Good stuff.

More links on 32/64 bit info

http://extended64.com/forums/t/2098.aspx

http://www.tipandtrick.net/2008/how-to-open-and-run-32-bit-command-prompt-in-64-bit-x64-windows/

Just found this http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa384249%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

Well I guess then that this could be quit a mess then and possibly an expensive one. I figure it's just a matter of time when 64bit will be the standard. Maybe patches will start coming out to be able to run 32bit hardware and software. Maybe a patch to make 32bit stuff think it's running on a 32bit computer, now that would be quite an app. Todd?

Good question. I'm really not sure but I think the disk format is independent of the number of bits in the processor, so I don't think it would be a problem reading from the drive.  It really depends if the OS can read the particular format: FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, etc.. I see that there is a FAT64/exFAT(see exFAT on wikipedia) but it's not related to the processor size.  My mac mini can read a usb drive formatted for windows but it can't write to it. Back-in-the-day you had to buy a special program just to get the mac to read the drive so I guess I should be grateful. But I digress.

As a software developer, I would expect problems reading a project file created in a 32 bit version of a program in a 64 bit version, but I think most companies would resolve this before shipping the 64 bit version of the product.  Depending on how the program saves the data it could work without a blip, could just not work at all or could "sort of" work but have weird seemingly random problems.  A lot of programs now use xml to save their configuarations making them immune to these number-of-bits problems.

I'm pretty sure you would have problems initializing a new 64 bit system with a "system" backup of a 32 bit system (the os). The other issues I mentioned aside, I think you'd be able to restore "user" files from a backup drive but almost certainly need a version of the os that could tolerate 64 bits. You'd also have to reinstall any apps, and even get a new 64 bit version of the app.  Could be a real mess. My friend was at his wit's end. I think I was the fourth person who tried to help him with this problem.

Bob do you think this will be the case with software also that was developed on or for a 32bit windows OS? Or is this just a hardware issue. I wonder how it will affect a backup drive? For instance if you have a bunch of files backed up on a 32 bit system and you get a new computer 64bit, will the backup hard drive run and be able to access files on it?

I just spent several hours helping someone getting MIDI to work on a 64 bit laptop running Windows 7 and thought there must be hundreds of people just like him struggling with this so I figured I'd post the solution.

The short answer is, you need 64 bit versions of the USB drivers AND you need 64 bit versions of the program you are using.  This will probably be taken care of automatically at some point but for now you need to be sure you see "64 bit" in the description of the driver and the computer requirements for the app.  The "Windows 7" seems less important (we've seen drivers described as Vista 64 bit drivers work) but it's best to check before making a purchase.

This seems like a simple problem but both the drivers and the apps will often run without reporting errors.  To make matters worse, Windows installs the 32 bit driver if has one so you need to run the installation disk that came with the interface BEFORE connecting the device. If you already plugged in the interface, you need to uninstall it then reinstall. The installer often gives you the option to do this. If not, you have to go to the Control Panel-System-Device Manager and remove the driver there.

One program that did report a problem was Reaper from Cockos. It didn't tell us that we needed a 64 bit version of the program and driver but it did report that it couldn't open the ports. Other programs blindly failed.