UPDATE: 2/22 I’ve solved the problem, I’ll have a complete report in a day or two to help others that might be up against what I was. I’ll offer a complete “how to”. – Anthony
This is just a short note to point out that if you have an opportunity to buy a new PC or laptop, demand Windows 32 bit OS.
Promises made by Microsoft of 32 bit application compatibility are blatantly false (at least in my case). After two days of pulling my hair out with Windows 7 64 bit Home Premium, then buying the “anytime upgrade” to “professional” which still didn’t solve the problem. My problem: a very expensive broadcast multimedia program that demands 32 bit operation. Yes I’ve tried XP mode and Virtual PC, still fail. I’m faced now with:
1. Returning my new HP laptop and telling them to shove it into the refurb bin.
2. Buying the full retail version of Windows 7 32 professional, making my laptop overpriced.
3. Driving to Redmond and giving Ballmer a swift kick in the butt for being dumber than Steve Jobs at making customers stranded with no place to go.
There’s no downgrade path to 32 bit from 64 bit, no optional install, no recovery, only more money down the toilet for a retail license I already own, which is 64 not 32. Or return the whole unit as far as I can tell. Pissed off I am.
Ideas welcome. Please, no, don’t tell me to buy a Mac or run Linux, as they are not solutions to this particular problem.
REPLY: Update, WUWT readers come through with a solution, providing a way to get a CD ISO of the 32 bit OS, and advising that the COA key for 64 bit will also work for 32 bit, something I didn’t know. Thanks!
The irony: I could have solved this issue with the Technet volume license subscription that I used to have, but that’s another licensing horror story where I fell into a trap I couldn’t recover from. The subscription lapsed a few days, I went to renew it, but found there’s no option for renewal on my login, and I’ve spent 3 months in runaround with MS volume licensing, who sold me a $900 solution that still didn’t work, getting a refund, then being told I had to buy the renewal through external distributors. When I contact them, they don’t know what I’m talking about and a vicious cycle ensues. I finally gave up.
My issues with MS are ones of over complexity in solving what should be simple licensing problems.
Thanks to WUWT readers for their solution suggestions.
I’ll post a new update when I have the results of this new attempt.
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Quite frankly, as a software engineer with over 25 years of experience, your vendor sold you a piece of crap. Whatever they sold you did not conform to the Win32 interface (and it is all too easy to do bad things which break this). They got caught out. Make a big stink and see if you can get an upgrade price. If they offer similarly featured 32 and 64 bit versions (no major upgrades) the ethical thing to do would be a free upgrade if you are at the current revision of the 32 bit version. Otherwise you need to negotiate a reasonable upgrade price to the 64 bit version.
If the don’t want to play ball, well, you do have a big megaphone…
Yea, dual boot is the ticket if you have an available version of a WinXP/Vista you could install in dual boot mode.
In Win7 go to control panel, admin tools, computer management. Then click on disk management. Then right click on the C: drive and select shrink volume and shrink it say 30-50GB. Don’t create new empty partition yet. It’s now time to research how to run the 32bit OS install to create a new partition in the used disk space and install the 32bit OS there. I’ve not done this quite some time so I’m not entirely sure of the process right now.
Good Luck
Small typo in previous post. That’s unused disk space.
At least youre not me…I have a sandy bridge CPU.
1. You need a laptop that has a good set of 32bit Win 7 drivers, with OEM support. Without that you are screwed. ( You can likely slam an OEM 32bit W7 OS on the one you have – but may lose some features. )
2. Then that lappie has to have the specs to run your app
that is likely to be a very small market niche.
Did you actually check with the vendor of your multimedia product BEFORE you purchased your PC? They would have been perfectly aware of the compatbility issues and would have warned you. MS never promised every app would be compatible with x64.
If you want to blame I think HP deserves the lion share of the blame. I am very happy with my x64 Toshiba Laptop but but the first thing my OEM recovery disks ask if whether I want to install the x86 or x64 bit version.
Personally, I don’t touch HP PCs with a 10 foot pole. My family members have discovered that they have rotten support if you want to do anything unusual (like install hardware). Your experience with x64/x86 issue is another example of shoddy HP support for people that need to change the system configuration.
And I thought farm equipment talk around the kitchen table was un-de-codeable.
