Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition OEM

I've had a socket 754 amd64 system running for almost a year, at my last upgrade I planned to be ready for 64bit software. There are just soooo many things I do that will be improved by a 64bit os; it's irresistable. I've had xp professional 32 bit running on this board for all of that time, I was waiting for the majority of my toys to be supported by 64bit drivers before I took the plunge into the 64bit OS. That is by and large the biggest problem with this OS as of the moment, driver support. XP 64 bit can support 32 bit software natively on AMD chips but it MUST have 64 bit drivers for any hardware you want to use.

A lot of folks that jump into this software make the mistake of not researching before trying to load it. If you do what I did and be sure there are drivers for everything and download before making the switch then you should be ok. I've got a fairly diverse collection of software, only one thing really wouldn't install at all and one other thing is giving me problems but nothing I can't get around. When dealing with something like an operating system you have to stop and think about all the varieties of hardware out there and just how hard it is to try to cover every possible combination when writing drivers. I waited for almost a year before even considering this software, anyone that tries out a new os that's been out for less than a year is just asking for one giant headache if you ask me.

Pre install research:
1. Decide what hardware you'll need, or can do without and go get all the 64bit drivers and software you need to support it and put it in a special folder on your hard drive where it won't get mixed up with 32 bit drivers.

2. If you can't get drivers for some things either replace them with new items or give up doing the upgrade until drivers become available. In my case I couldn't get drivers for one of my older HP printers; I gave it away and got a newer one that did have drivers available. As a general rule of thumb, if it's less than a year old there will "probably" be 64 bit drivers made for it at some point and most companies are at least giving eta dates or beta drivers if there are not final 64 bit versions already available.

3. If you don't have the latest bios on your motherboard it may be a good idea to get it since win64 may have only been tested on popular motherboards with the latest bios. Don't forget to download the chipset drivers for your motherboard. I found that XP64 had exceptional chipset support for my nforce 3 based board but I still needed drivers before the built in ethernet would work and it does need the file that tells XP how to handle the cpu. If you've got a motherboard over two years old you may want to go sit in the forum for it and see if anyone had insurmountable problems getting xp64 going on it. The socket 754 cpu is about the oldest 64 bit tech available widely and it's also currently the cheapest because it is the oldest.

4. If you care about your old ie favorites or email find out what you've got to do to move that where you can retrieve it. If you have xp 32 bit the files transfer wizard is what you need.

5. Firewall and antivirus: Not all of the firewall and antivirus packages on the market will work with xp64 research the issue. If yours that you've paid for doesn't currently support it, you can download the excellent AVAST package (www.avast.com)as a stop gap measure. Xp64 is new and throws some curves to the hackers, but they'll figure it out soon enough, don't think you're safe just because not too many folks have XP64 bit yet. I'm currently running AVAST and Ghostwall for a firewall, so far so good.

Pre-install machine preparation:
1. I've built a number of machines, more than a few with windows XP. No matter what MS tries to make you believe, it's still a good idea to have no more installed than absolutely necessary when installing a new OS. Pull anything you don't need to have in there for the install, disconnect all usb hubs, all printers, all cameras, graphics tablets, the IPOD, anything along those lines. If your soundcard is not built into the motherboard pull that out of there too; think basic; one hard drive, one cd or dvd reader (internal preferably), one video card, a wired prefereably ps2 mouse and ps2 keyboard, the monitor and nothing else.

2. If you have SATA and PATA (IDE) drives on your computer and you plan to use a SATA drive as the C: drive definetly disconnect the PATA drive temporarily. In fact, disconnect all but the drive you want the operating system to install on to be extra safe.

XP 32 and now 64 bit have an extremely annoying tendency to play musical drive letters and put your drive letter assignments all over the place, it also for whatever reason insists on installing xp64 on the first PATA drive it sees no matter which drive you've got selected to boot from in your bios setup (most newer motherboards have this function but XP 64 overrides it for some reason). If you have one of those old IDE high capacity floppy type drives or a IDE internal ZIP drive then BE ABSOLUTELY SURE YOU DISCONNECT THAT DEVICE. I don't know if the bug still exists in xp64 but xp 32 always had a problem trying to make the zip drive the C: drive and install the OS there.

