No, this time it is not Microsoft - it is NetGear that is not providing an x64-capable version of their software. The very latest VPN client software for a ProSafe router (FVS338) doesn't work (install) on Vista x64: 

I think it is needless to say that I am not amused. Who are you kidding in late 2008?

This time it is the Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0:

Given all my past run-ins with developing on x64, how is anyone supposed get any development work done on a x64 box?

I am currently working on a Compact Framework project, and started development on a different machine - where I successfully used the Cellular Emulator of the Windows Mobile SDK. Today, on the other machine (the laptop), it didn't start but present me with the following error message:

After some searching (on the G-word search engine), I came across this post:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3538593&SiteID=1

Sure enough I am using Vista x64, heck, we are living in 2008 with multicore CPUs and 4GB+ of RAM!

And here is the Catch 22: when moving development to a Virtual PC image, you don't get USB ports which you need for connecting to a real device...

This is ridiculous considering that we are fast approaching mid-2006:

As you can see in this blog post, Windows Media Encoder allows for screen recording (option: Capture Screen). Till now I had no need for a screen recording on my x64 box, but today was the day:

I am really, really growing tired of all the x64 annoyances.

Update Installed the x86 version of Media Encoder alongside, et voila, the x86 version delivers.

Because I wanted to create a DVD cover, I decided to install CorelDraw 10 (fine for what I need) onto my box. However, it very much refused to cooperate:

It told me that it expects NT4 through 2000 as an operating system, however, that it cannot detect my current OS (the blank third column). And that's the story. No CorelDraw for me on the x64 box. Grrrrr.

Update No dice on 32-Bit Vista (December CTP) either. Setup completely craps there. Well, so the final option is to install CorelDraw 10 in a 32-Bit virtual machine on my x64 box...

The culprit: http://transfers.one.microsoft.com/ftm/

The error message:

---------------------------

Program Cannot Start or Run

---------------------------

The program or feature "\??\C:\DOCUME~1\CHRIST~1\LOCALS~1\TEMP\~EXB0000\setup.exe" 


cannot start or run due to incompatibility with 64-bit versions of Windows. Please 


contact the software vendor to ask if a 64-bit Windows compatible version 


is available.

It's "only" the FTM that I need for Connect and MSDN Premium downloads! Dear Microsoft, how about a working version for us Windows x64 guinea pigs?

Note: I am complaining about the standalone install, not the ActiveX. But who's using IE these days?

When I installed the QuickTime security fix (v7.0.4 for the records) on my laptop, I finally found out who caused this event log entry on my x64 box:

I didn't pay attention to the files copied when installing on my x64 box, but this incompatible GEARAspi driver is being installed by iTunes (which I still don't get why it is installed when I need QuickTime, but isn't this the kind of "packaging" that got Microsoft into hot water?).

You have heard that many times before - use FxCop! This time you hear a wailing sound from the x64 world, me who is griping about assemblies that ain't cross platform as they should be (like you are using ints instead of IntPtrs for doing PInvoke...). Please, please check your assemblies with FxCop, even if you use only those rules:

Thank you so much for considering!

http://www.3dvelocity.com/articles/win64compatibility/win64softlist.htm

Very useful. And sad, because even the latest Nero / InCD doesn't support x64. No packet writing software for me.

Update There is a packet writing SW for Windows XP Professional x64 according to this press release. But what are they thinking? The trial version ships without the packet writing software InstantBurn. Come on.

When will the misery end? Initially, I only bought 2GB of memory for my x64 workstation. But I intended to add two more from day one, and today was the day - two additional Kingston KVR400X64C3A/1G DDR-400 modules were delivered to my doorstep. So in theory 4 modules would yield 4GB of memory.

Not so fast, Buster. Exactly. After finding out the hard way (blue screen and various other sorts of lock-ups), it looks suspiciously like the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium does not like four DDR-400 modules! (the ValueRAM site hints at this, and there are discussion threads too) that pretty much takes the biscuit.

