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.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Anthony, by hook or by crook, just get a 32-bit DVD matching the type of your 64-bit DVD (OEM to OEM, Retail to Retail). Install, activate, phone call, done. Give them the URL to this page if they have a problem. 😉 Gotta add my two cents to some of the comments (names are not important here, but the misinformation is) …
Nonsense. 32 bit isn’t ‘holding’ anything anywhere. Those apps are what they are, and are what they were! Programs were compiled, they exist, they worked, now sometimes they do not. The past does not change, only the future does. In the future according to Microsoft it is allowable to break things from the past, they call it planned obsolescence. It occurs in their recently shoddy compilers and trickles down to the general public through fanboys telling us to update the old software. Imagine a world where we throw out the old books because the language is ancient and obsolete or because they won’t fit on our new bookshelves. Buy new books (or get the authors of the old ones to update them!). Never mind the fact that many of the authors are dead. It’s a brave new world.
First of all backward compatibility should be implied, and automatic. But if they didn’t promise it, why not? That should have been goal #1 in the meeting of the systems design team. But guess what, obsolescence was planned. Rough analogy, hey we’re gonna update all the roads in the country, only problem is all your cars will need to be updated or better yet, replaced before they will work. It’s no wonder there are a ton of green AGW types employed at Redmond.
Ballmer in the house? (Can you believe they actually called Win v6.1 as Win7!) Anyway, the statement The vendor should supply … shifts the focus from MS to everyone else, how convenient. What about the vendors who are dead? Intel has kept up their end of the bargain by creating chips that are backwards compatible, extending and adding registers, NOT re-designing. If they did we would have, oh I don’t know, an incompatible chip (see Intel vs Motorola, or even x64 vs IA64). So if the hardware is compatible, and the software is frozen in time (16-bit, 32-bit) where must the problem be? Yep, the operating system changed. Sheesh, sometimes I think we should have stuck with Intel compilers! Lest we forget, Microsoft made its name on languages and compilers, they owned the field and were trusted. IMHO they may be screwing the pooch here.
The app ‘demands’ whatever it was compiled for. Most likely their fancy expensive Microsoft Developer Studio .NUT++# compiler didn’t mention that the output program would have an estimated lifespan of a couple of years. Redmond won’t be shipping updated compiler files and libraries to its users to recompile all their stuff. And this of course cannot address the folks who died or left the biz. Microsoft hasn’t release a thunking converter to the general masses that inputs a compiled binary (or intermediate object code) which outputs a brand spanking new compatible binary. Microsoft certainly didn’t even try to make current compilers respect previous operating system versions. Microsoft simply did the bare minimum necessary to release an OS that uses x64 compatible CPUs (riding the upgrade marketing propaganda wave, e.g., wireless 4g and 5g …) and intentionally sabotaged backwards compatibility because it suits their purpose. They were also in a mad dash to send the Vista disaster into the memory hole. Finally, the sentence: Also, 32 bit makes your computer run at 3/4 speed is just so meaningless I don’t know where to begin.
Well sometimes ‘developers’ and authors vanish, retire and even die. But no matter what, blaming developers from any number of years ago for something that MS just did now is way off the mark. Support? Support doesn’t mean waiting around in perpetuity to correct future problems in the OS! The developers write and compile their stuff in their timeframe without benefit of a time-traveling DeLorean to snatch a future copy of PC World. Their app worked before. Now it doesn’t. It was written for Windows, a so-called constant, a platform (this was the very purpose of Windows!). The ‘platform’ was later modified to use the brand spanking newest marketing hype (64 bits! oh my!), and it was broken in the process. What is most unforgivable is the fact MS creates both compilers and the OS, and still would not guarantee compatibility. This kinda breaks the marital vows developers take with their platform compiler of choice. Fail.
No, that actually is their fault. And you’re wrong because it can be done so it is by definition their fault, they simply chose not to. I’m not saying they had to do it, I’m absolutely not saying there should be a law to make them do it. I’m saying they should have done it, because they could have done it. But they were in such a hurry because Vista had become an albatross. Also, they were way too busy inventing and foisting the dog-ugly ribbon bars (leave my Excel alone!) on their customers and killing Classic themes, therefore how could they possibly find the time to ensure 100% compatibility!