Like I said earlier, the simpler you make your system for the install the fewer headaches you'll have, just be sure that you don't register your copy of xp64 until after you've got all the pieces installed......if you don't MS$ will think you're putting their stupid OS on a second machine and try to give you a hard time.......sigh.

3. An installation to a clean hard drive will probably be less of a problem than an installation to a drive that's had a copy of windows 32 bit on it in the past. I had problems until I renamed all my old windows folders, you may just want to do this before even trying the install to save some headaches.

4. How do you connect to the internet? If you're using a wired router no problem but if you're using wireless and you aren't wired at the access point be sure you can get drivers for your wireless card that actually work properly.

Installation:
1. The XP64 bit install is no different from an xp32 bit install. You set your bios so that it boots first from the cd rom, pop the disk in the drive start the machine and let it run. It's a fairly self installing procedure the only times you have to do anything is when you pick your time zone and type in the disk key.

2. It's about an hour process to load the OS then you'll be taken into windows for the first time; nothing new here.

Driver loading order:
First you want to load the chipset drivers and CPU driver for your motherboard and processor. AMD chips need a driver, I'm not sure if that's so with Intel processors. Once the chipset drivers are loaded you will probably have to reboot. This was a problem area for me, kept having blue screens of death but I think that may have been caused primarily because there was another copy of windows 32 bit on the same partition; after renaming the old windows folders there were no more issues. Windows will load a generic video driver so don't worry about that just yet (as a rule the chipset drivers have to be properly installed before the video driver will install anyway....AGP is bad about this and I'm sure PCI express is no different).

When should I register?:
Don't yet, shut the machine off, hook up your other hard drives (you may not want to hook up PATA drives that have a operating system on them yet, if you do and have more problems you might have to wipe the OS off them before you can use them in your machine). Put the sound card back in the system as well. Also install your virus and malware packages before opening yourself up to the web.

When you reboot you should then be able to connect to the internet and authorize your copy of windows and register if you so choose.

Now's a good time to load video card drivers. I had a problem with my ATI video card, I found it necessary to load directX 9 before I tried to load the drivers or the drivers would freeze up the system at the next boot up.

My hardware: (no problems with drivers for any of this stuff)
Epox EPKDA3 plus Pro with AMD 64 socket 754 3000 plus cpu and 2 gig ram (built in ethernet, sound chip (not used), PATA controller, SATA controller (raid capable), iee1394 (firewire 400) controller, USB 2 controller(s))
ATI All in wonder X800 (be sure to put direct x9 on the system before loading drivers to avoid problems-other utilities currently don't work, i.e. no tv or capture etc.)
2 Maxtor SATA drives
1 Maxtor PATA drive
Liteon cd/r and dvd reader (one device)
Soundblaster X-fi Extreme sound card
HP DVD640E firewire DVD burner (no extra drivers needed)
microsoft mouse
microsoft keyboard
Canon 6000D photo printer (software and drivers from canon.com)
Brother MFC-640CW all in one scanner, fax, printer
All in one flash memory card reader (one of those can handle all the varieties) uses built in windows drivers

Software installation:
There are a couple of lists online that list software packages tested under xp64bit, these lists don't list that much at all. I'd suggest going to a forum for your software package if you don't know if it'll work. I'll list what I've found works and what doesn't. Be especially careful about registry cleaners and disk utilities, if they're written well they'll refuse to install if they can't handle the OS; some may not be so well behaved. Generally if you get a new OS you need new disk utilities. A full 64bit utility will be a LOT faster than older 32 bit stuff anyway just because it's moving soooo much more data at one time. I downloaded a trial version of diskeeper 10 to defrag my drives, it's tons faster than the older versions I have ever were and the price isn't bad for what it does.

