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Ask Slashdot: Best 32-Bit Windows System In 2012?
First time accepted submitter justthinkit writes "I have a number of applications that will not run on 64-bit Windows, but I would like to gain the benefits (most better caching) of having more than 4GB of RAM. Am I stuck with these Windows operating systems? And why is Windows Server 2008 Datacenter and Enterprise not included on that page? Should I go with a Linux or Win 7/8 system, and run a VM of Windows XP? Is this a solved problem or a lost cause?"
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A VM can have a 32-bit OS installed.
No sig today...
Think about this critically: you probably want your operating system to be the master of its new hardware, and then you want it to interpret the needs of your older software.
If compatibility mode won't do it, set yourself up a VM and run everything in there. You can share a drive with the host OS and thus be nearly transparent.
It doesn't make sense to me to hobble the OS in order to run older software, when the newer OS is better with the newer hardware.
For all you know he's got a 15 year old piece of industrial kit that needs 15 year old software to interface with it. Assembly line equipment maybe, oil drilling gear, CNC stuff, who the hell knows. A lot of this stuff is unsupported or the original vendor has vanished. Maybe this hardware still has years of life left in it, and the replacement value could be in the millions.
No, it isn't. It is XP 32bit. Looking at mine now, "Windows XP Professional" "Service Pack 3". No 64bit mentioned at all in the system properties. I don't think XP 64bit ever had a SP3 either.
Considering "XP Mode" in Windows 7 is a complete copy of XP running in VirtualPC, it's a perfectly reasonable (and accurate) claim to make. That was the whole point of XP mode, after all.