Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

install win7 32 or 64 bit on a 4 gig ram machine - opinions, please.

<< < (6/9) > >>

cmpm:
Well, for me it's 4 new sticks 1gb each replacing 2 bad sticks 1gb each.
Ran memtest from memtest86 and W7's memdiag. on the first two to find they were bad.
So I upgraded to this computers max of 4gb.
Came out clean with both mem testers.
But I was still getting blue screens,
sometimes at startup and sometimes after everything was loaded in W7.

BothXP Pro and W7 would only show 3gb usable, while showing I did indeed have 4gb of mem.
Some limitation with 32bit.
ACPI is on in the bios in the setup default as well.

XP is not blue screening while W7 did.
Same Memory-4gb.

If I could do it over I would have bought the W7 64 to read all my memory.
But I don't know if that would blue screen either, cause I haven't tried it....yet.

edit-Don't think I will either
this computer I've had since 2005.

4wd:
Afaik that still requires you to run in test-signing mode, 4wd.-f0dder (June 20, 2010, 04:10 PM)
--- End quote ---

Going by the instructions, you only need test mode if you want to then run your self-signed driver on another system which, (naturally), doesn't have the system certificate it was signed with.

Making Other Systems Accept the Signed Driver

Clearly this is a solution of limited value, as the only copy of 64-bit Windows that is happy with your app/driver now is the one that you just did the work on.  The signature on the driver only works there because makecert installed the root certificate for your driver signature in your local driver store.
--- End quote ---

To me that reads as if the resultant signed file will work on the signing system without requiring test mode.

But without actually having something to test it with -

Innuendo:
If I could do it over I would have bought the W7 64 to read all my memory.
But I don't know if that would blue screen either, cause I haven't tried it....yet.-cmpm (June 20, 2010, 09:00 PM)
--- End quote ---

Did you buy OEM or retail? If retail MS will ship you the 64-bit version for a pittance of shipping and handling. If you bought OEM MS won't ship you anything which I think is a bit of a rip. In such a case if I were you I wouldn't have any guilt over obtaining a 64-bit disc by other means.

The 32-bit & 64-bit versions even use the same keys so it's not like you'd be pirating anything because all the software manufacturers drill into our heads it's not the media you are buying it's the license key & if that license key can be used with both versions of Windows 7 I think that's a legal avenue to explore.

Carol Haynes:
BothXP Pro and W7 would only show 3gb usable, while showing I did indeed have 4gb of mem.
Some limitation with 32bit.
-cmpm (June 20, 2010, 09:00 PM)
--- End quote ---

Depending on what hardware you have in your machine you are very unlikely to see more than 3.3Gb of RAM in a 32 bit system and if your grapgics card has large onboard memory you are likely to see less than that (which probably accounts for the the 3Gb only). Vista and 7 do recognise that you have 4Gb available but the way it works is that any devices with mapped memory (eg. graphics cards) is removed from your 4Gb so that it can be mapped.

If Windows 7 32-bit is blue screening and the memory is OK I would guess it is a driver issue. I am starting to come across a number of systems (32 and 64 bit) that are having issues with drivers installing out of the box. This includes my own desktop system - I tried to install 7 and Vista, both 32-bit and 64-bit and all 4 versions blue screened. My motherboard is Vista certified and my graphics card is identical to one I use on another machine with windows 7 so I suspect it is another piece of hardware present in my desktop box that is causing the problem At the moment I can't be bothered to fix it but when I get round to it I will need to remove all inessential hardware before the install and then add them back bit by bit and download the relevant drivers from the manufacturer because obviously something doesn't like the drivers supplied by MS during Windows setup.

cmpm:
Thanks, yeah I think I'll try.
I got it at a school discount, but that should not matter.

I have to get over my general hatred of the whole mess to speak to them first.
Damned, if they didn't do this on purpose, it was a major screw-up.

I'm back on XP and this is a media center as well, so I don't know....
W7 had trouble with my tv tuner card (ati), working for a bit then loosing the tuner's signal.
Works fine with XP media center installed, glad I had called for that disk long ago.

Seems the W7 disk is an enterprise update disk.
Printed on the disk is "Licensed for use only by Students and Staff"
Sounds plural to me.
I have it on my laptop as well, so I don't feel I've wasted my money....sorta...:)

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page