Doesn't Work:
Corel Wordperfect Office 11--runs,but crashes a lot when trying to save. Corel patches won't install, can't see the program installation.
Earthlink (Infinium, Aluria software (?))
antivirus/antimalware package--at first I thought it was working. Now I can't do any scans, either it's an incompatibility issue or something crawled in and disabled it; don't know.
Executive Software Diskkeeper 7---I've upgraded several times but right now I can't get my original 7 to install for the upgrade so I'll probably just have to buy a full version 10 that does support this OS. The ten upgrade is worth it, runs tons faster than the older 32 bit versions.
Sonic MyDVD studio Deluxe--won't install(I expected as much this company doesn't support anything or ever release any patches)
Registry Repair Pro--installs but makes a mess, don't use it (shame it was my favorite registry fixer for 32bit and 98, maybe they'll release a new one that doesn't mess up 64)...from reading the 32 bit registry is a LOT different from the 64 bit registry so that is undoubtedly the problem here.
Pinnacle Studio ATI version 9---freezes after a minute or two of installation, might be because the ATI stuff isn't working right now--more later.
HP DVD writer installation software---no firmware updates or other software, says wrong version when you try to load it.
Broderbund PrintMaster 15--appears to work somewhat but many menus normally on the right mouse button don't work, i.e. isn't working right period (just ordered version 17 to see if it's any better)
Microsoft Intellpoint 5.4---says won't work with 64bit os when you try to load it.

Does work:
Dungeon Lords (game)--I think it works although sometimes I'm wondering if things like switches are missing. Didn't work under the ATI drivers but seems ok with Nvidia card, screen flickers a bit sometimes.
Logitech software for MX1000 mouse, setpoint(?)---got latest version off logitech site. Newest version 2.60 just put up within the last few days works fine and setpoint now installs properly too.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0--seems to work fine
Adobe Photoshop 6.1--seems to work fine
Filemaker Pro 7---so far seems to work fine
Microsoft Office 2003 Professional--works fine
Elder Scrolls Oblivion--works great
Guild Wars/Factions(game)---Works fine with Nvidia geforce video card, wasn't under ATI, game company offers zero support under 64 bit.
Power Print 3---seems to work fine
Microsoft Plus Digital Media Edition---not sure, seems to be working ok
Acrobat 5 (full edition)---installs and works but don't seem to have the printer driver for making acrobat documents from other programs (i.e. you print to this driver like a regular printer it makes a acrobat file). There are posts on adobe forums about this, so far they're trying to blow everyone off on fixing it--nothing new with this company.
Lavasoft Adaware SE Plus Edition---works great
Musicmatch 10--seems to work fine--burning functions work great too.
Yahoo messenger--works fine
Mozilla Firefox---works fine
Noise Ninja (latest version)--seems to work fine
Limewire Professional---appears to work great (just be sure you've got your antivirus and firewalls up before you use this. A lot of bad stuff comes in on p2p setups)
Motorola phone toos---software runs but no 64 bit usb driver for the phone yet so all you can do is access the transflash drive to put stuff on the phone, can't backup phone books or anything like that. You can get around the driver issue by getting a bluetooth transceiver for 64 bit, MSI is one of the few that has a functional one out now.
Teamspeak--This is a voice chat utility popular with gamers, works fine.
Microsoft Activesync--this utility synchronizes devices running pocket pc 2002/2003 notes, contacts, email etc with your desktop outlook program. Microsoft has included drivers for most common pdas, my old dell axim x5 works fine.

