64 or 86 bit?

suuunly · 08 Jan 2010

Hi, I have a "HP Compaq nw9440" and it runs "XP"
I have plans on upgrading to Windows 7, but don´t know if I should install the 64 or 86 bit version.

I know I can get the information by using a tool made by microsoft
"http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/upgrade-advisor.aspx"

But my problem is that I have a typical hal.DLL problem, and can´t start up Windows. So what I am trying to say is:
Which version is recomended for the "HP Compaq nw9440" that has not been upgraded with Hardware (with RAM, and so forth)

btw: I have back´t up everything using Ubuntu on boot up, so I am ready to install Windows 7.

THANKS FOR YOUR REPLY

Dom · 08 Jan 2010

Overall, 64 bit is faster and still supports lots of x86 programs (for me anyway) and if you have over 3.0gb to 3.5 gb RAM, the 64 bit architecture will support it all.

yowanvista · 08 Jan 2010

x64 uses extra RAM but it's much better than x32

K3VL4R · 08 Jan 2010

The specs on that laptop are easily good enough for 64 bit. I would look at upgrading the ram though if you are still at the stock 1 GB. Nothing to do with being X64, 1 GB should run fine, just that your ram would be the bottleneck of that system regardless of the OS you were using.

nate42nd · 08 Jan 2010

On a machine with those specs, 32 bit should be fine. You will not need 64 bit.

I would go with 32 bit (or x86)

jav · 08 Jan 2010

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/products/system-requirements said:

If you want to run Windows 7 on your PC, here's what it takes:

1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

If you have 1 GB RAM I will definitely go with 32-bit.

The benefits of 64-bit wouldn't be worth performance hit.

pparks1 · 08 Jan 2010

I think people exaggerate the performance gains of 64-bit. Unless using heavily computational software which is 64-bit in nature..performance gains are often simply not there. Especially if you couple it with a machine that is a bit lower on RAM as the 64-bit code takes more space in memory.

suuunly · 11 Jan 2010

THANKS FOR ALL YOUR REPLIES

I installed:

64bit

and

2GB RAM (don´t worry it was compatible with the system) I had lying around on to the computer

And it works better than ever before

I am now finnishing a Lynda course ( Software training online-tutorials for Adobe, Microsoft, Apple & more ) to understand how Windows 7 works :P

So again: THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL REPLIES

Tews · 11 Jan 2010

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