32 Bit or 64 Bit for Laptop

I have an HP DV6700 laptop with with an AMD dual core TL60 64 bit processor. The laptop shipped with Vista Home Premium 32 bit and has 4GB ram, I'm ready to install the Windows 7 beta on it. Is there a reason I shouldn't got the 64 bit route?

I don't use many programs that will give me 64 bit headaches (MS Office 2007, PowerDVD etc.) but the laptop does have an HD-DVD player built-in as well as native HDMI. I just don't want to have to install 32 bit after I find out that 64 bit wasn't a smart move.

Well there are advantages in 64 bit version. It's supposed to be faster, and it utilizes the CPU and memory at their maximum capabilities.

You probably wont' have problems with software, most of them work fine.
As for HDMI and all, well, I guess you'll have to test it first,I'm afraid there's no answer to that in advance.

A clean install takes less than 20 minutes, it won't be hard to switch to 32bit in any case.

I have the 64 bit on my laptop right now and have had no problem finding drivers and software that works. Only have 2 gb of ram so haven't been able to take advatage of that feature yet. But I just ordered 4gigs from newegg

Great! Thanks for the responses, I'll give 64 a shot and see how it goes. Great forum!

Bare Foot Kid said:

Hello Itsdon, welcome to Se7en Forums!


The video card I'm using has one HDMI out; I've had no problems with any of the Windows 7 builds and HDMI.

Like limneos said, 7 only takes twenty minutes or less to install.












Later Ted

Bare Foot Kid - I have been reading everything I can to figure out why both the 64 bit ATI Vista & the 64 bit ATI Windows 7 Preview drivers hang in the process of installation at the point "Enumerating source media for installable packages....". ATI gives a support email but there was no response. Thwe windows drivers work good. Just like in Vista Beta testing....Testers can't grt to the people who might be able to do something with the information. It is all over the ATI Forum...no real answers....any Ideas?? (HP dv5-1125nr with Radeon HD3200 graphics with a HDMI input on the 64 bit Laptop...any thoughts - Patrick C

Patrick C said:

Bare Foot Kid - I have been reading everything I can to figure out why both the 64 bit ATI Vista & the 64 bit ATI Windows 7 Preview drivers hang in the process of installation at the point "Enumerating source media for installable packages....". ATI gives a support email but there was no response. Thwe windows drivers work good. Just like in Vista Beta testing....Testers can't grt to the people who might be able to do something with the information. It is all over the ATI Forum...no real answers....any Ideas?? (HP dv5-1125nr with Radeon HD3200 graphics with a HDMI input on the 64 bit Laptop...any thoughts - Patrick C

I believe the most solid answer would be that's it's just a Beta , and there will be full support for drivers later on. You should stick with the Windows driver for now..Believe me, though, there will be huge support of drivers compared to the first releases of Vista, and that's because of the disappointment that was caused back then due to the lack of them.

Just wait a couple of months...

limneos - I was hoping that wasn't the answer. Although that is the answer, when things are tested in the real world people communicate because they really want the best result. Why not in this case?

But I do agree to communicate and find a solution, its just that your problem seems to be manufacturer-related and I don't think there's much we can do about it, hence the Beta reminder...

I do some research before I answer every post , cause its my opinion taking criticism here...So, to get to your case again:

if only the Windows driver works fine, but the preview drivers from ATI that are designed for this reason don't, then either there's a hardware misconfiguration in your system or they are not that well-made yet.Meaning that they've probably been tested to a small number of systems, without covering most of the new or old systems in the market right now, making it impossible to say that they would work for sure.

Now we wouldn't even want to try and force-install a driver that refuses to install in the system it's made for, would we?

Then again, you might be experiencing the MSI installation problem, as seen here...
Windows Installer - can't install ANY msi package

You could try this fix:

Code:

 start regedit
navigate to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\SQMClient\Windows\DisabledSessions
rename MachineThrottling to _MachineThrottling

and see if it changes anything and lets you install your drivers.