bad iso.

ugh.

i won't do this a third time.

i'm going to end up mostly running 32 bit software. 32 bit software on a 64 bit os is a bad idea. i mean, it works, but it's pointless to upgrade if your key programs are 32 bit.

i was going to maintain a dual boot, anyways. but i'm thinking old xp - even broken - will still be dominant for the near future.

i built that machine - and this was many years ago now - to get up to 64 bit xp in time. expandable to 16 gb on the board was pretty advanced at the time, although i've never put in more than 4.

contrary to claims otherwise, moving to 64-bit from 32-bit with 4 gb of ram can get extra resources because 32-bit will inevitably ignore one of your sticks to fit the total (including the ram from your video card) under 4. it's not a max of 4 + bios + video + whatever else. it's 4. max. total. so, if i upgrade then i get another gb...

...but the reality is that setting the pagefile to 10 gb is just as good. the system may have to dump stuff to the drive here and there, but you never have to use more than 3 gb of ram all at the same time and if you did your system would crash because it couldn't.

i'm standing here all these years later and sort of laughing at myself. 64-bit is still a niche market. and i have to admit i don't see any real reason to upgrade, either. there's nothing i can think of that will work in 64 that doesn't in 32.

it's mostly the lack of evaluation software. there's lots of software i could buy. i can't afford to even think about that. so if i'm running everything in 32 anyways because it's all i can find then it's meaningless.

but it may be useful to have a non-broken system, from time to time.

yeah.

the problem with running 32 in 64 is that you're constantly converting it. what you're actually doing is running through a virtual machine. that's a net loss in speed (it may not be measurable, but it's a downgrade). considering the amount of drivers in use in sound production, that's bad news waiting to happen.