After 3 years of the same XP32bit installation, today Ill be installing XP64bit on the drive Im expecting to be delivered later on : http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130454

This is the first time Ive ever bought a hard drive for my main rig that wasnt Seagate. Ive heard some cracking things about that Samsung, so lets hope it lives upto the hype.

Not quite sure what Im gonna do with all that space, been running a 120gb as my main drive, 500g seems a little extreme. Althought I have filled up a 320gb external drive in a little over 6 months.

Dont know to do with 500g?! You dont download enough random crap!

Just remember to download at least the ethernet driver before starting.  The manufacturers havent all caught on to the idea of 64Bit drivers on the CD that comes with a motherboard yet.  I would also suggest using nlite to make life easier.  Stream the SATA drivers etc in, and you can also make it into an unattended install if you like.  Personally I love XP64, ive actually found it runs really old (like Win98 type) software better than normal XP.  Im assuming its the 32Bit engine that makes life easier.

Ill be going back to XP64 when I next reinstall (from Vista64). My computer just isnt happy running Vista.

As beaker says I would recommend getting atleast your network drivers sorted before hand as they have never been picked up by XP64. Apart from that Ive never had any issues with drivers (some people have issues with TV Cards but Ive never owned one)

Quote from: White GiantThis is the first time Ive ever bought a hard drive for my main rig that wasnt Seagate. Ive heard some cracking things about that Samsung, so lets hope it lives upto the hype.

Ive got a couple of these in my rig, fantastic drives can barely even hear them

I installed XP64 a couple of months ago to make sure all my hardware was picked up from the get go. All I had to do was manually install graphics drivers, so Im fine with that.

/looks at clock, damn sh*ttyLink.

After I got my mobo to recognise the drive, it went pretty smoothly.

Formatting a 500gb hard drive takes a while though . . .

Still sorting a couple of niggles out. My main concern is that Download Accelerator Plus is claiming my code is wrong (fully legit, I actually bought it about a year ago), meaning Im stuck with the crappy ad riddled version

Quick update, got pretty much everything sorted now. Load times are much quicker (especially Firefox which was always slow to load for me; 8-10 seconds previously), and HDTune says this new drive is over 3 times quicker than my old one.

Tis very, very, very, VERY, quiet too. Not that noise bothers me, 1x120mm/1x92mm/2x80mm fans kinda make noise from a hard drive a moot point.

Okay, encountered three problems with XP64.

First off Nero wont install. It gets to the actual installation point, and just hangs with 100% CPU usage. Tried reinstalling, no luck (Using the latest demo from the official website).

Second, when I minimize WMP(11) I cant right click on the task bar and select the WMP toolbar, which should allow a mini screen to play at the bottom right. The option just isnt there, and Google isnt giving me any answers.

Finally, I used to use a plug-in for Winamp called Dimin-Hotkeys, which allowed me to use the multimedia keys on my keyboard to control Winamp (Play/Pause, Forward, Back, etc.). Now it doesnt seem to want to work.

Any suggestions?

Dont know about WMP or WinAmp but dont even bother with nero... the latest version is nothing but random crappy bloat software.

Get something like Ashampoo

just press the buttons on the keyboard anyway.  My keyboard works with winamp without plugins.  I just press the buttons in the hotkeys section to remap them to my hotkeys.

Quote from: DoomsDont know about WMP or WinAmp but dont even bother with nero... the latest version is nothing but random crappy bloat software.

Get something like Ashampoo

Lovely job! Using it now - gotta burn 200g gig /sigh Thank you Dooms.

Quote from: soopahflyjust press the buttons on the keyboard anyway. My keyboard works with winamp without plugins. I just press the buttons in the hotkeys section to remap them to my hotkeys.

Excellent, dunno why I didnt do that in the first place.  

Only problem left is with WMP11, and this really bugs me.

*edit - ignore the comment about coasters, my fault.

Nutha update regarding WMP11, aparently XP64 wont allow this, only way around it is running explorer.exe as a 32bit program.

hmmm thats strange, I dont think I noticed this probelm with WMP11 even tho I used it exclusivly for the time I had XP64