<p>Just got my laptop, has 4 gigs of ram so I want to change my OS to the 64bit Vista. My only question is what do I do about drivers? I've never installed an OS before so I'm just going off online guides and I'm not clear on this. Can I just install the OS and it will have the drivers needed for my computer to work or do I have to download the 64bit version of drivers before I format and then install them after I install the OS?</p>
<p>I would repartition my hard drive for two bootable partitions and then install Vista x64 on the new partition. I’d probably keep both as well as having an extra bootable OS can be handy if there’s a problem with one of them.</p>
<p>Sometimes the manufacturer includes a driver disk with the system and the disk might have 32-bit and 64-bit drivers. If this is the case, then you are all set. If not, then try the website of the manufacturer of your system. They may have drivers for your devices or they might not. If they don’t, then you have to chase down drivers from the web and this can be a real pain. You should try and get all of the drivers using the 32-bit OS, preferably before installing x64. You could theoretically need a driver for your network adapter so that you wouldn’t be able to download any drivers (chicken and egg problem). I’ve done this many times and it’s a pain.</p>
<p>Sometimes the only way to resolve a problem is to go out to buy hardware with x64 drivers and install them on your system as x64 drivers aren’t available.</p>
<p>Yeah, you definitely want to get the drivers first. Lenovo provided all the 64-bit drivers I needed when I switched from 32-bit XP Pro SP2 to 64-bit Vista Business. Check and see first.</p>
<p>So I install the OS and then go back and do the drivers? I don’t understand how that would work how does the computer components work without drivers?</p>
<p>In general, a lot of things will work with default drivers. Your video card will drop back to VGA mode. Your keyboard and mouse should work. Your network may or may not work. Your sound may or may not work. But keyboard, mouse and video should get you far enough.</p>
<p>With the dual-boot approach, if you need a file, you can always boot to Win32, download it and it should be available to the OS on the other partition.</p>
<p>Apparently I’m not the only one who has done this, google has turned up a couple of promising sites. Hopefully they will work out, I will try it out soon and post back to say what worked in case anyone else here is doing this.</p>
<p>For future reference, this guide worked for me: [Vista</a> T400 Clean Install Mini-Guide w/ Switchable Graphics - Notebook Forums and Laptop Discussion](<a href=“TechnologyGuide - TechTarget”>TechnologyGuide - TechTarget) . The only problems I have are that in Device Manager theres a problem with “Standard VGA Graphics Adapter” and “Video Controller”, their drivers are wrong. If anyone has any suggestions great, otherwise the computer is working fine for now.</p>
<p>You may need to download drivers from Intel, nVidia or ATI for your graphics adapter.</p>
<p>Slightly off topic: I would just wait a while and upgrade to Windows 7 64bit. It’ll be much better than Vista (coming from a beta tester).</p>
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Yeah, the guide messed me up a little because it wasn’t for the same model as mine so it told me to download an ATI driver when I needed the intel one, everythings working now.</p>
<p>@Lees: To late for me now but I don’t really see whats so bad about vista. I’ve got SP2 and its fully updated and I don’t have any big problems with it. The pop ups are a little annoying but they don’t happen to me that often, then again I’ve only been using it a few hours.</p>
<p>i usually just have a second computer on hand</p>
<p>phade,</p>
<p>Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Vista is actually much better than XP. If you use it for a month, you’ll never want to go back to XP.</p>
<p>Vista is nice if you have a fast machine. SP2 is supposed to be quite a bit better than SP1 in terms of performance. I haven’t downloaded it yet but I’m going to do that on my Vista laptop. I was disappointed with Vista on my 2.0 Ghz XPS M1330 because it takes so long to boot up.</p>
<p>Vista runs fine on my Core i7 desktops and I’ve heard that it generally runs well on quad core systems.</p>
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<p>This is true. If I remember correctly, Windows 7 is supposed to be much friendlier on older systems.</p>
<p>^There’s the Win 7 Release Candidate available if anyone wants to test it. I’m using it on a computer i just built and it is pretty awesome.</p>
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<p>I second this (coming from a Mac user). 7 is very good. Not Snow Leopard good, mind you 
but given the price difference between PCs and Macs (and that the OP already has a PC), it’s good enough for most.</p>