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Nonsense. Yes, you're out of luck, but other operating systems (not just Linux, either) successfully mix 32/64 drivers and programs on such hardware.


Windows XP x64 is an interesting mess of an OS. By what I can tell, they took their work on the Windows XP/2003 ia64 version and ported it to x64, including all the barriers that existed on ia64. With the Itanium, 64 bit code is running ia64, but the 32 bit code is running on x86. So, with ia64, all drivers must be ia64 64 bit, and for some reason this limitation got moved over. As did the odd issues with even the filesystem layout. x64 programs see c:\Program Files\. x86 programs see c:\Program Files\ as well, but it's actually c:\Program Files (x86)\.

As far as your problems with many programs like AVG, odds are it has nothing to do with the programs and more to do with their installers. Neither x64 or ia64 versions of Windows allow any 16 bit code. Many installers still use a few 16 bit lines of code, thus making them not run properly.

A friend of mine uses XP x64 on one of his machines. It's working fine for him, but most of the use that box sees is the occasional game playing of games released in the past 3 years.