February 2006 - Posts
Microsoft has announced what will be in the various editions of Vista, the next version of the Windows operating system. The press release is here. The interesting thing for me in this is that x64 will be available on all editions. This means full Media Center and Tablet PC functionality will be available on x64, finally! To quote from the press release: "All new versions are available for either 32-bit or 64-bit systems, depending on the needs of the customer. Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate and Business will be available as a full-packaged product at retail and on new PCs."
Charlie.
Microsoft has released a new beta of Windows Defender that works with x64 Edition. You can download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx
Note that this is a BETA version and should not be installed on production machines unless you understand what beta means.
Charlie.
Thanks to Dennis Pack for posting this link in the public 64-bit newsgroup. It shows all of the available wireless G network adapters, including PCI adapters, that are based on the Ralink chipsets, and thus have drivers for x64 Edition. It's not an official Ralink site, but seems quite comprehensive. Here's the link: http://ralink.rapla.net/
Charlie.
This isn't really an x64 issue, but a file system issue, but since it came up on the newsgroup, I thought I'd comment on it briefly here. If you want to have a single virtual memory file that is greater than 4 GB, you must put it on an NTFS partition. Why? For the simple reason that FAT partitions, even FAT32 partitions, don't support file sizes >4GB. (See MS KB 281220)While it is technically possible to have multiple swap files (see KB 237740), the real solution is to do what you should be doing anyway - use NTFS. The time for FAT has come and gone, and it's time to move on. The NTFS file system is much more robust and full featured compared to FAT, and as disks become ever bigger, it's really the only option that makes any sense at all.
So, if you're used to using FAT32 for your file systems, and moving to an x64 box with lots of memory where you want a large virtual memory swap file, make sure you set your swap to be on an NTFS partition.
Charlie.
VMWare announced today that they were releasing a public beta of their new VMWare Server product that is based on the earlier GSX product. They also announced that the final release will be free.
Their servers have been hammered all day, but I managed to get the new version downloaded and installed on my ASUS A8V with Athlon 64 3500+. A pretty basic system, but it does have 3 Gb of RAM in it and works fine as a VM server machine.
First impressions? Well the install is S L O W. Took forever. But once installed, everything seemed to work about as I'd expect. VMWare Server doesn't support the Teams that I'm used to with VMWare Workstation (why not?!), but it does support management from a remote workstation and even has a web interface for management. It also doesn't support multiple snapshots, a major disadvantage. However, it does support automatic startup of VMs, no logon required, so that's a plus. Overall, however, it doesn't feel all that different from VMWare Workstation 5.5. As with 5.5, it supports both x64 hosts and x64 guests, on supported processors. This means that my D series 3500+ Athlon 64 on the other server won't support x64 guests, just hosts. But the E series 3500+ on the main x64 server will support both guests and hosts. As will my Ferrari 4005, of course. Next week I plan on pulling that old D series and plugging in a new dual core Opteron 165 in it. That will be quite happy running x64 guests.
Charlie.
So, if you're running Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition, with multiple, dual-core, processors, and not all processors are correctly recognized, then you may be running into a problem caused by how your BIOS increments the APIC numbering. There's a fix from Microsoft to enable the extra processors that aren't being seen, KB # 899656.
Note: this only says it applies to Server 2003 x64 Edition, but I have a strong suspicion that it might equally apply to a dual-processor, dual-core Windows XP Professional x64 Edition computer as well.
Charlie.