Driver incompatibility still a major issue in Windows XP 64bit

Windows XP is nice operating system for low grade system. My old laptop runs on 64bit edition of Windows XP Pro. Now the issue lies with driver and software compatibility. The operating system is crashed and I am going to format it completely. Luckily I found the operating system disc. But do not have the drivers. I searched on the official site. There were only 32bit drivers available. So what should I do. Will 32bit drivers will work on 64bit operating system. Because I can give a try. Atleast till today I can use my system under safe mode. But in normal mode the screen goes blank. I fix the laptop and gift that to someone. Mostly a kid who can learn something. Right now my lan is working, I can surf internet, my video cam is working, dvd looks a bit problematic, but detects cds slowly, there is no issue with the hard drive and LCD is bit faded out. All is all the laptop is under working condition and I think it will survive a few more year. I want to clear up the old os and install a fresh new one. But I am stucked with driver compatibility stuff. Some of the applications that run hot keys and web cam are only available for 32bit.

To find out whether a 32 bit driver will work on 64 bit or not you will need to take a risk and format your system. Because there are 50-50 chances that 32bit drivers will work on a higher platform. Mostly I had seen many companies provide common drivers for both platform.

Formatting will wipe out everything, and you will need to rely on Windows drivers. This drivers are capable of running the video at lower resolution, usb devices, and lan it is commonly used. Or else you have to find the driver. You can do one thing here. First run system restore under safe mode. So that you can get at-least a working system in normal condition. Then install image creator tools like Ghost or Acronis. Keep the image file inside a partition. Format your system and then install new windows. Use those 32bit drivers. If there is any issue related to compatibility or error or crashes you can restore the entire system via image file created. So you will get all your changes back. The restoration will fine if you do not make any major changes to system partition.

It is better if you can provide the laptop model number here. There are chances tha many people has purchased this before and they might be having the driver disc with them. Or do one thing contact the manufacturer. They provided driver cd on a small fee.

Windows 32bit and 64bit both are entirely different operating system. The good news is that 64 bit operating system supports 32bit drivers and software. You do not need to worry about the compatibility. So in my advice you must take the chance. If you just want to use the laptop for general purpose then the best thing you can do is switch to Linux. Today there are multi-featured operating system released like Ubuntu. They have a nice desktop environment with rich features that you can find in Windows also. The best thing about this operating system is that you do not need to install or find any drivers for them. It also comes in 64bit version. The OS is free to use and easy to manage. I am sure there is no option available in Windows XP 64Bit to run drivers of 32bit version on compatibility mode. It is possible to run some 32bit applications on that mode. Also you can install 32bit operating system on that. It will worth if you can test it.

That is right why don't you try to install a 32bit operating system on it. If there is a 32bit drivers available then you do not need to worry about compatibility stuff. Maximum 64bit hardware supports 32bit operating system.

I am one of those machine. My system is 64bit but I am using 632 bit Windows 7. I have 2GB ram and a intel cpu which works fine. Till yet the problem that faced was only due to software installation. They pop-out a error on the screen saying that the software do not support installation on your system. But somehow I manage to use them on compatibility mode. The drivers which did not installed I found them via Windows update. But for Windows XP I have many doubts. Microsoft has told already to stop support for this old OS. So at this point you might face issue. The only issue that you mentioned in black screen on boot. This looks like a virus issue. System restore can fix it. In safe mode you can run tools like registry repair, system tune up utilities, etc. This might restore ample of your OS settings. You can run mconfig and click on startup services. Disable some of them. Also you can modify the boot options in safe mode via it.

What I know about this is, mostly the issue arises while configuring printer. While all drives of 32 bit works fine under 64bit os. You do not need to worry about the web cam also.

I face issue mostly on software. I had never tested those drivers thing. What I did is copied the drivers folder from System32 inside Windows in C drive. I copied them on a usb and formatted by system. After normally boot from Device Manager, I had re-installed them one by one manually. All looks fine here. For that you will need right click on the hardware and then click on properties > drivers. In that click on update. It will ask you for the location. In this way my lan started working, as there was no driver available for 64 bit.

There are chances that some hardware might not work. I am not sure about the camera and lan. Because my old laptop did the same thing. I had formatted tested some 32 bit drivers things messed up.