[compnovo]

I just couldn't stand looking at those two empty RAM slots on my motherboard, especially since they're practically giving RAM away in cereal boxes these days, so I made the decision to double my memory to 8GB and upgrade to Win7 64-bit. That turned out to be more of a hassle than it should have been.

My first problem turned out to be with the install disc itself. I kept getting error messages when the installer was expanding the files, saying that certain files couldn't be located. It finally occured to me to look at the disc itself which, it turned out, came with a "factory-installed" thumb print . A couple of minutes of disc cleaning solved that mystery.

My second problem was trickier --- the install kept blue screening. After doing some searching on the web I suspected I might have a faulty stick of RAM and, sure enough, that seems to have been the problem. I was attempting the install with 4GB, and ended up pulling one of the sticks to get the install to complete. Afterwards I put the suspect stick back in and am getting occasional blue screens that cite memory problems (the new memory is in the mail).

I think it's interesting that I didn't have consistent problems when running at 32-bit, although this may explain the rare but mysterious blue screens I did encounter over the past several months (I make so many hardware swaps it's hard to pinpoint things). From what I've read on the web 64-bit addresses a different part of the RAM, or something like that --- I figure you RAM experts know what that means.

What I learned is this:
1) If you're getting error messages about missing files during an OS install check the disc for cleanliness first, it may be a simple fix, and;
2) Win7 64-bit is a lot less tolerant of iffy RAM, so if you're getting blue screens try running memtest to see if your memory is the problem.

I don't know if I missed anything else important at this stage...

This post has been edited by compnovo: 09 December 2011 - 10:03 AM

[coastie65]

Yeah, that is one advantage to getting the Retail version of that thing, you get both the 64 bit and 32 bit versions. I installed the 64 Bit version and am tempted to see if i can get away with instaling the 32 bit version on the laptop my Mom uses ( she has 32 bit Vista Home Premium on that thing which gave me a fit a while ago trying to get the updates ( I think Vista is choking the life out of it, although it has 2 Gb of 667 Mhz ram; I just ordered 4 Gb of GSkill 800 Mhz ram to put in that thing ). No, I don't think you missed anything. Bout time you got up with the big boys.

[compnovo]

coastie65, on 09 December 2011 - 01:26 PM, said:

Bout time you got up with the big boys.

I was holding out mostly because I had an old HP laserjet that didn't have 64-bit drivers for a while, and LAZINESS because the upgrade required a full install. Besides, everything was so stable...

The problem is, once I was done with my wife's PC build I got restless for some kind of project. This and the watercooler should keep me occupied for a little while. I must say it's nice to have a fresh, clean system again (not that it will stay that way for long ).

This post has been edited by compnovo: 09 December 2011 - 01:48 PM

[coastie65]

Sounds like me. I'm never content to sit and play, gotta be into something, although that laptop aggravates the heck out of me at times. I guess one of these days I'll actually spend some time with it and get it straightened out. Think I need to shut down some start up things for the most part.

[LiveBrianD]

What?
I just went with w7 64-bit from the get go. Man, the 4GB set I bought in Jan 2010 cost $100, now it's $30. Even 6 months ago, when I got the laptop, a 2GB SO-DIMM 1333MHz was $25, now it's $13. Compnovo, how much do you mess with your PC? I wonder, since 32-bit doesn't use as much ram (typically, I'm not talking about the maximum it can recognize), maybe it didn't use all of the ram chips before and therefore didn't hit the bad parts?

[compnovo]

LiveBrianD, on 09 December 2011 - 03:40 PM, said:

Compnovo, how much do you mess with your PC? I wonder, since 32-bit doesn't use as much ram (typically, I'm not talking about the maximum it can recognize), maybe it didn't use all of the ram chips before and therefore didn't hit the bad parts?

Hey LiveB,
I mess with my PC A LOT. I think that 64-bit is using a different part of the RAM not normally accessed by 32-bit (I bet waldojim knows).

What's with the Cheerios box? EDIT: I just looked closely --- that's good!

This post has been edited by compnovo: 09 December 2011 - 04:32 PM

[LiveBrianD]

compnovo, on 09 December 2011 - 04:31 PM, said:

LiveBrianD, on 09 December 2011 - 03:40 PM, said:

Compnovo, how much do you mess with your PC? I wonder, since 32-bit doesn't use as much ram (typically, I'm not talking about the maximum it can recognize), maybe it didn't use all of the ram chips before and therefore didn't hit the bad parts?

Hey LiveB,
I mess with my PC A LOT. I think that 64-bit is using a different part of the RAM not normally accessed by 32-bit (I bet waldojim knows).

What's with the Cheerios box? EDIT: I just looked closely --- that's good!

You said "they're practically giving RAM away in cereal boxes these days"! I used paint.net and left the tolerance on the 'Magic Wand' at the default 50% (it selects all stuff with a similar color to the place you clicked on), and that gave me a pretty good result, erasing the white background on a picture of ram.