Seriously though, if you have a box with an x64 CPU …
* Install Win7 x32 DVD and it runs most 32-bit software and older with no problems
* Install Win7 x64 DVD and it runs less 32-bit software and older with no problems
… well who made the mistake? The hardware and application is a constant here. Now obviously they own the code that DOES work (Win7 x32 DVD). They chose not to integrate it into the x64 release. Others can do it in 3rd party Virtual Machines, why isn’t it built-in seamlessly and called upon when needed? Or better yet perfect the compatibility mode so it always works (yeah, and is always present, not just Win7 Pro!). Why did someone else have to invent DosBox? And Sandboxie? Was Redmond just being kind to these 3rd party developers! If it was me (and dare I say most others) we would have ironed this thing out purely on principle because it would be the right thing to do. Demand quality, compatibility and perfection, Period. But Microsoft has almost turned itself into IBM now, they are almost there. All fat and little muscle (and for tiny brains, see the Ballmer videos).
Keep in mind that if this had occurred anywhere in the approx dozen years between DOS 2 through 7 (broken compatibility, remember you compile for the platform) Microsoft might never have survived. Alternatives such as DR-DOS, OS/2, or something else may have succeeded after all. Backward compatibility was a given, once that is in question you no longer have a platform, instead you have a moving target. Most people do not like moving targets. Microsoft DOS succeeded because it was a constant dependable platform (albeit bare-bones) for its developers, particularly the business and gaming community which would never have accepted the current attitude in those days.
For the record, I am definitely not a M$ basher at all, having made a ton of money with them and because of them. I’ve been involved since before they had an OS (yep, CP/M). There was a time (most of the time really) where when bugs were found they were fixed (‘hey, this program refuses to run on DOS 3.xx, find out why!’). Now they have allowed themselves to be reduced to blaming past developers for writing an app that fails on a future broken Operating System! What is really interesting is how they have managed to transmit Koolaid electronically through the internet to draft some fanboys to parrot these absurd talking points! It’s the developers fault! We must shed the 16-bit (and now 32-bit) code to progress! Windows is becoming less of an Operating System and more of an application in each iteration. Compatibility is questionable, and you pay good money for this!
Here is an exaggerated but logical way to think of this. Lets say you have …
(A) One Operating System Win7 at Microsoft
(B) One Million x86 applications worldwide
Does it make more sense to (A) fix and fine-tune the the ONE Operating System, or (B) recompile one million programs? Exaggeration aside, most people would logically choose (A). However, Microsoft and their illogical fanboys would love the world to choose (B). Heck, they might just sell another million compiler upgrades (planned?). But hold on, just think about the carbon footprint! All that electricity wasted re-developing and bandwidth to send out updates! Yikes! You see, Microsoft isn’t really green at all except in the wallet of course.
Yes, I agree, it is deliberate. Also, “had enough hardware upgrades that I could no longer activate WinXP“, never a problem, just a toll-free phone call and it is taken care of. Unless something at Microsoft has changed very very recently, this still applies.
Why is such a smart guy like Tony Watts still using Windows when he so clearly hates it? Have you been involved with these guys?
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/02/22/0244242/German-Foreign-Office-Going-Back-To-Windows
Obviously, people are entitled to their opinions, but most of those bashing of Win7 64 bit is nonsense. Sure, in a perfect world, all previous versions of products would work in new environments, but that’s not now, nor has it ever been the case. It is not done with malicious intent either. Having been a software developer for over 23 years, I’ve seen my share of hacks, tricks, using undocumented methods, etc., for getting code to work on a current release of Windows, only to see it fail on a new release, and we’re not even talking about 64 bit vs 32 bit. And multi-media type apps are usually some of the worst offenders, or the video card manufacturers with their buggy and unstable drivers.
Windows 7 64 bit (as with XP 64 bit) provides you with tremendous benefits, when considering the ability to access more than 2GB ram. That, and the native 64 bit processing on a 64 bit chip is well worth the upgrade. XP compatibility mode and virtual pc allow most of the previous versions of software to run. For those that won’t, you ALWAYS have the dual boot option. I have dual boot on my computer and I use Win7 almost exclusively, but if I need to, it’s a short 1 minute reboot into XP, where I can run all my existing apps. And when I boot back to Win7, any files on my XP drives are available to me. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have to do this, but it’s such a minor inconvenience that I don’t spend one minute worrying about it.
