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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?"
What's wrong with running Windows 7 x64, and running your 32-bit applications in compatibility mode?
Do you need 3D accelerated graphics? If not, VM is the way to go. Just RDP to the machine and do what you have to do.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Ask at http://serverfault.com/ and describe your problem in greater detail.
>> I have a number of applications that will not run on 64-bit Windows, but I would like...more than 4GB of RAM
Do you realize that many of your 32-bit applications would freak out in a 4GB memory space?
Just go with Server 2003 with PAE support. Same base as XP really with PAE support built in.
I've gotten some cranky Win32 apps to work on Win7 64 by getting the 32-bit dll files in the C:\Windows\SysWOW64 folder instead of C:\Windows\System32.
The naming conventions don't make any damn sense; they should have kept System32 for 32-bit files and created System64 for 64-bit files. But that's just me.
We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion.
I never knew that I had so many 64-bit applications. Thanks, Microsoft!
A VM can have a 32-bit OS installed.
No sig today...
We have some crappy in-house database software that will only run properly if the graphics depth is set to 16bit. Without that change the window rendering gets all messed up. I never ever would have guessed that's what the problem was.
VM's can fake a 32bit cpu.... its almost like there isn't a real CPU and someone is just pretending or something...
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
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.
1. Yes
2. Dunno
3. Yes
4. Yes
5.... errm yes?
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
A problem with both Server 2003 and XP is that they will be unsupported as of April 2014. If 32 bit Windows is still required in 2012, then my guess is it will be in 2014 as well. So if possible I would go with something more modern.
I would try running it under Linux with Wine. Windows may not be necessary if it's just for a couple of applications.
It's implied that they have userland software that for some reason won't work in 64 bit windows. The asker then goes on to suggest using 6 different OS's as well, as if their finicky software has no problem with linux or windows from XP to 8. Is the real question about PAE? I feel like we are missing something here.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
Just VM and RDS with a RDP on the "cloud" your apps and issue Surface pads to everyone including your mailman. Also, you owe me $120,000 in consulting fees. And I do not expect company stock well not your companies anyway.
Nope, Windows 7 32bit limits you to 4GB of ram for driver compatibility reasons. The last 32bit consumer OS from MS that actually supported greater than 4GB of ram was Windows XP SP1.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
VM's can fake a 32bit cpu.... its almost like there isn't a real CPU and someone is just pretending or something...
Guess the OP failed to comprehend the "Virtual" machine....
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
First and foremost, all consumer 32-bit windows versions are licensed to top out at 4GB. If you want more than 4GB, you will have to buy a (reassuringly expensive) server edition that permits it. Done. End of story.
The only other alternative is to get a 64-bit version of Windows 7 Pro. The Professional (and up) versions of Windows include something called compatibility mode, which is a free copy of Windows XP 32-bit, running inside a virtual machine. That's probably going to be your most cost-effective way of running your legacy apps on top of a 64-bit machine with oodles of RAM.
The guest CPU is the same as the host CPU on all popular VM solutions. If there is something in your applications that fails in the presence of a 64bit CPU, a VM isn't going to solve your problem.
I'm sure some thrifty assembly jockey writing vital-but-dreadful line of business applications in the 80s has a counterexample; but the mere presence of a 64bit CPU shouldn't cause any trouble for 16 bit applications. The issue is that MS dropped support for 16 bit applications on all 64-bit OS builds. A 32-bit OS on a CPU that supports 64 bits will run 16 bit applications without incident; but will only be able to use the first 4GB of address space without PAE, hence the poster's desire for a 32 bit OS with PAE support.
Not sure if this is of any use but the Windows 7 32bit Kernel can be hacked to properly support PAE and allow 64GB accessible memory under W7 32bit. W7 32bit was supposed include full PAE support but was nurfed at the last moment due to third party device drivers getting confused over the > 4GB memory space (I never had this issue).
A couple caveats come to mind:
# You have to patch the 32bit Kernel. Linky: http://superuser.com/a/95309
# Although you have access to >4GB of memory, no single process can use more than 4GB (minus graphics card memory)
I have used such a setup under W7 32bit SP1 for the last six months without issue as I needed the extra memory to run multiple VMs simultaneously.
HTH and good luck!
Seriously, it is real, real hard for me to find programs that don't run on 64-bit Windows these days. Windows has a flawless 32-bit user mode compatibility layer, so all 32-bit apps run no problem. The only cases that you have problems are:
1) Kernel mode stuff. There is no 32-bit kernel mode shit on 64-bit.