Is there anything working on Windows XP Pro x64? I think not. Point in case: I just tried to install the Intelli* software for my Microsoft Laser Desktop 6000:

Now come on. This is Intelli* v5.4, a version that is newer than anything to be found on MS' download servers (where you won't find x64 versions either).

Windows XP x64 at this point in time is only for people who are willing to put up with below-par driver and application support. This experience almost comes close to Vista Beta 1...

Update Turns out I was one day too early. The new version 5.5 can be downloaded now, and it supports 64 Bit (IntelliPoint 5.5 x64, IntelliType 5.5 x64 [one download for x86 and x64]).

This sordid story starts with a good thing to do: I wanted to perform a backup onto my external USB hard disk. So I took the drive that was attached to my old workstation and did my routine: delete an old backup to make space for new ones. But Windows decided that it might be a rather good time to annoy me:

Huh, what are you trying to tell me? At the same time, a tray notification popped up:

USB is usually not a network connection, and I most decidedly did not abuse the cord for bungee jumping at that time. This error also yielded tons of event log entries like this one here:

Being already a little ticked off, I decided to take a peek into Computer Management, section Disk Management:

Gotta be kidding me! Being annoyed already, I dug deeper into the property sheets for this drive:

You remember the error messages about delayed write failures as well as paging? Write caching is disabled?

For good measure, I attached my harddisk to another (non-x64) machine. Working fine there. Next, I switched USB cables. Same result. Used a different external USB hard drive. Again, same result. So that pretty much means that external hard disks don't work at my new workstation.

I am wondering if that is another problem of x64, or the chipset driver in this case. Cables and physical disks are already ruled out - ideas?

Update My drive enclosures have Firewire support too. So I connected the drives via Firewire. That works around the DWF problem, however, now I stumbled into a different issue (event log record):

The device, \Device\Sbp2\ASSMANN AB-PENR35 Combo Devi, did not respond within the timeout period.

The KB article SBP-2 drive stops responding when you try to write data in Windows XP nicely fits this error. Back to square one, research on the USB issue. At least I am not the only one that experiences those kinds of DWF problems, as an Internet search proves.

Update Tried again with USB after updating the nForce chipset driver to v6.82. It got farther this time, but it still crashes with DWF. Judging from a search for "delayed write failed", I am most decidedly not alone.

Solution At least sort-of... I poached ye olde Adaptec DuoConnect card from my old workstation and plugged it into the shiny new one (which, thanks to the A8N board, already has 10 USB 2.0 ports of its own). Booted the machine, drivers were installed automatically, plugged in the harddisk, did the same operations as before - and it worked flawlessly.

Conclusion: There must be an issue in the combination chipset / NVIDIA nForce (x64 only maybe?) chipset driver.

Seems like my computer is living up to its name.

Update I decided that I had to have another go at it. So I bought a brand-new external 3.5" enclosure, a Map-H31S (according to the documentation it should use a Genesyslogic GL811E). I disassembled the old enclosure and put the hard disk in the new enclosure. Connected it to the mainboard's USB connectors - et voila, it works! Seems that this enclosure's IDE to USB chip can deal with my motherboard.

Instead of risking my sanity by trying to install Virtual PC 2004 on my x64 box, I decided to go with Virtual Server 2005 R2 x64. Thankfully, this new release of Virtual Server allows installation on an XP host, and the setup experience was pleasantly uneventful.

Of course I ran into a snag - my default browser is Firefox, and the administration Web site didn't fully function with it. So back to Internet Explorer, and configure the first (existing) virtual machine:

I learned the following things:

• Do not forget to configure the network adapters. Otherwise connecting to your domain can be a challenge.
• Definitely enable Remote Desktop on your virtual machines, which brings me to the next item on my list:
• When renaming a virtual machine beware of your own cleverness. Especially if all your virtual machines were copied from a once-configured image, and you renamed one of those instance so that the original name no longer exists in Active Directory.

Other than that I have to say that Virtual Server 2005 R2 is a much better experience than Virtual PC 2004.

My journey through x64 land is getting more frustrating by the minute. When I tried to connect to my dedicated server box via RDP, I got the following error message:

The specified remote computer could not be found. Verify that you have typed the correct computer name or IP address, and then try connecting again.