Silly me; being somewhat computer illiterate (hey it’s tool, like a cross-cut saw; right ?) Here I was laboring under the misunderstanding that the “OPERATING SYSTEM” was a standard interface; between “THE HARDWARE; ANY HARDWARE” and the “SOFWARE; ANY SOFTWARE”.
So where did I go wrong. Evidently each piec of HARDWARE and each piece of SOFTWARE requires its own COMPLETELY CUSTOM AND UNIQUE “OPERATING SYSTEM” . What went wrong; how could I have let myself be so deluded ?
I work all the time, with a very very expensive piece of Optical Design software. With a 32 bit operating system, it can barely address enough memory to hold the file name; so it was a great relief when they came out with a 64 bit version. They upgrade it evry few days/weeks/months/at least twice a year; and I always download and save both the 32 bit, and the 64 bit versions, and I save them ALL back for about three years. I used to have every single version of the program ever released, including all the beta versions; but that is now more code than you can address.
The 64 bit version works under win XP-Pro-64 Our IT people have been testing win-7 but so far they don’t know if it works or not. I remember M$-DOS 3.2 . That OS seemed to work ok. Haven’t liked anything since. It all seems to get slower with each new release.
I don’t have a suggestion, just some observation which might or might not help solve the confusion.
There are several incompatibilities with W7:
1. An incompatibility with a number of old softwares introduced with Vista which W7 inherited. It has nothing to do with the “bittiness”, it affects both 16 and 32 bit applications. It’s caused by changes Microsoft made deep inside Windows, which break old code. There is no easy rule to recognize the software affected, there are lists on the net. If you have this problem, going back to W7 32bit won’t help, because all versions of W7 and Vista are affected.
2. W7 64 bit dropped support for old 16 bit for good. This affects old applications from the 1990s. If you have this problem, going back to W7 32 bit will help.
3. W7 64 bit can’t run hardware drivers for 32 bit. That means you can only use hardware with 64 bit support, i.e. very recent ones. If you have this problem, going back to W7 32 bit will help.
However, XP mode should resolve 1. and 2., and even in many cases 3. without having to abandon W7 64. I’m baffled that it didn’t work for you.
Why get a 64-bit operating system? Because soon you will need more than 3GB of usable memory, and 32 bits doesn’t support that.
I have a different and much more practical solution to the old crappy software problem, old crappy hardware. I have recently bought a Dell GX240, for $40.00, a GX260 for $30.00, and a GX620 for $125.00. Unless you are prepared to be patient, check Craig’s List daily, and act quickly when you see what you want, you will probably not be able to get such good deals, but you should be able to get a GX240, GX260, GX270, or GX280 for under $100.00 and a GX620 for under $200.00. I saw a GX620 without a hard drive offered last week for $100.00. I have bought LCD monitors for: 15″ – $15.00, 17″ – $40.00, and 19″ – $65.00.
This is a much better solution than putting a crippled 32-bit operating system on your new computer.
For what it is worth, I purchased an OEM version of win-7-64, that I was planning on installing on my home computer so that it coulda ctually use the memory that is in the computer. You are forced to specify 32 or 64 bit when oyu get the OEM version.
I was told; by the software people at FRY’s that the regular home/business/professional non-oem versions of win-7 came standard with both 32 and 64 bit versions; and presumably you could run them both on a dual boot system.
I have never been able to get anything on M$ web site to work so can’t get a real answer from them.
Whoa! Why so much effort in trying to “fix” it? You simply bought the wrong laptop (possibly on multiple fronts: definitely wrong OS and maybe wrong hardware as well – not a big fan of HP laptops). Sounds like you got it from a big box store. Return it and find a laptop with the OS that you require (out of the box). M$ didn’t make you buy the wrong OS. Life’s too short. Go get the right thing. =)
PS-A Technet subscription is now included in the MAPS program. If you’re not familiar with MAPS, it’s subscription available to those in the Partner program. I find it to be an invaluable tool in my work.