2) 16-bit programs. 64-bit Windows does have the 16-bit compatibility layer since there's no 16-bit mode you can access form long mode on the CPU.
3) Stupid programs that check the version and fail out, even though they'd actually run.
There just aren't many of those anymore. We use some amazingly fussy engineering programs at work, and they all run on 64-bit Windows these days.
So if your software really won't work, look and see if there's an update, or something else that'll do the job. If you just haven't tried it, then try it. Get a copy of 7 64-bit and see. I bet you have no problems. If you really have old 16-bit programs you need to run, do it in a VM, they can't benefit from modern system resources anyhow.
Really?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
A 64bit CPU can have a 32bit OS installed. That's not the point. If the 64bit CPU is what causes his applications to fail (and not some software environment problem), then running the OS in a VM won't help because it doesn't change the CPU that the application will see. VMs are not CPU emulators. The code inside the VM runs on the host CPU.
No VM built for resource management convenience in a standard production environment is a CPU emulator, because that's horribly inefficient compared to doing passthrough. If you don't mind incurring substantial overhead, though, something like QEMU can do full emulation of an x86, ARM, MIPS, or SPARC CPU. Not at all fast, compared to passthrough(also supported with KVM or xen); but it can be done.
There's a commercial product, I can't remember the name, that allows you to run Windows XP on a machine with >4GB of memory. Processes still have their usual memory limit, but the extra memory is used for disk cache and page space cache. Your processes will essentially be paging to RAM disk, which seems silly, it but works.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
However you also have to deal with developers who's apps actually check what version you're running and won't even try to install.
It isn't much fun; but the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit provides a mechanism for telling a large number of potentially useful lies to a program about the environment it is living in... Figuring out which ones you need is an exercise for the reader; but if you manage it you can then have the OS automatically furnish those little falsehoods every time the designated program runs.
It's a more powerful and granular version of the 'run in compatibility mode' feature, designed to keep the whiny enterprise customers happy.
Say I were to install VirtualBox on a PC running the x86-64 version of Windows 7. And say I were to buy a USB floppy drive in order to read an authentic set of Windows 3.1 install media. Could I run Windows 3.1 in this VirtualBox?
That will at least buy you some time to beat some sense into whoever is keeping this legacy software around that it's well beyond time to get it upgraded to something more current than a few decades old.
Sometimes legacy software has no still-maintained close substitute, and some sort of virtual machine is the answer. True, the OP probably isn't asking about games, but I'll still give an example of a 16-bit app that hasn't been upgraded: Is New Super Mario Bros. Wii for Wii an adequate substitute for an old 16-bit app like Super Mario World for Super NES?
I would like to gain the benefits (most better caching) of having more than 4GB of RAM.
Anonymous Coward wrote:
Just buy win7 32 bit version
The 32-bit version of Windows 7 won't use much more than 3 GB of RAM because too many 32-bit drivers for desktop PC hardware are intolerant of PAE.
VMWare used to use software emulated CPUs, at least on OSX. It's why they were an order of magnitude slower than Parallels. You could also have more logical CPUs than actual cores on your system - at a huge performance hit, of course. I don't recall if you could set the specific CPU type, or if it was fixed - to a 32 bit CPU. So there was definitely some emulation going on there.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
All x86 and x86-64 CPUs boot into 16-bit "real mode". A 16-bit or 32-bit OS just never bothers to switch it into 64-bit "long mode", the point of no return from which only a reboot can take the CPU back to real mode.
Because 2008 and 2008 R2 are only available in 64-bit flavours, they do not need to support Physical Address Extension (PAE), which by definition is a way of allowing a 32-bit OS to address more than 4GB RAM.
If they are in house applications, change them to accommodate 64-bit operating systems.
Hehe, during the last 10 years we were twice able to convince the guys with the budget to spend some on a new version of the software.
Both times they forgot to communicate with 'the field' and came up with something totally unacceptable.
The original software was developed by a field engineer (Hi Q!), right there on the job and he was always looking for input by the users and clients, it's near perfect but new engineers do have to get their head around the 8.3 file naming convention :)
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
This was briefly mentioned earlier, but I wanted to state clearly and concisely:
Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate all include licensing for Windows XP Mode, a 32-bit virtualized instance of Windows XP SP3. It is an additional download (actually a couple downloads), but it is free. I use it every day at work (on my 64-bit Win7 machine) to run a 16-bit app that was written in 1992, while I wait for that app's replacement to be written. It works perfectly, in fact much better than VirtualBox did for the same use case (there was laggy/odd redrawing issues with VirtualBox, no matter how many resources I allocated to the virtual machine).
