Are My Problems due to X64 bit version.

Hi Everyone


Sorry if this seems a bit long winded, but I will try to keep it concise.
I have been running win 7 32 bit Beta And RC with little trouble on my aging pc. Nothing giving any problem except onboard audio drivers which when forced installed and worked fine.
After buying a preorder Full retail Win 7 O.S. I decided a new build was in order.
I installed the 64 bit version of Win7 on my new PC .
I5 750 CPU, Gigabyte P55A-UD3 m/board, 4GB Kingston Ram, Samsung F3 1TB HDD, Asus HD5750 1GB graphics card.
Almost immediately I started having problems.
Programs I had running without any issues under the Beta and RC would not install under 64 bit Win 7 Home Premium, notably an old UK version of Quicken Deluxe.
The main problems started after installation, the PC would work well until I tried streaming video from BBC I player or You Tube, this was ok within the browser window but not when I switched to full screen mode. After a minute or two the screen went blank and then parts of my desktop would appear, Icons or taskbar or background or gadgets or any combination, the pointer would only move between screen changes and the only cure was to do "Ctrl-Alt-Del" and work the pointer to the shutdown button after the task manager menu screen appeared.
Win 7 reliability monitor showed a list of "Video hardware error " occurrences with a" we will get back to you" message if a solution was looked for. I tried updating the video drivers from Ver. 8.66 supplied to ver. 8.68 with no effect . I replaced the Graphics card with the old ATI X600 card from my old PC, with slightly older driver ver. 8.56 and the problem disappeared with standard and HD streaming working without any problem. I assumed my Graphics Card was faulty and returned it( The supplier held it until the 28 day deadline passed, emailed that it was faulty and refunded the cost). I then ordered a Sapphire card, same type , only to get the same problem. I have since found the problem happens with Google Earth another program which ran without issue under Beta and RC. I also had a couple of instances where the screen went blank for a few seconds but recovered and continued to operate, and a message to say that the video driver had stopped working but had recovered, this was always followed by the discovery of a black desktop background with only icons gadgets and taskbar visible. The PC would otherwise work normally with the background only reappearing momentarily as the PC was shut down.
First Question - Is this a driver problem, a win7 64 bit problem or a combination?.
Second question - Can I install Win7 32 bit as a dual boot with win 7 64 bit to allow some comparison testing, and how?.
I apologize again for this longwinded ramble through my problems but any help would be appreciated.

Lot to read, I will answer the questions that I know as I come to them

Old programs If programs are very old they may be 16 bit, cannot be run on 64 bit.


The problem with YouTube etc is most likely from the graphics card or the drivers as you already noted. The fact that you had things working properly with a graphics card implies that the problem is not with the 64 bit platform, but rather with the card.

hmmm what year quicken deluxe is it? Did you try installing it in compatibility mode - put in the cd, open it up in windows explorer and right click on the setup.exe file. Then on the compatibility tab set it it to Windows XP (Service Pack 2). Try installing it after that by double clicking on the setup file.

This person also had problems with your card in 64 bit, and solved it by installing an old driver (Though you may have already tried that).
Also I read a post by someone elsewhere that said they had troubles with the sapphire/gigabyte combination. They solved it with a BIOS update - available from the Gigabyte site.
That said, you have a very new computer so I would imagine the BIOS would be up to date. Maybe try ringing Gigabyte support to see if it may be to do with the motherboard - it is the common denominator between both setups.

Most older Intuit software required you run it under Administrator ONLY. They for years hated Microsoft and refused to do anything right. Sometimes you could change the permissions on the Application folder to Modify and that was good enough to get it to work.