Hacking Windows 7

[cheshirenoir]

For a while now I have been using Windows 7 in 32bit mode, despite having over 4Gb of RAM. My Ubuntu was 64 bit, but the main reason for using Windows 7 was for games that were, (how should I put this?) less than compatible with the 64 bit version of Windows. (Windows 7 has been the MOST compatible version of Windows in quite a while BTW. Better than XP by far)

So I grinned and bore the brunt of only seeing half the RAM I owned. It was fine, but, as time wore on, I found myself using Windows 7 more and more, and, Ubuntu less and less. (Nothing wrong with Ubuntu, it's just that I was using my home PC to play games more and most of those were under Steam and thus, under Windows)

 

So I started investigating ways to use the additional RAM. I looked at a RAMDrive solution that looked promising, but unfortunately didn't work as promised. There were also some threads about hacking your Kernel but they looked rather daunting until I found this page!

 

Now I'm running with the full 8GB exposed and it's great! Combine it with Chrome spawning a new thread for every tab and we're talking some serious performance gains. 66 tabs no waiting? Check!

Comments

[dortamur.livejournal.com]

What old apps don't work under Windows 7 64bit? I've been running 64bit for a few months now, as has my wife & son, and I don't think we've found anything that hasn't run yet.

Oh, I think my son had something that wanted us to "upgrade" to Windows 95, but I'm pretty sure he got around it pretty easily with compatibility settings.

[cheshirenoir.livejournal.com]

Lets see:
My Linux Drive access suite
My Scanner driver
My Tablet driver

and that's just the low hanging fruit that I remember from the Beta.

Didn't seem worth the pain.

(Windows 7 x64 REQUIRES signed drivers so drivers were my big problem.)

[dortamur.livejournal.com]

Ah, fair enough!

I haven't had any driver issues yet - possibly because I haven't tried getting too many old(er) hardware bits working with it. Even my old Creative sound-card worked relatively painlessly.

[discordia13.livejournal.com]

A lot of installers written for the Win2K/XP era that involve database driverish things have failed for me in my testing.

MSDE also wont install on 64bit (protests a bit in 32). This is a terrifying prospect for my developers when MoronBoss(tm) insisted they upgrade to new ASUS laptops that ship ONLY in Win7-64.

Win7-64 is just all out annoying.

[linstar.livejournal.com]

*whispers to you that you are such a nerd boy* I can't believe this is what you were geeking with my Doof about :P