Buy applications you actually get the source code to ESPECIALLY if they're custom made or very geared towards your specific problem. So many applications you buy now are going to be fine in 32-bit or 64-bit environments but what if the industry decides to go more towards an ARM variant within the next 2 decades?
A LOT of companies are seeing the mistakes they made now by buying into custom-made solutions that they have no control over and over the years the company has either stopped supporting the solution or gone out of business. Even Microsoft has a whole slew of software you probably never heard off (look around if you have an MSDN subscription) and actually doesn't run on Windows 7/8 64-bit. Off course whether or not those companies are going to make the same mistakes is up to them but I think in general history has shown that it's not a good idea to have your software locked up out of your control if you rely on it.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
> I'm not an expert
No offense dude, but, you're not. This isn't going to address the issue. The problem here is running 16bit apps and mixed apps with 16bit code bundled in with them.
PAE is physical address extensions. This means that you get multiple "windows" of RAM which means that you get to switch your view on which window of RAM address space you get to see. This allows you to see above 4GB which still using 32bit address space.
This doesn't allow 32bit applications to see more than 4GB natively, it doesn't allow the kernel to address more than 4GB (It's still a 32bit app after all), Citrix boxes can't magically take 20 times the amount of sessions, it's for large data storage applications.
So, if you have a 32bit app, it can only natively address 4GB of RAM, with the divide with Windows, this is half the amount of RAM you've got installed minus drivers. Graphics cards which have 1GB of RAM, will take 1GB out of the system so that the graphics drivers can address the RAM on the card.
This is great if you are MS, Oracle or VMWare and are fine with writing your own memory manager but writing a memory manager for allocations is a pain.
The poster was looking for a way to get old apps to work on a new OS, and honestly, getting it to happen reliably is a PITA.
If this is being done for a business, it's a bit of a dark art, all I can suggest is test test test test and test some more.
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
First let me get this out of the way: the solution to your problem is to run your older apps in a VM. Compatibility mode works sometimes, but not always and actively hobbling your entire machine with an older, less secure, less new-hardware-aware OS just does not make any sense. If you need to run graphics-intense software that a VM just can't handle then dual-boot the older OS. With that said, simply buying a server OS or even hacking Win7 Pro to use PAE (Physical Address Extension) may not work the way you expect. The 4GB limit isn't just a license thing that Microsoft imposes. It is a 32bit limitation on addressable memory (look it up, even 32bit non-PAE 'nixes have this limit). PAE is a trick of the OS to address more memory than the 4GB limit, but your standard 32bit apps probably won't be able to access that extra memory. Very few Windows applications are PAE aware--MS SQL is the only one I've ever used with it--and everything else will simply sit in a 4GB bubble completely ignorant of the rest of the RAM in your machine. So, do yourself a favor and grab VirtualBox, VMware, or whatever floats your boat, use a 64bit OS and make life easy on yourself.
32 bit apps work fine. the problem is many 32 bit apps have 16 bit components, MS didn't include a 16 bit emulator in their 64 bit versions of windows.
and to avoid this problem in the future, MS won't give their "windows certified" logo out to any 64 bit apps that include 32 bit components.
It is a lost cause upgrade your app to 64 bit and move on. if you are really desperate run it in a VM, but then you are just delaying what really needs to be done. if it is a 3rd party vendor, dump them. (and yes i know that can be easier said than done)
>VM of Windows XP?
No, not a VM of XP.
A VM of Windows FLP. It's like one of those pirated and trimmed back XPs, but official and not botnet ridden.
It boots in 8 seconds on this user's machine, so fast that in order to install the 3D drivers in VirtualBox, you must hand-edit boot.ini to put it in safe mode, since spamming the F8 key doesn't work.
It's. Fast.
And to every other program, like Photoshop and whatnot, it identifies itself as XP. I dare say that anyone pining away for the days of W2k, this is the Windows for you. It's like W2k, but you don't have to fetch DLLs from XP and neither do you have programs bitching about having the wrong version (WordPerfect Office won't install in W2k).
