Are 64-bit systems reliable??

[robert_]

I currently have a 32-bit system with WinXP, VFC v 9.0, and Visual C++.net 2003, everything works fine.

However, I was considering my next upgrade to a Xeon 5160 and Windows XP Pro x64. From reading these posts it seems that Vista has compatibility issues with VFC.

If I buy a new Xeon 64-bit system, what else would I need to buy to get VFC running again? I believe that VFC v9.0 should load with the 64-bit option, correct? Does WinXP Pro x64 work better with VFC than Vista?

Could I transplant my current 32-bit hard drive as D: or E:, and boot from either the 64-bit drive or the 32-bit?? (The Xeon is supposed to handle 32 or 64 bit?!)

[Steven_L_Intel1]

It is not a case of "working better" - Vista has some security features that cause problems for some applications that rely on the system registry, including Visual Studio. Intel Visual Fortran itself doesn't have a known problem with Vista (we haven't tried 9.0, though), but Visual Studio does. My testing suggests that making VS "run as adninistrator" takes care of the problems, and this is what MS is recommending in general for VS.

I will comment that VS2003 does not support 64-bit development, so if that's the route you want to go, you'll need VS2005 and Intel Visual Fortran 9.1.

I think dual booting should work, but have no first-hand experience (I should try that...)

Other than the security issues, I would not expect any difference between XP64 and Vista64 in this regard.

[Dishaw__Jim]

Have you (or has Intel) assessed the utility of running the development environment within a virtual machine? The reason why I ask is that at my location, the IT security mandates have resulted in all administrator rights (and even "Power User") being revoked from all users if the machine is connected to the network. Anything that needs administrator rights gets done on a standalone machine.

I have been thinking about doing the experiment but I haven't been thrilled with the performance of Microsoft Virtual PC (on my laptop, which is a 1.8GHz Pentium M/1GB of memory, the virtual machine has the performance of a 450MHz Pentium II). Maybe VMWare or Parallels will perform better or does the answer lies in getting a CPU that supports virtualization in hardware (the Core 2 Duo is pretty sweet but the Intel ads are soooo bad).

The bottom line is that any guidance from Intel is useful, particularly because it provides documentation for justifying IT requests.

[Steven_L_Intel1]

I'm not aware that we have tested that environment. I do think that Microsoft missed an opportunity in not making VS work properly in the normal Vista privilege environment.