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I have a problem where my IT department will not install 64 bit windows on a 64 bit machine.

The application I need to run is 64 bit. Is there anyway I can run this app on the machine and let it utilize the power of the 64 bit Quad core with 8gb of Ram.

The 32 bit version only also see's 3gb of RAM.

My IT department were very unresponsive to support 64 bit windows.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards, Tom

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Belongs on superuser.com – Paul R Sep 9 '10 at 16:30
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Burn a Live CD/DVD for one of the popular x86-64 Linux/FreeBSD distros, boot from that and run your 64 bit code under a proper 64-bit OS. – Paul R Sep 9 '10 at 16:32
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migrated from stackoverflow.com Sep 9 '10 at 16:32

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2 Answers

up vote 9 down vote

You can't run a 64 bit application on a 32 bit OS. You could set up VMware on your box and enable virtualization in the BIOS if it's not already. VMware can run a 64bit VM on a 32 bit host if set up properly. It can even access all (or most since it's a VM) of your RAM.

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You can see stackoverflow.com/questions/56124/… for more info. – David Moye Sep 9 '10 at 16:39
Incidentally, the free version of VMware Server should support this configuration. – David Moye Sep 9 '10 at 16:40
Nice, didn't know this was possible. +1 – Sathya♦ Sep 9 '10 at 16:43
This thread supports Davis's answer arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=115156 – subanki Sep 9 '10 at 16:53
The Free/Open Source VirtualBox will also allow you to run 64-bit guests on 32-bit hosts, provided the underlying hardware supports hardware virtualization (Intel VT/AMD Pacifica) and has it enabled. Getting it working can be tricky, for example, with my Dell Optiplex 755 there were certain BIOS settings that needs to be set just right (and not all of them obvious) in order to get VT enabled so VirtualBox would see it. – afrazier Sep 9 '10 at 17:02
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up vote 4 down vote

You need a 64bit OS to be able to run 64bit applications, and also to be able to use more RAM.

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