Im about to format my machine (It's getting sluggish and full of crap) and am at a crossroads, Vista x86 or Vista x64? Is there any real gain for going 64? Bear in mind i only have 2 gigs of ram.

x86

Care to elaborate?

x32

On another note, Why is 32 bit officaly called X86?

x16

Because it's designed to work on the x86 architecture, originally released with the 8086 back in the late seventies/early eighties. It's your standard 32-bit processor.

I see.

x rated

xtacy

Heard it does wonders.

no reason for you to run 64 bit, you'll have a harder time finding drivers for things in x64 as well

Some research later.
Is it true that older games (95' onwards) have trouble installer due to 16 bit installers?

x64 Windows cannot run 16-bit apps... basically Windows 3.1 apps.

Some lazy devs in the Windows 95 and 98 eras used old Windows 3.1 installers for their games.

You don't see those anymore though.

You can recognize such installers because Windows 3.1 apps cannot be themed.

Example:



There are other reasons why an app cannot be themed:

- If a window is not a child window of the desktop or an MDI client area it will not be themed. Theming is only supported for windows that are on the desktop or in an MDI application. Other uses are uncommon as they tend to be buggy but they exist.
- Windows belonging to csrss.exe in XP cannot be themed. Usually only applies to console windows. Console windows are now mostly themed in Vista (scrollbar still unthemed).

IIRC these installers are the kind that open up a big fullscreen window and then a smaller window on top of that for the actual installer. The smaller window might be unthemed even if the app is 32-bit, but the bigger window will be themed unless it's 16-bit.

Also you can check Task Manager:
- 16-bit apps have a process name of "ntvdm.exe" instead of the exe file name, as they must use the NT Virtual Desktop Manager (or whatever that stands for).
- Task Manager has a menu entry that can toggle whether or not it shows 16-bit apps. This will show "wowexec.exe" as well as your 16-bit processes. Note that neither Process Monitor nor System Explorer can see 16-bit processes, only Task Manager can (but they can still see ntvdm.exe).

I had 64bit windows for about a month. While pretty much every program I had ran, nothing acctualy ran better and some small features didn't work.

Basicaly, if you don't have anthing that requires useing 64 bit then don't.

32.