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

[David Goldsmith]

On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 11:51 AM, Sean Mattingly <smattacus at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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


It helps a lot, thanks, but just to be clear, mine is dual core 32 bit
hardware, yes?  So the info about the 64 bit VM on a 32 bit host OS on a 64
bit CPU isn't exactly applicable, is it?

Right now, I'm leaning toward keeping my Windows install as is and trying a
64-bit linux install in a dual boot config., as the only thing presently I
need the extra memory addressing for is Python-related software. :-)

Thanks again.

DG

PS: now that I've netted a couple "volunteer instructors," if the linux
majority would prefer it if I took this exchange off list...
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