Come to the dark side (*nix), we have cookies 🙂
Don’t know if this will help, but I submitted a question to serverfault.com
http://serverfault.com/questions/238496/problem-running-32-bit-app-in-win7-x64
If there’s an answer to the problem, these guys will know it.
Fingers crossed.
Anthony
Been playing in the PC game for a long, long time.
It sounds like you fundamental issue here is the program talking to hardware.
ALL virtualisation solutions (VMWare, Virtual PC, Virtualbox, etc) will struggle to map SPECIALISED hardware into the land of the VM. You MAY also most likely need native 64 bit drivers for the hardware also.
If the hardware is USB then a good virtualiser may cut it, and the only one I know that has really good performance is VMware player. The others work OK but the performance is not so good.
If the hardware is not USB, then you are pretty much stuck. The only solution is to roll back to a 32 bit OS. Even here you may need to be very careful – for example, if the 32 bit version of the program that you have is for windows XP, then the device drivers are unlikely to install and work in Windows 7 (32 bit edition). You may have no choice but to use XP.
So – check where the problem actually lies. Check that the drivers you need are available for Win7 32 bit before committing to that course of action (else you will be making more dents in the wall).
If you can get 32 bit drivers for Win7 then use the people who have left comments here to get a 32 bit OEM disk, and install it using the same licence key you had for the 64 bit version.
Only consider virtualisation further (in any form) if the hardware dependance is USB. Otherwise forget it.
Ok , ServerFault punted to SuperUser (must be a linux moderator…)
Lets try this:
http://superuser.com/questions/248735/problem-running-32-bit-app-in-win7-x64
Herewith is some perspective on cost versus benefit:
Thirty years ago, when I was doing mainframe programming for a living, $5000 might buy you the computer’s on/off switch.
Things have improved considerably since then, but the need to weigh cost versus benefit still holds, and it can be a two-way street.
It all comes down to this …… Is your sanity worth $5000 to you?
Anthony,
The more that I think about the more I think you should be taking your complaint to HP. It is not MS’s fault that HP did not buy the type of license that gives you a dual install. If HP support says this they are lying. Other vendors offer that option. There is no excuse for HP to refuse to provide it.
I keep my Windows NT tower going to communicate with a Trinity system, and no, it’s nothing religious. Once you lose these discontinued PCs it can be impossible to work with the older equipment.
Just tried upgrading to Internet Explorer 8 tonight on an older laptop. The installation window said it failed because Internet Explorer 8 was required for installation… OK, plan B …..
Gosh Anthony, this makes ‘roid rage seem tame!
Welcome to the world of most consumers, who do not have the skills to fix the problem, even if there is a fix. Yep, it sucks.
But, your blood pressure is more important than the perfidies of MicroSatan.
Look after yourself. We want you to stay healthy, not compromise your well being because today you have hit one of the many very, very annoying and expensive glitches most of us face.
If no-one on this site can solve the problem in the next 12 hours, you might just have to sell your pets and children and cough up the 5 grand.
Or, you could institute a proper tip jar so that people who want to help can do so.
[Reply: the tip jar is there if you look for it. ~dbs, mod.]
Anthony:
I’ve got an HP laptop running Win 7 64bit. I’ve run Win 7 beta, the RC and finally got the new upgrade recovery discs from HP in their very delayed promised upgrade to Win 7.
HP allows you to order a replacement recovery disc. Perhaps they will allow you to get the 32 bit install? Unfortunately, there is no easy uninstall 64 bit and re-install 32 bit, only the painful total re-install of everything. If no HP cheap install disc options, perhaps we can donate for your purchasing the NewEgg Win 7? Then you can sell your Win 7 64 bit on EBay.
The biggest issue I’ve run into with drivers and win 7-64 is that it absolutely refuses to run unsigned drivers. I’ve been tempted to use a hex editor and “sign” the driver.
Try turning off User Account Control before doing the program load. From a tip sent out by Computer Pilot magazine: User Account Control is intended to protect you from potentially vicious malware and other programs from running or making changes to your system – the unintended consequence is frequent annoying prompts and frequent failed installations, unsolvable reasons why programs won’t run or even install properly. We see this happen with a lot of FSX addons.