Mike Haseler says:
February 22, 2011 at 12:04 am
So I installed “Agent Ransack” … which has worked so flawlessly that I had to look to find its name!! Apparently (reading the help) it is a lite version of the professional filefinderpro provided free of charge.
Thanks for that tip! I am going to try it on the work W7 computer I have struggled so hard with… and cursed!
The Retail (non-oem) versions of Windows 7 (and of Vista) have two DVDs, on 32 bit, and one 64-bit, but only one product key. Once you have installed one version, entered the product key, and activated it, then when you install the other version with the same product key, you will not be able to do the online activation. Before you can activate the second installation, you will have to call the 800 number and tell the online support person that you have uninstalled the first installation. So you cannot dual boot them.
Golly, trying to read this thread has been a revelation. It is like going into those geek sites where people argue passionately, to the death, about things that most people can’t comprehend. Perhaps that is part of the attraction (for the contributors).
Anyway Anthony, you obviously have a lot of lurkers of the geek persuasion. I wonder if some of them would be interested in building a superbly cross-referenced database for the compendium of reference works that people keep asking for?
PS – hope you didn’t have to sell the pets and kids – j
Anthony,
Yeah I bought a Dell laptop and Dell Optiplex for a customer last week, both had the choice or 32 or 64 bit Win 7. It seems like their are plenty of 32 bit options out there. Maybe you like HP? Maybe you should be blaming this on HP and not MS?
Either way, this is the reason why Apple does so well. All of this confusion and nonsense with versions, 64, 32, Premium, Upgrade, Downgrade is so 1997. This should all work well and be integrated by MS and their hardware partners so that there is no pain for end users.
This is why those of us that studied computer engineering know that a good computer is the whole widget of hardware and software. The anomaly of MS wherein the OS and the hardware are isolated is a fluke of history. MS should work diligently to fix this problem once and for all. Or they deserve the scorn and loss of market share they get for making everything so ridiculously inconvenient for partners, customers, developers and everyone else. All so they can remain a high margin software only business in a world where almost every other device is a careful integration of software and hardware, done by people working under the same roof.
Too late. I’ve just bought an HP PC with Win 7, 64 bit premium. One giant step backwards for computing.
Anthony–
On the lemon-into-lemonade front, have you considered just for funsies calling up the marketing department of your software vendor and offering them a trade of a free 64-bit upgrade in exchange for prominent ad visibility on WUWT for some length of time?
Be sure to show them the traffic stats, and mention how popular your site is (and it is) with the broadcast meteorology crowd.
Worth a shot. . .
Just my two cents, sorry if this has already been covered; I read as many comments as I could.
If your software is hardware intensive, it would probably run better on a server grade machine. So install it on a 32-bit server and also install VNC, or a similar screen sharing package. Then set up a VPN for remote access.
Of course, for remote access this is only feasible if you’ve got good upstream bandwidth (I’ve got 20 Mbps), and it’s pretty tinker-intensive, but it can potentially be done for free, assuming you have a server-grade box and a modem/router that supports VPN.
Steve Fletcher
‘“32 bits are plenty. 16 were plenty, really. RISC processors (like Apple used to use) worked fine and were faster. The maxing of bits is pure hype to sell more hardware.”
Awesome buddy. Maybe you only enjoy minesweeper and hearts, but for the rest of us that use our PC’s for more than word 2.0 I will take my 32/64 bit processors.’
Actually the CPU by itself don’t provide that much “power” it’s actually your graphics cars, sound card, bus speed, and amount of, and speed of, RAM, that matters, oh, and don’t forget the speed of your hard drive (which is why people really ought to go with speedy solid state drives, especially in laptops, vroom vroom.)
After all it is the slowest crap that slows down your system, usually, never your CPU. This is actually easy to prove, just get a, supposedly, retarded set up, load it with enough RAM that a system can take, and create a RAM disk to use as a hard drive to install to with enough RAM left over to work with. et Presto, lightning fast system. This didn’t work for only windows 3.11 back in the day but even NT 3.51 and win95 (which worked on IBM’s MCA based server 386’s even, given enough RAM), but wasn’t made into zen until the linux router (no hdd required) was spawned I think. If your in to gaming RAMdisk is what you really want to use, and not just for the game but for the OS swap file as well, if not the whole OS fits too. Less lag. Works for database files as well, the only thing you need the hard drive for is for saving changes.