Hardware that you can't get drivers for at this time (as far as I know, and as of this writing):
Logitech webcams---There is much whining and pulling of hair on this one no eta on release. Supposedly creative will have a 64bit driver for one of their products soon if it's not already available.
Kensington---Oh boy are there a lot of folks ticked off at this company, no 64 bit drivers for any Kensington mice, trackballs, bluetooth dongles, nada nothing.
HP--older printers (i.e. over a year old). HP/Compaq has flat out decided they aren't dealing with new drivers for older products period. Someone has apparently released a third party driver set that gets many older HP printers operating.
Motorola cell phones---near as I can tell they haven't updated their phone tools to include 64 bit drivers for their phones.
Adaptec VideOh!---this gadget is a USB tv tuner and capture device, great product, adaptec says drivers are planned but no eta date for release and you can be sure you won't be getting a software update either so you'll most likely be looking for a replacement suite (Sonic/Roxio doesn't believe in upgrades or patches just putting out their hands for more of your money).

My experiences with it:
First of all, 64 bit starts up noticeably slower than 32 bit does (see tip below about improving start speed). It may have to do with the extra memory it handles or some of it might be caused by the emulation layer necessary for the 32bit software or just that they've got some tweaking left to do. XP64 bit can handle oodles more memory at the same time than 32 bit windows could, just because of that, most things run noticeably faster.

The one game I play a lot lately, guild wars (and Factions too), runs much better now than it did under win 32 bit--it's an extremely graphics intensive game and is running much smoother now. A lot of older software packages sometimes give a problem when running the installer....i.e. sometimes you have to force a quit on a frozen installer but the next time it does actually load correctly. I have to say that so far I'm pretty impressed that so much 32 bit software does run flawlessly or with only an occasional hiccup. My only thing left to research is why my TV utilities etc aren't yet working for the all in wonder....I thought every thing loaded off one disk but I might be wrong about that...currently I don't have any tv utility, movie player or anything such as that.

I mentioned earlier this OS's annoying habit of wanting to load on a PATA IDE drive, instead of a SATA drive (and my board does have embedded controllers) setup as master drive. I'm probably going to need to clean off that PATA hard drive and reformat it so that there is no longer any old system files on it before I'm going to be able to put it back in my system. Definetly disconnect any IDE zip drives or those high capacity floppy things that were so popular a few years ago and of course PATA drives too before installing xp64.

I've only had xp64 bit really operational for a day, can't see anything yet that's a big problem other than the occasionally quirky 32 bit software installer. I wouldn't recommend this install for the faint of heart but I'm sure given another year they'll get the buggy drivers fixed. Gamers are the early adopters of this OS because of the very much improved memory handling for graphic intensive games (and aren't they all that way these days?). So far I don't have any major complaints other than having to replace a couple of packages that won't run under it and I really did expect to have at least a bit of that problem.

TWEAK FOR IMPROVED STARTUP AND HARD DRIVE ACCESS: Shut off indexing. I got this off a forum--- to do this go into my computer and hit the right button for each hard disk, uncheck the "allow indexing service..." box and tell it to cover all files and sub directories. It takes a good thirty minutes to shut off the indexing on every file if you have a bunch. Do this for each physical hard drive. Find the "prefetch" folder that should be in your windows directory. Enter the prefetch folder and delete everything in it. On your next boot up you just won't believe how very much faster it comes up than before. Sounds like MS has a little tweaking to do with that function....this same procedure also works with win32 bit. I haven't seen any difference in functioning since emptying this folder so don't worry about deleting this stuff...if you're paranoid just copy the folder someplace till you're satisfied that it's not causing an issue.

update: Well either my ATI aiw developed a problem or the drivers really are as bad as many say they are. In guild wars had screen corruption problems, got worse and worse, I've pulled the ATI card out for now and I'm going to test it on another computer but right now I'm convinced the card has gone south because the screen corruption is not just in games it's all the time including at bootup. I suppose this could be a motherboard hate or a firmware issue too. Replaced the ATI card with a BFG 6600 OC geforce card, right now can't get the drivers to install for it and I'm just using the MS driver.....Like I said, drivers have been a PITA on this os, I think it is getting better..that was pretty cool that I only complained on Logitech's forum last week and they have a updated driver this week.....that's service. I wish they were all like that.

update: been using this new os a few weeks now, wanted to mention a few things.