--
BMO
"I have a number of applications that will not run on 64-bit Windows" ...
There is *NO* difference between 32-bit environment applications see on 64-bit windows vs 32-bit windows.
You either have driver issues, compatibility mode issues or ancient 16-bit apps that only run under a 16-bit wow. Some older installers for 32-bit apps used a 16-bit setup.
If you had bothered to read the summary for comprehension, you would realize that the OP didn't give the slightest indication that he has any programs which individually need more than 2-3 GB. He's interested in a big system cache, which PAE would provide if Windows is architected even halfway intelligently (I know, big "if").
And no, this isn't even close to a "dark art".
It is beyond me why you would expect anyone here to have any experience with faking things.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
As long as it is isolated from the Internet and you scan every data storage device (usb thumb drives, external harddrives ect) on a supported windows for viruses before you hook it up to the windows xp box you will be fine as long as you have hard-drive back ups in case of disaster. Hell we got rid of a windows 3.11 box running automation software less then 5 years ago at my work, and that was because of hardware failure (the mother board died due iirc to a problem with the power supply) it is now running on a old xp box they had laying around.
Just because it is no longer supported does not mean you have to upgrade it just means you have to be careful.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
... then the community could give a better tailored solution for your needs. :-)
i.e. Why do you need more then 4 GB? Does one app need more then 4 GB?
Why not just run multiple VMs ?
Are your apps closed source?
Do you need DirectX / OpenGL support?
etc.
Actually windows 7 32 bits will do the job period.
Your processes will essentially be paging to RAM disk, which seems silly, it but works.
That's exactly how RAM Doubler worked in the mid- to late 1990s. It reserved some of a machine's RAM for a RAM disk containing a compressed swap file.
The obvious choice here is XP. It is stable, well supported, still gets patches, and is generally a better option than 7. Plus, you probably already own it.
The other option is to get a proper OS and just use WINE. Or you could pirate Windows and use it a VM. Just do anything but pay money for another copy of Windows.
Since nobody else has posted it....
Best 32-Bit Windows System In 2012? - No
But the only reason to not run a 64bit OS and 32bit apps is because you need to run 16bit code.
PAE won't provide a big system cache because the kernel is still 32bit, it can't address more than 4GB itself. A kernel won't be able to address itself through a PAE window.
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
Windows 2008 Enterprise and Datacenter x32 will support 64GB of ram, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778(v=vs.85).aspx#physical_memory_limits_windows_server_2008
I've seen comments (but no clarification from OP) about these being 16-bit apps, and also mentions of Virtualization.
Excellent idea. But one big benefit of virtualization is that you can run these apps in the oldest available OS you can grab. Are they DOS apps? Grab an MS-DOS 6.22 image and install it into a tiny virtual machine with, say, 4MB of memory. If that's all they need, why give them more (and a giant base OS like Windows XP)?
The benefit here is that if you have dozens of these legacy apps, you can put _each of them_ into its own virtual machine, each taking up only 4MB or whatever, and you can run all this on a beefy 64-bit server for your newer software.
I think Hyper-V can run MS-DOS in a VM. If not, you can consider using VMware's free Server 1.0, or Workstation (both of which run on Windows).
Exactly. Have a separate VM for each legacy application and they will each get the maximum available memory, so you won't have to resort to PAE.
To do that now, you would need to purchase Windows 2012 Standard license and downgrade it to Windows 2008 Enterprise.
And why run it on the Free Hyper-V? The Windows Server 2012 Standard license entitles you to run Hyper-V + two VMs on the box (provided the root partition is not used for anything else besides managing Hyper-V).
Yes., I have read the Microsoft licensing rules.
Why on earth would you want a 32 bit system in 2012?
This signature intentionally left blank.
IIRC MS Server versions support PAE. 36-bit kernel, but 32-bit userland :-)
Really, it does what you're looking for. Here's an example.
I have an old scanner and recently moved to Windows 7. No driver available. I'm hosed, right? Have to buy a new scanner. Or find technical docs, the DDK and write my own driver (painful, time consuming, and awful).
VMware to the rescue!
Make a Windows XP virtual machine, load XP scanner driver into it. Connect scanner, use VMware Player to move the USB device to my VM. Bingo! Works like a charm.
