Are 64-bit operating systems ready for the desktop?
by Mats Hellman on 27.Apr, 2009 under Linux, Windows
I’ve been asking myself this for a while now. 64-bit has been a standard for several years now and still computers are sold with 32-bit operating systems. Why is this?
The only reliable 64-bit OS I’ve used was my MacBook Pro which I sold. It worked and I never really had any driver issues with it. So why are PC’s still sold with XP or Vista 32-bit. XP and Vista both have 64-bit versions and still vendors don’t supply decent drivers. Why? It makes me almost mad to be using a 64-bit OS only to notice I can’t get this or that working on it since there are no drivers. Which naturally makes me ask, has Linux passed Windows in hardware compatibility when it comes to 64-bit?
I recently got my Lenovo X200s and it came with Windows Vista business 32-bit. I ran it for a while but since it had 4Gb of RAM I wanted to try out Vista Enterprise 64-bit. Vista 64 has been a ride of ups and downs. The Intel graphics controller driver keeps crashing, even after several updates and the one thing I miss the most is my Targus USB-to-Serial cable. As I work with network appliances I need a serial connection and these days it’s almost impossible to get a serial port in a laptop so the fallback is a usb-to-serial cable. Targus does not supply 64-bit drivers for the cable so I have to keep an old IBM T42 for this purpose.
What is it that makes the normally fast moving computer industry to keep on feeding the 32-bit OS? Is it really to much to ask to get drivers for my 64-bit OS?
Do you have similar feelings or does your 64-bit computer work like a charm? Please comment.
Finding drivers for unrecognized hardware in a Windows system
by Mats Hellman on 24.Mar, 2009 under Windows
Sometimes when you finish installing your Windows operating system you are missing drivers. The easy ones like chipset,network and graphics are easy to find, but what about the rest? Below is a screenshot of the details on the Intel Gigabit network card. Nothing special there, it’s installed and it’s working fine.
If Windows wouldn’t be able to find drivers for it the Details pane would still be visible and you would se the Device Instance Id. From that one line we can get everything we need. So let’s try it out.
In the beginning of the line PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_10BD&SUBSYS…. VEN stands for the Vendor, this being Intel and DEV for the device in question. So now that we know this much just head over to pcidatabase.com and enter the DEV id 10BD into the device search.
Voila. As you can se we now have both the vendor and the device. Now just head over to the vendor website to get your drivers. If you think this is a mess and don’t want to do it the hard way there are software’s doing the exact same thing, but it’s always good to know how to search for them yourself and where to find the information in case you need it.
As a last note, this was made on a Windows XP Professional desktop but the same system applies to Vista and the Server operating systems.