I don't "think" it's the registry cleaner causing the problem but I've had two programs need to be reinstalled because they stopped working or just started acting weird.
Musicmatch 10 and diskkeeper 10 both started refusing to start or hanging or doing some such weird thing. There haven't been any OS updates from microsoft that I'm aware of so can't blame it on a patch, I think it's mostly like a good old fashioned system file version hate that's going on. Reinstalling diskkeeper got it going again, just noticed musicmatch being a pain last night.

Found a beta version of the nvidia drivers for the 6600 that can properly detect the card but I've still got two unknown device entries in device manager that appear to belong to the video card or the chipset (they weren't there before the video card so I think it's a safe bet they belong to the video card).

MS and their lack of support for XP 64 bit professional:
From what I've been reading, at least for the moment this OS has been pretty much abandoned by MS in favor of the upcoming VISTA which is also a 64bit OS. There have been only a couple of updates since the big update right after I installed it and those have been i.e. security patches. From what I've read about VISTA I don't want it, it's going to be an overthought resource hog....my fervent hope is that all work done on VISTA drivers will eventually benefit XP64 (i.e. I hope that even though the drivers are not the same for both OS it will be easier to modify a VISTA driver to make it backwardly compatible with XP64 than writing a whole new one). Personally I predict there will be a lot of folks dumping VISTA and going back to this OS, there is comment after comment about the stability of this product. I have not had one crash and only a few lockups since running this OS, certainly far fewer than win32 in the same time period. I've found a few 32 bit packages that don't like to run concurrently (like musicmatch 10 and yahoo chat)on 64bit XP but other than that it runs smoothly and only once in a long while do I need to use that reset button to get the machine out of a freeze.

Update on microsoft products: Just wanted to make it a bit clearer that so far........most microsoft utilities and software have been updated to work properly with this OS. Microsoft Office Professional works fine as does word (I miss my wordperfect wah). Microsoft support utilities such as intellipoint and intellitype have both been updated to work correct under xp64 bit. I haven't tried any microsoft games like dungeon siege but hopefully it works fine too.

update: I just bought a new motherboard with Pci-e video and SLI. Just no avoiding it, when you change motherboards, even if it's the same chipset family you pretty much have to do at least a restore install of the operating system, this OS is no better than past incarnations of windows. Microsoft has changed some of their security protocals to make even a reinstall ANNOYING on this OS.

Usually in a new install or under xp 32 a restore install, you are given the option to activate your new installation within ten days....not here. This is stupid from a tech point of view because MS does not have all drivers built into windows and if you change a motherboard you are most likely going to have to reinstall chipset drivers before your internet connection will work...so here I am at midnight looking at a screen telling me I can't sign in AT ALL until I activate......these people are idiots! All MS is doing is alienating the system builders and people like me that upgrade a lot--of course that's the point MS would like nothing better than to force you to purchase a new copy of the OS each time you change motherboards, ie. they want to get away from you can only run one copy at a time and make it that the OS is tied to each motherboard......absolute unmitigated greed if you ask me (and this is my opinion so sue away ms). Fortunately the telephone activation is 24 hour and automated (voice recognition, worked pretty well) but it was still pretty stupid that I had to call them for a restore and it wouldn't let me in long enough to install drivers and do it the quick way over the internet.

Many companies continue to add support for xp64 which is good. Logitech still hasn't released any drivers for their webcams.

More stuff that works now:
HP has released 64bit drivers for some of their scanners.
Print Master 17 works perfectly
City of Heros and City of Villains works perfectly
Dungeon Siege II works great
Nero Burning 7 (package works but it's soo buggy I took it off, won't coexist with roxio 8 either)
Roxio 8--Seems to work great but won't coexist with Nero 7.

