I managed to force myself into an installation of Windows XP X64.
How? Well, I bought a new DVDRW which wasn't working properly so I decided to change the jumper from 'CS' to 'Slave'. Unfortunately I changed it to 'Master' without realising and couldn't understand why Windows wouldn't boot. It wouldn't even get to the boot options so I could load my X64 test install.
When I realised what I had done I changed the jumper to 'Slave' and still no success. After checking that everything was there with BartPE I decided to repair-install XP but every attempt resulted in a BSOD at the hardware detection stage.
I had my road to Damascus moment and realised that the BIOS had changed the HD boot sequence while the jumper was incorrectly set and was trying to boot off HDD2... and I'd knackered myself. lol
That left me no alternative but to go Windows XP X64 completely.
OK, so now I have a nice installation of X64 that runs smooth but there are a few software gaps here.
Mainly because I cannot find a proper firewall that will run under X64.
X64 runs 32bit applications under WOW64 (Windows On Windows64) and this is faultless apart from just a few things.
Anything that needs to install drivers has to run under X64 proper and won't work fully under WOW64.
Firewalls are just such a program, and the only alternative to XP's inbuilt firewall appears to be Ghostwall, which also does not monitor outbound connection attempts.
There is a 64bit edition of Outpost v4 but on every boot it tells me there's a problem and the drivers couldn't be loaded. The popup gives steps to remedy this but the result is the same after twice rebooting as required.
I've tried Kaspersky, Outpost 4 and ZoneAlarm. Others that I have looked at include Symantec, McAfee (glag), Bitdefender & Kerio - all these have disclaimers on their sites specifying they operate under 32bit environment only.
Therefore, I'd like to know if anyone can suggest a viable firewall for XP X64?