Unless your program is very exotic requiring access to something VMware doesn't emulate, like the PCI bus or some such, you should be good to go. And if your program does bang around on non-emulated hardware you really need to consider just using the OS it was created for. Get a legacy system to run it. And use VNC to get to your desktop on your shiny new x64 system.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
For downgrade rights, you need to be purchasing under a volume license agreement (either select or open), retail and OEM products don't come with downgrade rights. Also, you advise to purchase a Win 2012 Standard license and downgrade to Win 2008 Enterprise. I think you have a typo in there. You would need to purchase Win 2012 Ent to downgrade to Win 2008 Ent.
You utterly fail to understand how PAE works.
4GB of addressable memory and PAE are rather unrelated.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Unaware of any BSOD reports running 32bit apps in Wine ( http://www.winehq.org/ )
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
I think you have a typo in there. You would need to purchase Win 2012 Ent to downgrade to Win 2008 Ent.
No. There is no Windows 2012 Enterprise.
You can run Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise (and even Datacenter) on a Windows 2012 Standard license.
The only limitation is that you only get the Windows 2012 Standard virtualization rights (2 VMs).
No typo, and I have read the licensing documents, as this impact our licensing purchases quite a bit.
That is not going to magically make all applications utilize more than 4GB of memory, they still have to support PAE. Besides, the link you posted does link to another list of Windows versions that support it, only with a different command line switch.
Good to know. I am very open to Linux at this point, having grown tired of Microsoft trying to put me and my preferred apps out to pasture. I can't imagine what people with super expensive equipment couple to XP systems that are ready to fall over dead are planning to do when (not if) that happens.
I come here for the love
You need to have a Software Assurance agreement to get it. Also, it is for enterprises. It is basically managed XP-Mode, so for small environments, it is probably simplest just to install XP mode for those who need it.
Of course, XP mode will not get patches in two years time (as XP), so this is not a long term solution anyway.
The reason we stayed with 32bit for so long was simply the fact that even on workstations 16bit limitations just weren't an issue because the prices were so damned high on memory ... so while the 386 may have allowed 32bit mode frankly your average desktop just didn't have the resources to really take advantage.
The reason we stayed 32-bit for so long was simply legacy software. 32-bit had many advantages beyond addressing larger address spaces. Even on the modest systems you describe 32-bit would have been beneficial. 32-bit registers, a flat memory model and simplified code generation would improve performance. Going to a flat memory model alone would improve software reliability. In the bad old 16-bit days I swear half of my bugs were because a segment register had not been updated and the code was addressing the wrong memory.
Appears to be extremely tweakable (i.e. complicated). Requires boot images, versus just running the application. Might work. Not sure I have the fortitude to give is a full-fledged try.
I come here for the love
There are lots of ways to break stuff or write applications that will be useful 5-10 years later but won't run on the hardware or OS's people are using then. And while there are lots of way to fix them, they usually weren't *your* applications, so either you don't have the stuff you need to fix them, or you'd need to buy an updated version, if one exists, or it's just not time-effective to do it when you could just run an older operating system to keep them alive.
My problem's simpler - the corporate desktop IT department won't support 64-bit Win7 yet because they haven't want to / finished testing everything, so I've got 32-bit Win7 on my work laptop, so I'm limited to 4GB of RAM and Firefox crashes a lot. At least we're using IE8 now and not just IE6! One of my coworkers gave up, converted his corporate desktop to a VMware image, and installed 64-bit Linux with a VMware player, so he now has something like 8 or 16GB of RAM and a nice friendly window to run the work desktop in.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I forget by now whether they stopped working for me when we got XP, or whether it was some generation of MS Outlook mail that didn't support the old connector software, but the real killer was when laptops stopped having RS232 ports on them :-) Yeah, I know it's possible to get a USB-to-serial adapter, and maybe it would even work with the Palm VII, but since the Outlook connector also didn't work, it wasn't worth restarting.
And when I recently upgraded to WIn7, HTC Sync stopped working, so I can no longer sync my Android phone to it, so it doesn't get calendar updates any more. Snarl. (Potentially I could fix this by dragging out an XP machine, installing the newest HTC sync, upgrading the phone to a slightly newer version of Android? What a Depressingly Stupid Machine.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
.
My apps are not needing more than 2GB of RAM and are probably not that hard to emulate. I just haven't VM'd stuff before. The half of my machines running Windows 7 are not on Pro, so XP Mode will require a 7 Home Premium to 7 Professional upgrade on each computer, and that is listed as $89 on Amazon.
