Win 7 64bit to 32 bit

[Starjumper]

Hi Guys,

Is there an easy way I can change my Win 7 64bit to Win 32bit ??

I am running an Acer Aspire 5738PG.

Thanks

John

[CGolder]

Full reinstall is the only way win7 is pretty quick though

[Spikey]

Whats the problem? I'd stick with a 64bit operating system if the machine is capable of utilising it.

[CGolder]

i presume you installed windows 7 64-bit on a lower spec machine and realised it runs like a pig?

[Woking]

why? unless it's too demanding on your current spec as above

[Starjumper]

I just wondered as a lot of other software and web browsers dont support it.

Thanks

John

[the_laughing_crow]

Try ubuntu, its free, easy to use and very very good.

[Gina]

+1

[KEJ]

Hi

I have windows 7 Professional 64 bit installed on my laptop and PC and can run all software, especially anything Astro related.

The only issues I had have been with very old pinnacle software for an old analogue to digital 8mm video converter hardware, the new software would not work with it, so I had to use the old software so I installed it in XP Mode and virtual server and bingo all fine.

I use Firefox and IE9 all fine.

[Weebz]

Been using x64 for over a year on two computers - anything that will run on x86 (32bit) should run on 64bit.

The only time you may run into issues is with drivers for older devices.

There should be no noticeable performance difference between the two however x64 can access 3gb+ RAM whilst x86 cannot.

Of course there will be exceptions and your mileage may vary but I haven't run into anything that breaks due to the x64 OS yet

[skybadger]

I run an acer 1825ptz on W7 64 and it flies for such a small machine.

The key issues I have encountered are:

1, Flash only runs in IE 32 bit, so run IE32 bit not IE64 - both are installed. May be fixed by now though, its an Adobe issue

2, Some ascom assumes the use of 32 bit scripting, this needs to be explicitly called by the user when user driven. When program driven (like ascompad on eqascom), this is a problem since I can;t tell it which one to use

Otherwise Stellarium, Maxim, registax, K3, CCDWare, deepskystacker all run faster using the wider memory space.

If you are still having issues then a rebuild is the only way, however I wouldn't bet on how whether 32 bit is supported as a valid option for W8 in the offing

regards

Mike

.

[the_laughing_crow]

I read somewhere that 32bit operating systems can actually access 3.5gb ram. So if youve only got 4gb the difference will be marginal. Not only that but any software you're using on that operating system will have to have been written for a 64 bit environment otherwise it will behave as though its in a 32 bit environment... so there'll be no difference at all.

Is that true?

So if youre running a 32bit program on its own in your 8gb ram 64bit OS the ram wont be making any difference at all.

[martin_h]

I read somewhere that 32bit operating systems can actually access 3.5gb ram. So if youve only got 4gb the difference will be marginal. Not only that but any software you're using on that operating system will have to have been written for a 64 bit environment otherwise it will behave as though its in a 32 bit environment... so there'll be no difference at all.

Is that true?

So if youre running a 32bit program on its own in your 8gb ram 64bit OS the ram wont be making any difference at all.

Thats true - but it leaves 4gb free for other programs to run.

[skybadger]

Not entirely - any 32 bit windows application is only allowed to access up to 2GB by the OS. The maximal setting is using the 3GB switch which tells the Os to locate itself in the 3-4GB memory area, freeing the lower areas and allows more available memory to applications. They are still limited to 2GB though. The only way around this is for apps built with PAE which is a way of memory windowing and limited normally to apps like Exchange or SQL server.

So no, the difference is not marginal even at 4gb installed memory. Its at least 1Gb or 50%.

Similarly, the 32 bit apps won't run faster on a 64 bit Os because of any magic, but the 64 bit OS will run faster on a 64 bit processor than a 32 bit one will and a 32 bit app will thus run faster due to the overall faster environment.

So the benefit of running 32 bit apps in a 64 bit environment with lots of ram is all about sitting in a fast environment, capable of giving every 32 bit app all the memory it wants up to 2GB and have them running in parallel processing like crazy.

Mike

[Starjumper]

Thanks giys, OK I guess the best thing is to stick with it.

Cheers

John