"That can't be!" was my first reaction. Especially because I use the very same host for email, and that was working from the start. So I fired up my trusty X31 laptop and tried there - working just fine!

Next, I compared the TCP/IP settings - both identical, because I use DHCP in my network to dole out IP configurations. Back to the basics. Ping. Working fine on my laptop, not working on my x64 box. Scratch, scratch. Wait a second! Because I am paranoid, I don't configure the default gateway for my machines, so that when I turn off the ISA client, I have no Internet connectivity whatsoever (nice for testing).

Turns out that the email program makes proper (high-level) use of the network stack, however, ping and mstsc go lower, and - nasty surprise - the ISA client doesn't work properly on x64 (thread here). Now that is the second time that my "no default gateway policy" rears its ugly head (instance #1).

Now THAT takes the biscuit by a long distance:

Those are the two hard disks of my RAID mirror! Showing up in Safely Remove Hardware... hard disks, which of course are nowhere to be seen in the device manager:

Anybody have an idea on how to exclude certain devices from Safely Remove Hardware? Let me know, I'd be really glad to hear.

Update A friend of mine pointed out that he had seen this with a RAID controller on one of his boxes too. He suggested that stopping the device would not work. After some hesitation, I decided to give it a try - and it failed:

Thank goodness. If it had succeeded, I would have had a problem.

If you have ASP.NET 1.1 and ASP.NET 2.0 on an x64 machine, you better read the KB article How to switch between the 32-bit versions of ASP.NET 1.1 and the 64-bit version of ASP.NET 2.0 on a 64-bit version of Windows.

it's then you stumble across such an error message:

java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException: String index out of range: -89

 at java.lang.String.substring(Unknown Source)

 at java.lang.String.substring(Unknown Source)

 at ZeroGla.a(Unknown Source)

 at com.zerog.ia.installer.util.magicfolders.JavaHomeMF.a(Unknown Source)

 at com.zerog.ia.installer.util.magicfolders.JavaHomeMF.b(Unknown Source)

 at com.zerog.ia.installer.util.magicfolders.MagicFolder.initializeAllMagicFolderPaths(Unknown
Source)

 at com.zerog.ia.installer.Main.d(Unknown Source)

 at com.zerog.ia.installer.Main.c(Unknown Source)

 at com.zerog.ia.installer.Main.main(Unknown Source)

 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)

 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)

 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)

 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)

 at com.zerog.lax.LAX.launch(Unknown Source)

 at com.zerog.lax.LAX.main(Unknown Source)

The application that blew up was the Sony Ericsson Update Service installer 2.2.11b. And guess what: it craps only on x64, not on my trusty 32-bit XP. I pretty much suspect that the programmer of this application didn't expect Program Files (x86) as a directory name.

After Christmas, I set out to assemble the parts of my new x64 workstation:

• ASUS A8N-SLI Premium motherboard
• Athlon 64 3700+
• 2 GB of memory (to be upgraded next week to 4GB)
• 2 WD 400GB RE2 hard disks (used in a mirror, I am too old and lazy for data loss)
• Matrox Millenium P650 PCIe graphics card
• Optical drives (DVD-RAM & DVD-RW DL) - reused from the old workstation
• Arctic Cooling Silentium T5 midi tower case

Lessons learned:

• InCD 4 is my enemy #1 for 2005 - it doesn't work (even install) on XP Pro x64
• Not all AV products' realtime scanners like x64
• If you are used to Arctic Cooling CPU fans, don't install the out-of-the-box fan that ships with your CPU - you will be disappointed. And opening the case soon again to replace it.
• Dual-head sucks. Why doesn't Matrox ship a triple-head card for PCIe?

I am pretty sure those ain't all the snags I will encounter, especially as Virtual Server 2005 R2 is now waiting to be installed instead of VPC 2004 on this machine.

Update Speaking of snags - the Canon LIDE 60 scanner doesn't work on x64. The driver simply doesn't support it. How craptacular.