Our advice for all Vista users is to Turn Off User Account Control. It’s done with just a few mouse clicks and you’ll find a lot of “gremlins” that cause programs to not run or install will instantly disappear.
To Turn Off User Account Control….
1. From The Start Menu – Select Control Panel
2. In the top left hand of the Control Panel Window Select Classic View
3. Double Click On User Accounts
4. At the Bottom Of The List Under Make Changes To Your User Account select the option to Turn User Account Control On Or Off.
5. De-check Use User Account Control (UAC) To Help Protect Your Computer
6. Then at the prompt – restart your computer
7. Your system will then restart with User Account Control inactive.
The incessant prompts to give permission for programs to run will disappear and those gremlins we talked about that stop addons from installing and running properly will also disappear.
This is VISTA related, but I believe S7 has very similar controls.
“Harry the Hacker says:
February 21, 2011 at 8:54 pm”
I agree with Harry on this Anthony. There is a big drive towards virtualisation (And has been since the days of IBM MVS) in the Wintel space which makes hardware dependent apps difficult, or even impossible, to manage.
Yeah, 10-4, Pamela. LOL! The techies are running rampant. I’m in the market for a new desk top PC when I get back to the Mainland from winter in HI and now I’m scared as to what to buy. The old machines running XP have done a pretty good job and I’m glad I missed Vista. Whatever I end up with it will be interesting.
I’m not quite sure what the problem is here, but it sounds like a problem I’ve had recently.
Is it that the $5k software accesses 32 bit drivers in the 32 bit O/S ?
I had to replace a laptop that is used for backup navigation on my boat. It interfaces with the radar, GPS , Autopilot, fuel flow and engine data and management.
The new laptop came with Win 7 x64 and was assured that it would work ! It seemed that the application software had only 32 bit drivers and there were no drivers for x64.
After much messing around and being told the laptop only came with Win 7 x64, I went and checked the manufactures web site and found all the 32 bit drivers listed, so I figured I could install Win 7 32 bit. BTW, it is one of those laptops with the O/S and recovery loaded on to a hidden partition.
Booted off a DOS CD and ran fdisk and wiped the partitions. Then went to one of the pirate sites and downloaded a ISO torrent of Win 7 x86 Ulitimate. I had no compunction of downloading a pirate copy, I was so angry with the run around I had got from the dealers and Microsoft in general after hearing all their hype being backward compatible. And I figured I had already paid for Windows 7.
Anyway, I loaded the O/S, clean install, installed the 32 bit drivers I had downloaded from the manufactures web site, then loaded the Navigation software. Hooked up the Laptop to the boat and it worked perfectly first time.
Problem solved.
If you just need the hp OEM 32 bit media then buy a new hp laptop with the 32 bit media, copy and return the laptop. You have a valid license number that should work for an hp 32 bit oem install disk. There are still stores out there that do not charge restocking fees.
My friend it seems you’ve hit an impasse. You have a choice among some unpalatable options:
1) Do nothing, which really is not a option but keeps you from spending more money.
2) Pay the ransom demanded by the vendor and move forward.
3) Sell your continually depreciating 64-bit asset and build a 32-bit system to your liking. This also involves spending money but should get you to a system that runs the way you expect.
I know you are pi$$ed at the situation. I feel your pain. I had a client that chose to run its enterprise accounting system on Windows. The database process kept dying because the 32-bit operating system could not handle all the concurrent threads. Their options were just as unpalatable to them so I had to squeeze as much memory out of the 32-bit limits until the 64-bit options became less risky. Have you heard about the /3GB boot switch?
Good luck with your choice.
I don’t know if it’s the same with Windows 7, but with Vista you right click on the .exe file and click ‘run as 32 bit’ – it might be in the ‘properties’ tab. I had the same problem with a game on Vista 64 bit Ultimate and this cured all my problems.
You mean this Steve Ballmer? There is something definitely lacking here.
I’m always left feeling that product developers at Microsoft are as confused about the intricacies of their products as their customers. The human genome is estimated to be comprised of something like 30,000 genes. How many lines of code are in Windows 7?
SP1 is released today – MS have addressed a huge number of compatibility issues in it – I’d suggest trying to install that first and then seeing if your app works in compatibility mode.