all apps "except those I specify" (and started with an empty exception list).
There is no "EDIT.COM" any more, so quick command-prompt editing of text files I do with "notepad {filename}" instead.

(The following apps are pretty much in alphabetical order)

Avast! Anti-Virus 4.6
- AV products have file filter drivers, so have to be 64-bit - there aren't many to choose from yet
- Works perfectly well from what I can see, it sets up a service to transparently intercept and check HTTP requests for port 80 and a second to transparently check SMTP/POP3 traffic
- Note: Processes are 32-bit: ashDisp, ashMaiSv, ashServ, ashWebSv, aswUpdSv

DivX Player 2.5.5
- No problems

DVD Region-Free 2.12
- No problems

Ethereal 0.10.11
- No problems viewing
- No 64-bit version of WinPcap means it cannot capture, only view captures

Fraps 2.6.0
- No problems

Games / Far Cry 32-bit
- No problems

Games / Far Cry 64-bit
- Patched to 64-bit version and installed the extra content, works fine and is VERY pretty

Games / Hitman Contracts
- No problems

Games / Steam / Half-Life 2
- No problems

Games / World of Warcraft
- No problems

Hexplorer
- No problems

Irfanview
- No problems

Office 2003 SP1
- No problems

Internet Explorer 32-bit
- No problems

Internet Explorer 64-bit
- No problems

Firefox 1.0.4
- No problems

Mozilla 64-bit (unofficial)
- Mostly okay, crashed a couple of times
- Bookmarks do not appear on the drop-down list until "Manage Bookmarks" is clicked once per load

FRAPS 2.6.0
- No problems

MSN Messenger 7.0
- No problems

Thunderbird 1.0.2
- No problems

Nero Burning ROM 6
- No problems

PowerDVD 5.5
- No problems (DVD Region-Free interfaces fine, plays full screen on secondary monitor happily)

Quicktime & Real Alternative Players
- No problems

SiSoftware SANDRA 2005.SR1
- No problems

Skype 1.3
- Does not run at all with DEP enabled
- Contacts tab does not refresh correctly

Spybot Search & Destroy 1.3
- No problems

SpywareBlaster 3.4
- No problems

SpywareGuard 2.20
- No problems

SysInternals Tools: RegMon, FileMon, Process Explorer (64-bit)
- No problems

Tiny Firewall 64 beta
- Same deal as Avast!, 64-bit system drivers with 32-bit processes/services: UmxAgent, UmxCfg, UmxFwHlp, umxlu, UmxPol, UmxTray
- "Windows Security" module causes problems with Ultramon 2.6 and advanced Display Properties

Ultramon 2.6
- No problems (once Tiny Firewall 64 had the "Windows Security" module uninstalled!)

VirtualDub 1.6.7 32-bit
- No problems

VirtualDub 1.6.7 64-bit beta
- Does not load movies generated using FRAPS (says codec is not found)

Virtual Server 2005 SP1
- No problems (W2K3 SP1 guests run at normal speed too)

Visual Studio .NET 2003
- No problems

Winamp 5
- No problems

WinRAR 3.30
- No functional problems, but no context menu when an object is right-clicked


I have not tested Virtual PC, but as I understand it currently this does not work on a 64-bit host OS.


Performance:
(Note: Upgrading to XP64 from the 32-bit version on the same hardware will for the most part not give you a performance increase.)
For the most part this is indistiguishable from the 32-bit version on the same machine (observational tests, not benchmarks) - it does seem a little less speedy when loading large amounts of data from the disk, but I put this down to the lack of a 64-bit PCI IDE driver from SiS/HP.

World of Warcraft, Half Life 2, Hitman Contracts & Far Cry are probably the easiest ways for me to get a feel of the speed of the system, and it is plenty quick enough for those

[amamelun]

I have still not figured out how to make xp x64 find that harddrive..
I test with a WD 1200 Sata and there is no problem..

So my problem is i can not make a clean install of XP x64 because it doesn't find the new hdd. Everething is ok in bios..
I also changed jumper setting on hdd from 3Gb max pr sec to 1,5 Gb max pr sec. Just to test it..

System:
shuttle sd31p, Intel 945G + ICH7R (Lakeport-G)
intel pentium D 940 3,2GHz

Bios is upgraded to latest.

Anybody got a clue?

[8bit]

See when you boot of the XP install disc? At the start it says to press F6 if you need to load third party SCSI or RAID drivers. You need to hit F6 when it tells you then stick in the floppy disk with your SATA/RAID controller drivers on it.

You should be able to find them on the website support area for your motherboard, obviously it is the ones for 64bit XP you're looking for.

[amamelun]

See when you boot of the XP install disc? At the start it says to press F6 if you need to load third party SCSI or RAID drivers. You need to hit F6 when it tells you then stick in the floppy disk with your SATA/RAID controller drivers on it.

You should be able to find them on the website support area for your motherboard, obviously it is the ones for 64bit XP you're looking for.

Yes I push f6 during install and have downloaded new driver from intels pages since, ( have 64 bit from shuttle ( doesn't work) and from Intel ( doesn't work) message from windows is iastor.sys is not valid image file (?)..

[8bit]

"Not a valid image file" sounds like what XP x64 tells you when I try and use something that's 32 bit on it. Tried contacting Shuttle support to see if they can help?

[amamelun]

It is the 64 bit i am using. I have one disk with 32 and one disk with 64. I test with the 64, and got this message. I think, ok.. files does sometimes get corrupt.. I go to intels page and download their newest 64 bit file..same error.

But now I have given up on microsflop x64 and installed normal xp professional. I had to get the pc up and running for today..

Thanks for all suggestions!

[8bit]

OK sorry I couldn't be more help!

My experience of XP x64:

It blue-screens a lot. In danger of being binned in favour of MCE again

[slayer2]

these windows programs are so tempramental arn't they