[SciPy-dev] WOT: Experiences running 64 bit Vista on a 32 bit machine

[Sean Mattingly]

Hi David,

I've installed Linux x64, Vista x64, and Windows 7 x64 on my desktop
computer which has this kind of processor:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115029

Looking around a bit on the web, I can find instances of computers with the
same processor you have with 64 bit OS's already installed. If I had a
computer with that processor, I wouldn't think twice about putting a 64 bit
OS on it.

I doubt that, with the 64 bit VM on a 32 bit host OS on a 64 bit CPU, you'd
be able to address more than the ~ 2.8 gigs of memory or so which is the
limit for 32 bit machines running windows (after hardware and whatever takes
its chunk of the 4g visible). Indeed, finding some threads on this:

http://superuser.com/questions/15434/how-does-vmware-guest-os-memory-usage-work

There's some links to forum discussion on that page where people have tried
that, but the gist of it is that the VM can be told to use more than the
amount of ram physically provided, but it's paging memory, and not
physically accessing the unused memory. What you're asking about, if it can
use more than the 4g limit, would require the VM making its own OS - like
interface with the hardware...which means it's not a VM anymore!

Also, I want to agree with an earlier message that you go with Windows 7. I
had a dual - boot configuration of Vista and Linux (Openbox on Ubuntu), and
Vista was just giving me all sorts of problems. I replaced the Vista
installation with Windows 7 about 2 weeks ago, so these weren't "early
rollout" issues. 7 is a much smoother OS; under the hood, it's running a lot
of the good things from Vista anyways, so there's no reason to go with
Vista. Really, IMO, going with Vista would be like taking windows ME over XP
SP2, at this point. And the driver support is much better, as some
manufacturers and software developers have just stopped caring about Vista.

Finally, if you decide to install Vista or Windows 7 and you have more than
one hard drive partition, feel free to ping me with questions, because
Microsoft made some...interesting...design decisions in the install process
there.

Hope some of this helps...
 - Sean


On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 1:23 AM, David Goldsmith <d.l.goldsmith at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 11:15 PM, David Cournapeau <david at silveregg.co.jp>wrote:
>
>> David Goldsmith wrote:
>> > Please forgive the widely OT request for input: I'm thinking about
>> > trying to run 64 bit Vista on my 32 bit machine (Pentium Dual-Core T4300
>> > @ 2x2.10Ghz); following
>> >
>> http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/32-bit-and-64-bit-Windows-frequently-asked-questions#How-do-I-tell.
>> ..
>> > I've confirmed that I'm "64 bit capable."  Has anyone reading this far
>> > ;-) had a particularly positive/negative experience doing this?  Also,
>> > how do I determine the 64 bit linux capability of my hardware?
>>
>> If windows 64 runs, linux 64 will as well; as far as OS are concerned,
>> 64 bits mode is like a new architecture (like ppc vs intel). When the PC
>> starts, the kernel of whatever OS you are running will refuse to run if
>> it is 64 bits and you run on a 32 bits machine. The details are OS/Boot
>> loader dependent, but most installers will refuse to install a 64 bits
>> installers on a 32bits-only machine anyway. You can also run a 64 bits
>> VM inside a 32 bits, assuming your CPU is 64 bits capable (so you can
>> run 64 bits Ubuntu in vmware on top of 32 bits Ubuntu for example).
>>
>> I strongly suggest using windows 7 instead of Vista if you can.
>>
>
> OK, thank you very much for the input.  Do you have first-hand experience
> w/ that vmware configuration?  My main issue of concern, IIRC the responses
> to a post I made about a year-and-a-half ago, is a single object being able
> to address more than 4GB of memory...  Thanks again,
>
> DG
>
>
>>
>> cheers,
>>
>> David
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