Some more general comments: For those of you that use their systems for video processing and dvd burning. There don't seem to be a lot of video codecs released and fewer still working utilities for changing and working with video files. This was the main reason I went to 64bit since this kind of thing should really benefit the most from the wider data paths for number crunching. Roxio 8 is one of the few packages that work but if you've got divx files or avi files that aren't perfect (i.e. may have a few errors) then it just refuses to deal with the file (i.e. no codecs or they aren't working rith with the roxio). I'm probably going to end up setting up one of my other machines with 32 bit windows and putting my video stuff on that system, I just plain need to setup my desk with two cpus to cure that issue. So far it still seems like the only updates being released for XP professional 64 bit are security issues and then microsoft is working on rolling out the next issue of i.e. (that has already caused dns issues, at least they fixed that one).

More software coming out:
There is finally a set of disk utilities somewhat like partition magic that works under 64 bit by Acronis, downloaded it haven't used it yet.
There is also finally a video file converter by xilisoft that allows me to work with video files that roxio can't read natively.
These two items were sorely needed, I'm glad that ms lack of interest in this os due to vista hasn't stopped entrepreneurs from realizing that a lot of us have this and like it.

More activation hassles:
I copied my hard drive to a newer larger drive using the new Acronis disk suite for 64 bit. Apparently even this is now considered enough of a change to trigger an activation hassle--I've changed hard drives at least a dozen times under 32 bit and never got hassled it was only motherboards that generally triggered the harassment. This time MS$ chose to force me to talk to a real human, I forcefully but politely communicated my displeasure with being hassled for upgrading my own computer, of course you get the stupid question "and how many computers do you have this installed on?" DUH like I'm going to tell them I've got it on six computers in the house when I only have one license, even if I was smart enough to figure out how to get away with that I sure wouldn't admit it. I guess they think they're being smart don't they? NOT! Actually all they're doing is ticking off people like me that upgrade their systems a lot. Apparently you get two activations before you have to talk to a person. I told the operator if I had any other choice besides their product they would be looooongggg gone and they would!!!!!!!! I guess we can only hope Linux becomes better supported than it is.

FYI: Apparently MS is running a promotion for this os, currently if you shop you can get it for $70.00 a copy with nothing but the disk and a license. I still wish I had a viable alternative choice but for now this is what we have for 64 bit, at least they've chosen to offer it at a decent price.

update: 64bit is going through some of the same issues 32 bit went through in that sometimes ms releases a patch that breaks software and it has to be reinstalled before it will work again. Roxio 8 won't run at all right now and it was a fight just to get it off the machine so I could put Nero 7 back on it. Diskeeper and the acronis disk uitilities also got broken and musicmatch also won't come up at this point. This kind of stuff is soooo anoying especially when you've got a package that gives you a bunch of hassle to install it (i.e. antipiracy measures). I'm about ready to clean off the desktop harddrive and load one of the newer disks I bought with this OS as at least on another machine none of those packages are giving me any issues at all (sometimes the difference in the OS build can be all the difference in the world with these kinds of problems).

update 2-2007: Vista just premiered, bingo lots of 64bit drivers and software suddenly available for this as well as vista just as I thought might happen. Be aware, this may be the last ms operating system that isn't tied to the first motherboard it's installed on. I have put this one on different boards and not gotten anything but the usual hassle, however, VISTA oem versions apparently have some new baloney written into the user agreement that you aren't permitted to put that copy of the os on another motherboard (apparently exceptions for defective motherboards) but this is just so inexcusable in my mind. I wouldn't have vista anyway but this is just more of MS$ taking advantage of us. Retail versions of VISTA apparently don't have this limitation but cost a whole lot more. I still really like this OS see no reason to go to VISTA at least for the forseeable future.

update: firewire users, firewire A drivers built into the OS, firewire B drivers are not. There is one firewire B card out with 64 bit drivers (unibrain pci firewire 800 card, SIIG supposed to have drivers for pcie card next month (july 07)) but as I found out, they may still need some tweaking with some external bays (especially those with more than one bay like my AMS venus D3sr product).