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 09 December 2011 - 04:43 PM

[crazy4laptops]

compnovo, on 09 December 2011 - 10:00 AM, said:

I think it's interesting that I didn't have consistent problems when running at 32-bit, although this may explain the rare but mysterious blue screens I did encounter over the past several months (I make so many hardware swaps it's hard to pinpoint things). From what I've read on the web 64-bit addresses a different part of the RAM, or something like that --- I figure you RAM experts know what that means.

Welcome to the world of x64!

Just to note on that, x64 doubles the data/information channels between the CPU and Memory, it doesn't double the bandwidth, just the amount of information passed per clock cycle. But I really don't know if it addresses anything different... a touted security of windows randomizes where it loads the kernel in RAM that way viruses can't attack it (as easily)

But x64 is the way to go on any CPU that supports it with 2gb of RAM or more...

To note about my x64 experience, I had to survive vista home 32-bit for an entire year on my laptop (2008-2009) it was so buggy it modified some flags BIOS a few times (disabled my wifi card and other times CPU virtualization) The day Win7 x64 beta came out I downloaded it and loaded on a separate partition, it changed my world! My computer was... USABLE!!! I managed to find a strange bug with my Northbridge driver where any flash based media was attached, it would halt the system and a hard reboot was required to fix. But once Win7 was released, I bought it for $30 because of the student special and that was the best $30 spent... ever!

Now that x64 is taking over, I can't wait to put Win8 x64 on my laptop and test it out, next friday can't come soon enough!

[compnovo]

crazy4laptops, on 10 December 2011 - 12:16 PM, said:

compnovo, on 09 December 2011 - 10:00 AM, said:

I think it's interesting that I didn't have consistent problems when running at 32-bit, although this may explain the rare but mysterious blue screens I did encounter over the past several months (I make so many hardware swaps it's hard to pinpoint things). From what I've read on the web 64-bit addresses a different part of the RAM, or something like that --- I figure you RAM experts know what that means.

Welcome to the world of x64!

Hey crazy,
Well it looks like I'm going to have to live in 32-bit land a little longer, my system is just too unstable with x64 --- I can't do any serious multitasking. I've got replacement RAM coming in the mail, so while I'm writing this on my netbook I've got the desktop restoring the image I made before the attempted upgrade (BTW, Win7's image backup tool works flawlessly).

[doslover]

compnovo, on 09 December 2011 - 01:47 PM, said:

I was holding out mostly because I had an old HP laserjet that didn't have 64-bit drivers for a while.

I was wondering about that sort of thing. I have a LaserJet 5 that I recently attached w/o incident to my Win 7 32-bit laptop with a parallel (centronics) to USB cable. All the needed drivers were located automatically online and it works perfectly as plug-n-play. Would I have a problem with it if I went 64-bit ?

This post has been edited by doslover: 11 December 2011 - 09:40 AM

[SnyperTodd]

doslover, on 11 December 2011 - 09:39 AM, said:

compnovo, on 09 December 2011 - 01:47 PM, said:

I was holding out mostly because I had an old HP laserjet that didn't have 64-bit drivers for a while.

I was wondering about that sort of thing. I have a LaserJet 5 that I recently attached w/o incident to my Win 7 32-bit laptop with a parallel (centronics) to USB cable. All the needed drivers were located automatically online and it works perfectly as plug-n-play. Would I have a problem with it if I went 64-bit ?

Before I replaced it, I used an HP LaserJet 5L with several x64 machines through a Linksys print server. When you plug it in, it will tell you that it can't find the driver. There should be an option to check Windows Update for the driver. Let it do that, it'll take a few minutes to find it, but there is a LaserJet 5L driver that works with Win7 x64. If you decide to go 64-bit and have trouble with the driver, just let us know, we can get you going.

[doslover]

SnyperTodd, on 11 December 2011 - 10:11 AM, said:

Before I replaced it, I used an HP LaserJet 5L with several x64 machines through a Linksys print server. When you plug it in, it will tell you that it can't find the driver. There should be an option to check Windows Update for the driver. Let it do that, it'll take a few minutes to find it, but there is a LaserJet 5L driver that works with Win7 x64. If you decide to go 64-bit and have trouble with the driver, just let us know, we can get you going.

I have a LaserJet 5, not 5L, which is a very different animal. Are you certain there are 64-bit drivers for it ? The LaserJet 5 has been around since the mid 1990s and predates plug-n-play.

[LiveBrianD]

Sometimes windows will have drivers built in for stuff. For instance, I have a decade old Epson Photo Stylus 870 that works without me needing to install a driver in W2K and up, including w7 64-bit.