I come here for the love
I personally favor a multi-lib Linux environment (Slackware multi-lib, currently) for my desktop. It's not that hard to set up and once you do, you get all the 32 and 64-bit libraries running seamlessly together without any conflicts. This way,you can utilize more then 3.5 (4.0) GB RAM without sacrificing your apps that haven't made the transition to 32-bit yet (looking at you, Citrix).
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
For complex software needs, emulation, or virtualization, is really the only way to go these days - especially if it's legacy.
I will frequently run my workstation(s) with 16GB out of RAM/into swap, so I have a couple more systems which just run virtual hosts. For instance, I've got a w7 VM that I run only basic "Windows" things on, and long run processes (eg. transcoding, torrenting). I've got another as a 'test' platform for misc browsers, and then I've got another VM which just has about a dozen different installed versions of Java (exclusively for Cisco crap, YAY).
I don't personally need 32 bit anything right now, but if I did, a VM would be the only way I'd even think of dealing with it due to the fact that it's a corner case. Corner cases make for a mess when you try to make them fit within an existing picture.
I've got many others (egads, 32 VMs in all and 22 running currently), but the basic idea is that "one OS" can get cluttered quite quickly and really doesn't provide the full suite of what you need. I don't need (or want!) Java installed on my main laptop or desktop. My laptop doesn't have the storage for all the movies I've ripped, so I keep them on a media server VM (which talks to another storage VM). It's quick and trivial to fit something else into the picture, and I never have to reinstall anything (rarely, at least) because some other program screwed up the registry or I got experimental and broke my package repository - just revert the snapshot.
(For what it's worth, I prefer Virtualbox.)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
You do not say anything about the nature of your applications, if those applications are DOS style (windows vista and onwards are very picky about DOS apps), your best bet is either DosBox, or FreeDos on a VM. Dosbox emulates the whole hardware enchilada, so it may be a tad slower than runing Freedos on a VM, and both solutions run on modern 64 Bit Windows... On the other hand, if your apps are Win16 or Win32, read on:
Even if the windows OS is 32 Bit, having more memory through PAE can have good effects, as each app running will have a full 3.5GB or so address space all for itself. 32 bit versions of Linux had PAE support for years. 32 bit versions of Windows do too, but artificially limits that support in consumer versions, in part as a differentiation tactic, and in part because some drivers do not behave nicely with PAE enabled.
No matter if your processor is 32 or 64 bits, what determines the "32 bitness" of the system is the OS (that is to say, a 32 bit version of the OS will behave as a 32 bit version, even if installed on 64bit HW).
As many posters said, your most cost effective route is to go with XP compatibility mode in a modern (think Windows 7) consumer version of the OS (be that a 32 or 64 bit version of the OS). The problem with XP comaptibility mode is that support for the virtualized copy ends in 2014, so the solution is very short term, and that it runs virtualized, so anything hardware intensive will be slow as molasses.
Is any of those limitations is unacceptable to you, you may run a 32 bit edition of Windows server 2003 (R2) (which is supported until 2023 (2025), give or take), activate PAE to gain access to additional memory, and then fiddle with the settings to make it behave more or less like a workstation if needed be.
If you follow the workstation route, this link may help:
http://www.msfn.org/win2k3/index.htm
word to the wise: troll the forums for hardware whose drivers play nice with PAE.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
If your application is designed for a legacy OS, it's not going to utilize more than 4GB of RAM. Next question please...
One thing I wonder - if Microsoft could have Windows Virtual PC for Windows 7, why not here as well? As I noted above, XP Mode is adequate, and here, for Windows 8, they could have released Virtual PC so that people could run Windows 7 and Windows XP instances under Windows 8. I mean, what's the difference b/w Hyper-V and Virtual PC for which Microsoft had both available for Windows 7? Also, can't Virtual PC include Windows 8 as well, so that anyone who wants to try out Windows 8, or have it handy for any new apps or devices that must have Windows 8 can run it under Virtual PC under Windows 7?
I was talking to a computer salesman a few days ago, and he had just installed Windows 8, and hated it - not just the UI, but also the fact that its driver support is extremely poor. I was thinking that if Microsoft made Virtual PC a default part of Windows 8, under which you could have a Windows 7 mode as well as an XP mode, this could well be the solution. Depending on the hardware one has, one could instlall the drivers under the relevant subsystem, and go from there. One could also maximize Virtual PC or have it as a part of the startup applications, and go from there, and only use Windows 8 if one happens to like IE 10. (Incidentally, am I right in thinking that IE 9 will be the last IE for Windows 7, and it will be IE 10 and beyond for Windows 8?)