update 3-2007: Another year later, seems to be more and more support for this os, I have great respect for the stability, I leave my machine on a lot during the week and rarely have to reboot, if there's issues with anything sometimes it's with ability to connect to web sites and I firmly believe my new router more to blame for that than the OS. I would not upgrade from this os it does what I need and slowly 64 bit capable applications are being released, you'll find them more stable, faster, and your system is happier multitasking with all 64 bit apps and a 4 gig of ram onboard. Vista seems to be the piece of unmitigated MS crap that lots of people said it would be.....avoid it.

update 4-2009: Two years after last update this OS is still not really even recognized by Microsoft (although they are providing security updates), with careful shopping you can still find promotional copies of this OS for around 70 bucks; a bargain in my book.  I have not run into any games lately that won't run on it.  My favorite game city of heros runs well on it although they still blow you off if you ask for tech support because it's not officially supported. 

Any older devices are still problematic for drivers. I've got several of the LIDE canon scanners which canon refuses to offer drivers for, you have to get new (which are supported apparently) but there are a couple of third party packages that have their own drivers for manys scanners and you can get them working that way.  HP has a supposed driver for their see through scanner series but I haven't been able to get it to work.  Printers are slowly coming out with drivers, my old all in one printer finally croaked but the new color laser has xp 64 drivers available off the web site, still not one single problem with nvidia video cards and ATI, now that it's been bought by AMD also provides at least a driver but I don't think they ever released the software package to work in 64 bit xp.  I still have seen only a couple of TV tuner cards that officially work with 64 bit but since many of those cards use the same chip you can sometimes find drivers written by novices that will allow them to work...I'm not sure that Hauppage has ever released any xp64 drivers for their cards.  Roxio released support for xp64 in their latest packages as did nero (really helps a lot with something as intensive as dvd creation).

Stability: This os is stable as heck.  I often uninstall and install packages, in the old days windows pretty much had to be reinstalled every year because the registry got so messed up you could not fix it with any of the scanner/fixer packages.  I have run into a couple of problems which I can't get fixed but nothing major.  I may need to reinstall sometime soon but for now it's dealable. 

Viruses: There are a couple of viruses in the wild that attack 64 bit but really not many.  If you run a product like avast and get the full version of adaware you're pretty much covered, having a firewall on your router helps also.

Still like it, still would buy more copies but if you've got a child that likes to play a lot of old games then this may not be for you, for those people you should probably stick with 32 bit professional.

4-2010: Support for this operating system is much better than it was when I first wrote this.  Biggest issue is that many "older" devices were never supported with new 64 bit drivers..so if you want a scanner that works right with 64 bit, you have to go out and buy a new one.  A few products have created software with their own built in drivers for hardware not supported directly (like vuescan) but it's nearly always cheaper to just go buy a new piece of hardware. VISTA was a joke glad I never took that plunge, the new Windows 7 is supposed to be pretty darned good and is reportedly the last standalone OS Gatesland wants to release...they're wanting to go to a "rent the os" model where they can bend you over for monthly fees for the privilege of running your computer.  I'm hoping Google releases Android for the desktop, someone needs to give MS$ some real competition and they are most likely one of the few companies with enough resources to fight the inevitable MS lawsuits if they try to compete.  I'm still quite happy with this OS, no real reason to upgrade yet, most gamers tend to have older hardware that may not support the newer OS.

2-2011: Microsoft just buried this great OS once and for all.  I have always said this was probably one of the best OS that microsoft has ever released.  It is stable and now supported by quite alot of hardware and software.  Microsoft refuses to release service pack three for this os, meaning that many products that worked before suddenly no longer work.  I've now upgraded to win 7, it's a shame that MS decided to ditch this excellent OS.  I think it's something we can expect to only get worse in the future. Our worthless government will do nothing about this obvious monopoly and their planned obsolescence tactics.  It's rumored that win 7 will be the last standalone OS in favor of a distributed OS that you must pay "monthly" to use.  If that is allowed, it's time to move out of the US where other countries don't allow such antics to go on.