[SnyperTodd]

doslover, on 11 December 2011 - 11:52 AM, said:

SnyperTodd, on 11 December 2011 - 10:11 AM, said:

Before I replaced it, I used an HP LaserJet 5L with several x64 machines through a Linksys print server. When you plug it in, it will tell you that it can't find the driver. There should be an option to check Windows Update for the driver. Let it do that, it'll take a few minutes to find it, but there is a LaserJet 5L driver that works with Win7 x64. If you decide to go 64-bit and have trouble with the driver, just let us know, we can get you going.

I have a LaserJet 5, not 5L, which is a very different animal. Are you certain there are 64-bit drivers for it ? The LaserJet 5 has been around since the mid 1990s and predates plug-n-play.

Wow, you're absolutely right, it is a very different animal. I didn't realize that. Anyway, when I went to HP's driver download page for the LaserJet 5 and told it the OS was Win7 x64, here's what I found:

Quote

You do not need to download drivers for this product. Print drivers for your product are available within the Windows 7 operating system. Use Devices and Printers, formerly known as the Add Printer Wizard, to obtain the Windows 7 update

That's how I got the 64-bit drivers for the 5L, which itself is pretty long in the tooth.

This post has been edited by SnyperTodd: 11 December 2011 - 06:33 PM

[compnovo]

The new memory came in the mail today and I'm back in business, x64 loaded without a hitch or hiccup. I guess that means I'm playing with the big boys now.
Next up: overclocking.

[LiveBrianD]

compnovo, on 14 December 2011 - 02:41 PM, said:

The new memory came in the mail today and I'm back in business, x64 loaded without a hitch or hiccup. I guess that means I'm playing with the big boys now.

You're a wee bit late to the party though. Admittedly, my PC still runs stock speeds for stuff (I OC the video card sometimes, but only because that's very easy to do, no rebooting needed).

[compnovo]

LiveBrianD, on 14 December 2011 - 03:37 PM, said:

You're a wee bit late to the party though. Admittedly, my PC still runs stock speeds for stuff (I OC the video card sometimes, but only because that's very easy to do, no rebooting needed).

Nah, you're never too late.
Besides, I'm not quite sure what I've gained besides having a lot of extra RAM I may never use . I will say this, though, if I hadn't upgraded I wouldn't have finally found and fixed that memory problem.

(I OC my video card occasionally too, for the same reason).

This post has been edited by compnovo: 14 December 2011 - 04:03 PM

[compnovo]

compnovo, on 14 December 2011 - 04:01 PM, said:

Besides, I'm not quite sure what I've gained besides having a lot of extra RAM I may never use...

I found one use today after I installed Photoshop CS2 and launched it. WOW.

(It's getting pretty bad when you reply to your own posts... )

[Rommel]

compnovo, on 15 December 2011 - 06:49 PM, said:

compnovo, on 14 December 2011 - 04:01 PM, said:

Besides, I'm not quite sure what I've gained besides having a lot of extra RAM I may never use...

I found one use today after I installed Photoshop CS2 and launched it. WOW.

(It's getting pretty bad when you reply to your own posts... )

LOL

[nathansuchy]

compnovo, on 09 December 2011 - 10:00 AM, said:

I just couldn't stand looking at those two empty RAM slots on my motherboard, especially since they're practically giving RAM away in cereal boxes these days, so I made the decision to double my memory to 8GB and upgrade to Win7 64-bit. That turned out to be more of a hassle than it should have been.

My first problem turned out to be with the install disc itself. I kept getting error messages when the installer was expanding the files, saying that certain files couldn't be located. It finally occured to me to look at the disc itself which, it turned out, came with a "factory-installed" thumb print . A couple of minutes of disc cleaning solved that mystery.

My second problem was trickier --- the install kept blue screening. After doing some searching on the web I suspected I might have a faulty stick of RAM and, sure enough, that seems to have been the problem. I was attempting the install with 4GB, and ended up pulling one of the sticks to get the install to complete. Afterwards I put the suspect stick back in and am getting occasional blue screens that cite memory problems (the new memory is in the mail).

I think it's interesting that I didn't have consistent problems when running at 32-bit, although this may explain the rare but mysterious blue screens I did encounter over the past several months (I make so many hardware swaps it's hard to pinpoint things). From what I've read on the web 64-bit addresses a different part of the RAM, or something like that --- I figure you RAM experts know what that means.

What I learned is this:
1) If you're getting error messages about missing files during an OS install check the disc for cleanliness first, it may be a simple fix, and;
2) Win7 64-bit is a lot less tolerant of iffy RAM, so if you're getting blue screens try running memtest to see if your memory is the problem.

I don't know if I missed anything else important at this stage...

I would keep the faulty stick of ram out of your pc you could have lost data i would reinstall from scrach i keep everything i need in dropbox free 2gb of memory after that just restore your dropbox it's alot faster than upgrading. The faulty mem stick could cause anything to be lost. Hope your new one comes soon, I use dropbox to store my files!

This post has been edited by nathansuchy: 24 December 2011 - 03:34 PM