jumping from 32 to 64 bit, what to look out for

I am most likely going to throw on my 64bit version I got this week, what "gotchas" have you guys run into when moving to 64 bit? Did most of your programs work ok? It looks like 64 bit drivers are available for all the hardware on my M1530 (video,audio,wifi, touchpad, fingerprint reader, etc)

I am mainly running Office 2007, firefox, Call of Duty 5, Steam (cod4), and the software for my Merc Zboard.

just wanted to learn from the experiances of all you people who have already made the switch.

BTW did you guys notice much of a performance boost with that extra .5 gigs of RAM available to windows? I doubt I ever used the full 3.5 gigs that my 32 bit OS uses but then again I'm not sure.

 

I opened a similar thread. If your dell has 64 bit drivers you might be out of the woods.

 

hey hody,

it seems that you can download all the drivers from the dell website, so you wont have a problem with that.

you will notice a slight boost in performance, and im afraid to say that firefox 3 no longer supports 64bit ( no longer??? WUT!!???? i know, i know...) i think firefox 2 does, but i had to make the move to Opera.... it feels strange, but ive gotten a liking to it... that was the only real problem i had, all others ran smoothly and without a problem ( steam FTW , and others like office 2007, photoshop, premiere, and all my games run without a problem, but im not sure about the zboard, maybe check the website to see if they have 64bit compatible drivers ?)

cheers !

 

I am not sure what happened but I am running firefox 3 on vista 64 bit without a problem.

 

I am not familiar with a Zboard, but all of your other software will work. The drivers are on Dell's site now. I haven't had any issues with 64 bit.

 

Really? ... didnt you get a message saying that it didnt support the 64 bit os ?

 

i stand corrected! i have just successfully installed firefox 3 in vista 64bit.... nice! its much much faster than opera

 

Yeah, FF3 32bit works fine in Vista x64. I think there is a 64 bit client out there, but I never messed with it due to there not being Flash 64 bit.

 

All of my 32bit software seems to run fine, in 32-bit mode, on a 64-bit Vista. I don't know if it's built-in function or what.

 

It's a feature of the OS to run both versions of software. It is a nice bridge until more devs write 64 bit code.

 

Built-in function called WOW64, Windows-on-Windows-x64

 

Shame 32 bit drivers don't work the same way .

 

well, I put it on yesterday with zero problems. All my software works fine, thanks for the help guys