P.S. I'm talking above about new systems, obviously - the ones that come w/ Windows 8 as a default. If you are using Windows 7, obviously don't upgrade. Incidentally, what is the maximum RAM that Windows 7 or 8 - 64 bit can handle?
Currently I would not recommend installing an old 32bit Windows on new hardware. Reasons include (1) Complete lack of drivers for some hardware and (2) Hardware (eg ahci) that has to work in slow compatibility modes.
Assuming your application runs on it I would suggest a Windows 2000 in a VM, with the guest given about 2GB of private memory (or just under). This is because (1) Windows 2000 is still very light on modern (or nearly) hardware. (2) It's compatibility is very good with both the 9X versions and the later XP and W7 so most (non Microsoft) programs will run. (3) It as a reasonable dos box and good 16bit support. (4) using the "270" hack you are not going to have any problems with license keys or activation servers going offline.
For the VM host I would suggest a 64bit linux using KVM as the virtual environment. I would NOT recommend using a 32bit version of the Linux kernel because the caching will not be able to use all of memory (despite it being available to applications) and the VM guest will be limited to 2GB without any choices. This is not the simplest of virtual hosts to work with but it does have very good performance and very wide hardware support. In addition with the correct choice of distribution it will be a very light host in terms of disk and memory overheads.
OTOH, if you just want something simple use Window 7's XP mode. (or perhaps Win2k in a Virtual CP)
Some really old apps will not run correctly, even in a compatibility mode for the newer OSes. Generally, I find that VMs running the older OS so that the apps have the OS they were originally designed for is the best option, but there are sometimes reasons why this is not economically or technically viable.
If you really want to try 32-bit Windows Server 2008 variants with more than 4GB of available RAM, you will need to enable PAE, but in 2008 the method for enabling PAE is a bit different to the older OSes: /set PAE forceenable" (without the quotes).
1. Right-click on a shortcut to your Command Prompt, and select "Run as Administrator".
2. Type "Bcdedit
3. Restart the server.
The system should then recognize the fully installed RAM quantity.
Not so. While Virtual PC XP Mode worked for me, Windows 7 32-bit didn't. My issue wasn't 32-bit or 64-bit (although Windows 7's 32 bit is a derivative of its win64 API, and not from the old XP's win32). My printer driver was not recognized by Windows 7, period! Neither could I install Adobe Acrobat 6, which was designed for XP. But once I put in XP mode, it ran like a charm.
If one is running XP mode, or any VMs, is there a compelling reason for those VMs to be networked? In my case, my Windows 7 is networked, but I don't bother networking XP mode, b'cos I don't access the internet that way, and I only use it for legacy stuff that is not supported in Windows 7. If I don't network XP Mode, I don't need to bother about either infections or patches. All that happens to my Windows 7 box, which is reasonably well secured anyway.
For Windows 8, since it currently has pretty poor driver support for existing (i.e. not brand new) peripherals, it would seem that one would have to run a Windows 7 or XP VM much of the time. At least until Windows 8 hardware support improves.
...I run most everything not specifically designed to run native on my win7/64 host, in a sandbox instance of xp32/NT/*NIX/whatever. It's really not difficult: install a virtualising engine such as VirtualBox or VMWare, create or download a machine image, and get on with it.
By the way, 32-bit end-user versions of Windows (ie, desktop systems) do not support more than 4GB RAM+4GB swap in native mode. You *may* be able to bump it to 16GB using 4GT and 64GB with PAE (4GT requires that the system already has PAE support), depending on the kernel and system release. There's a slew of tables here.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
The answer is no, you're not limited to the set of OS versions on the page you linked to. That page just lists the OS versions where you put the /PAE switch into boot.ini. Later versions support PAE just as well, but have a different configuration mechanism to enable it. Details are available from the page you linked to.
The original question was "Best 32-Bit Windows System In 2012?..
And I'm afraid, despite it's awesome capabilities... Wine is only the best windows system if you compare it with Windows NT 3.51 and OS2.
If you've somehow convinced yourself that the best platform for running 32bit windows apps isn't Windows, then parallels on MAC OS is streets ahead of wine.
Why can't Linux just accept that it is good for running Linux apps, and leave the windows apps for windows.
virtualbox is awesome