Anyway. – Having installed the 64-bit RC on the 6th I’m on my 7th day of using it, and I think it’s great. The only programs I haven’t been able to install to this day are: –

1) BT Broadband Desktop Help; which is an ISP-specific program used by some UK BT customers for getting free online help from India along with a lousy computer-fault-self-diagnosis program that usually ends up asking you to open an online interactive dialogue to BT staff in India when it can’t identify the problem after 1/2 hour of tests. It includes a download speed-checker that always tells the customer that the internet speed is fully acceptable and the fastest available; probably even if it’s 2 kilobytes per year. BT obviously need to come up with a version specially for Windows 7; which I expect they will do by the time the next Microsoft OS is in beta. (The problem with it is that it doesn’t see that a Windows 7 administrator account has administrator priveliges; and thus doesn’t install, but says that your administrator account must have administrator priveliges before you can install it.)

2) A Space Invaders game written in DOS and distributed via my blog, labelled “Inv78-02.exe”. It runs fine in XP but 7 refuses point blank to run it.

For those looking for the sound recorder, (”sndrec32″ in XP) it’s been renamed to “SoundRecorder.exe” and exists in the %systemroot%/Windows/System32 folder. I initially though Microsoft had left it out and even went as far as blogging on the subject, only to get an eggy face later when someone pointed it out to me.

I’m installing as much as I can on the RC; because I want Microsoft to receive as much telemetry as possible so that the RTM will be the very best that it can. You may have noticed that ther have already been several experimental updates via Windows Update. (Most of them for the 64-bit version.) – So the RC still has some way to go to be an RTM candidate by the look of things. To my mind the more I run on it, within reason,; whether it actually runs or not, the more Microsoft can diagnose prior to RTM, and hence maybe SP1 will be a bit smaller as a result? – Even if not I like to put it through its paces to some extent just to see if I can push the boundaries and find out more about it.

Holy crap: This is meant to be a comment, not a blog post. I’d better end here.

Now, I’m running 64-bit with 4.0 GB. Processor (AMD Turion 64 X2) is 5.3, memory is 6.1(!), graphics is 3.3, gaming graphics is 3.9 (1919 MB available graphics memory!?) and disk is 5.6.

I see in the detailed list it says that 128mb is dedicated to graphics, and that 1791 MB is available shared.

The install was on a new HD, one that I was expecting to install RTM on, but when a couple of files refused to get copied over for backup, I ran a chkdsk and went from 0 MB sectors bad to over a megabyte of sectors bad. I decided it was time to retire that drive.

Thanks for all the information, Rich!

This article really helped us to go on over the edge. Thanks alot I think we will be installing it this week.

I currently run the beta in 64-bit, and I’ll be installing the 64-bit RC this week. I’ll be running this on an AMD Phenom x 3, 2.3GHz with 4 GB DDR2 800MHz RAM. I might get another 4GB to add to it.