Actually, and I know this isn’t a solution (which you already have), but the Ultimate editions of Vista and 7 have both 32 and 64 bit code in the same box. It’s a more expensive way to migrate to 32 bit than you tried.
Also, many mentioned Technet Membership – but those licenses are only for “evaluation” purposes.
@1DandyTroll
RAMdisk is what you really want to use, and not just for the game but for the OS swap file as well, if not the whole OS fits too. Less lag.
Putting the swap file in a RAM disk is nonsense. The swap file is for when the OS needs more RAM than is physically present, so you offer it more space on a different medium. But putting it on a RAM disk means, first you take away RAM forcing the OS to swap earlier than it otherwhise would, and then you tell it to use the RAM you’ve just taken away from it as surrogate, but not one bit more.
I have six siblings of which two are engineers and being engineers(mechanical and electronic) they are always right. Another is an electronic tech who repairs computers and the like. When they all get together it sounds a lot like this thread! Too many acronyms for me. I see at writing there are 168 replies and at $10 each we should be able to get you a new laptop to provide us with all these posts that we look forward to. The daily dose of WUWT is a great tonic for the mind and if a new, better, faster, nicer and/or functional computer is all that is needed for even more great articles my check is in the mail; figuratively of course.
On another topic I am a superintendent at a golf course here in Ontario and I need a new weather station to keep track of disease pressure and threats to our turf. I also require a couple of soil temp monitors that can relay info daily to my computer to time appropriate chemical apps. Many of my colleagues have weather stations and is there a way for them to compile a temperature record for Canada/US by sending info to you? As I said once before golf courses are idea settings for thermometers—lots of turf and not much jet exhaust!
edeck
Where else but in America can Microsoft get away with using their customers as guinea pigs to “send error reports”, so MS can fix their programming, only to release the next disaster verison, for an upgrade fee no-less, and start the process over again.
Do not Send Error Reports. MS is not entitled to free troubleshooting labor. Let them figure out what is wrong, themselves! And keep using the version you have. Do not upgrade.
This goes for Autodesk and their AutoCAD, as well. Stay with Release 14 and 2005 LT and tell them to shove Revit.
I had the exact same experience with an $8,000 engineering program. Now I have a used XP machine for FEA’s, and a new Windows 7 machine for everything else. Microsoft obviously knows that this will happen, in what way is it a good thing to them?
Anthony, out at the MS website is a potential fix for you, since you stated that you have the Professional version. (Note to your readers: it does not work on Home Premium.)
You have to dig for it (sorry, I no longer have the link), but it is a “comapibility” fix that SHOULD allow you to use 32 bit programs without a problem. (My nephew is a web developer, and tried to help with this..)
If your problems are ONLY with 32 bit programs, it should resolve your problems. I have older 16 bit programs that are crucial to my business, so the “compatibility” fix only solved half of my issues.
I bought a back up desktop with XP Pro to handle everything else. (I protect it like the crown jewels.) BTW, You can still buy a new computer with XP pro, at smaller, custom shops.
I have the 64-bit version of Win 7 Professional Retail on my latest machine, and it installed my old programs in a separate 32 bit program directory. They run fine without XP Mode or Virtual Machine, and we’re talking WordPerfect Office 2000, and Photoshop Elements version 1.0.
The disk came with both 32 and 64 bit versions. I went 64 so I could get past the <4GB memory limit, and I went retail so I could move it to another machine in case of motherboard failure.
you know, if you play the windows installation cd backwards you will hear the devil speaking.
but what is truly frightening? if you play a windows cd forwards, it installs windows.
too bad for the odd program we need that still has to run on ms. i am down to just silverlight/drm for netflix.
If you’re still reading this, Microsoft Windows 7 and 2008R2 service pack 1 has been released. Install that (through windows update it will be marked as an important update) and try to run your app normally or with those 32bit compatibility mode options enabled. 3 successful installs sofar, although I swear nothing has changed and the monster of a thing is still the same speed as before.
Anyways, good luck!