With more & more people opting for a 64bit processor over a 32bit one & already most of the Linux distros offering 64bit operating systems to the users, how could someone keep windows down.
The first ever Beta Release of windows XP 64bit was on September 2004. It had so many flaws that you couldn’t even run a video on the system using windows media player.
Many releases later even after about 1.5 yrs, it still remains a beta version. Most of the problems have been fixed but the primary problem remains that of drivers & software availability.
Now let me start with the basic stuff to get the OS for free go to https://microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/facts/trial.mspx
& then follow the instructions to download the ISO file. It’s a 150 days(6 months) trial version.
Once you got it downloaded, burn it on a disc & then install it the same way as you would with a normal windows XP disc, but I would recommend you keep the old 32bit installation of your old OS.
Once you have windows installed, you will see a considerable amount of speed difference between the way your system boots & runs. The windows XP 64bit runs faster than the 32bit counter part. If your lucky & have hardware from standard well known hardware companies then most of your hardware will function normally & well.
Once you have everything running comes the tough part WinXP64bit has native 64bit support & runs all your 32bit programs on a emulator, something similar to how your 16bit programs run on windows XP. Also it doesn’t provide support for 16Bit programs so as result you can’t run programs which are very old & use 16bit code.
Now comes the surprise part though it provides support for running 32bit applications, most of the common applications fail to run on the 64bit platform. Also for folks who like to play games on windows there is bad news for you most of the games don’t run on the WinXP 64bit platform. Thanks to this most of the vendors are offering 64bit versions of there software & games now a days(trails can be downloaded for free). But I feel as the days go on winXp64bit will get better & better. Also the software availability will increase for the 64bit platform & you can actually use all your favouriate application in windows xp 64bit.
As of now the winXp64bit is definitely not the replacement for your windows XP operating system. Though you can run 64bit applications on it, its of only use to people who are use software which have 64bit versions of it also out, like IE, Media Player, Norton …
For the rest it’s just a way of knowing how fast windows can actually perform when using the full features of your processor.