Windows 8 x86 or x64

When I bought Win 8 the upgrade advisor told me to get the x86 version of the os because I was running it on XP x86. Ive now found an x64 bootable win 8 pe which Im typing this from and it seems to work pretty well.

So did I make the wrong choice getting the x86 version or would some of my old 32 bit programs like wordperfect office 2002 have trouble running on the x64 version of windows 8. I did have to use compatibility mode for this program on the 32 bit version but maybe it wouldnt run at all on 64 bit.

I also missed out on hyper v virtual machines which I like to test from time to time when trying new os etc. This of course is not in the 32 bit version even though my 64 bit machine supports it.

Guess I will have to wait for windows 9 before I can go 64 bit. Thoughts?

I've got the 64 bit vers. of Win8.1 and I'm most peeved that it won't even attempt to run my DOS 16 bit programs and even crashes some 32 bit programs like an old MS Visual C++ Developer. All ran OK on XP 32 bit. Also on Vista.

Edited by XRaySpeX (Tue 22-Apr-14 14:43:37)

Interesting is it possible to dual boot the two I read somewhere the keys are the same?

So dual booting x86 and x64 versions now but cant get my printer to work in x64.

In reply to a post by Banger:

Guess I will have to wait for windows 9 before I can go 64 bit. Thoughts?

There is no point in moving to 64 bits if you don't need to. The most common reason is to address more than 3GB of memory. If you're happy with 3GB max, you might as well stay with 32 bits.

In reply to a post by micksharpe:

There is no point in moving to 64 bits if you don't need to.

Didn't have much choice! Bought laptop from HP. All on offer were 64-bit; the only 32-bit was a tablet.

I want to run x64 because it has virtual machine support and my machine is fully 64 bit compliant.

Getting on pretty well with 64 bit the only problem is the printer. Even managed to get vmlite to work on it as hyper v isnt supported (slat) by my core2duo processor. At least I can see all 4gb of memory. Going to have to keep the 32bit partition due to the printer problem, but creating an image now.

Have a similar problem with a legacy Canon slide scanner. I went so far as to ask Microsoft if it was legal to dual boot (this is Windows 7 but same principle, I'm sure) and basically their answer was yes, because I'd only be using one Windows at a time. The slide scanner works in X86 but not at all in X64.

Ok gone back to x86 version, will keep the 64 bit version and XP as dual boots, but too many of my old hardware drivers just dont work on 64 bit. The main one is my printer and having been told by MS printer rep., Alan Morris it is extremely unlikely HP will update the code base for such an old printer, I have had to give up for the moment.