This is a bad advice. I need 64bit as I need all the memory installed. There is nothing bad in 64bit except in a few rare occasions and N900 flashing is one of them.

Other than this I have not had any problems whatsoever. Going back to 32bit would be massively stupid.

i can confirm than vmware works with xp for flashin on win7 64

it does work with windows XP mode. All you probably forgot to do was:

click on "USB" in the toolbar, and select "N900(update mode)"

The trouble is XP mode on Win7 64 only works with the latest hardware

well what i did, is i downloaded the xp virtual drive program, run it, and it worked. i reflash to 900mhz with no problems at all

Sorry but your argument is fundamentally flawed. Primarily because W7 is a modular OS and therefore is far superior to Vista for a start, and secondly because of the memory addressing issue - a 32bit (x86) OS can address 32^32 memory modules whereas a 64bit (x64) OS can address exponentially more, ie 64^64 memory modules. This equates in the final analysis to a 32bit OS seeing a MAX os 3.47Gb of RAM but a 64 bit OS can see up to 128Gb RAM.

64bit is certainly the way forward....

I would try to reflash using the VM inside W7, and failing that run a dual booting machine with an old XP or Linux install as the alternative OS for flashing only.

so is yours. your point might be "correct", but your arguments are full of errors:

"Modularity" is not something that gives an OS a big advantage. it simply says that you can enable / disable features independently from other OS features. that's neither new nor something inherently valuable. it makes deploying and managing w7 easier, but it's no big deal.
and vista is nearly as modular as w7, that wasn't a new feature in w7.

what's a "memory module" ?
seriously, don't use numbers and terms you don't understand.
a 32 bit architecture can address 2^32 adresses of memory, whereas 64 bit archs can address 2^64. try computing 64^64 for comparison... that's a number many many many orders of magnitude larger.

since one address usually corresponds to one byte, you have 2^32 bytes of ram (=4 GB) as possible maximum in 32 bit systems, minus some overhead. the possible adress space for 64 bit systems is 16 exabytes. 128 GB of ram is a practical limitation of today's systems.

I got the flash to work on a Win7 64-bit, no virtual PC used..

Just updated the libusb-win32 to 1.2.2.0.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/libusb-win32/

For some strange reason it is not readily apparent how to install this.

How to get N900 flasher to work in Windows 7 64-bit (x64).

• Install Flasher 3.5 - http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/maemo-d...-downloads.php
• Download libusb-win32-bin-1.2.2.0.zip - http://sourceforge.net/projects/libusb-win32/
• Press U while starting N900 and attach USB
• Wait for the original driver to install.
• Run inf-wizard.exe (bin folder in zip) - Run as Administrator

  1. Press "Next"
  2. Search in list and select "0x0421 - 0x0105 - Nokia N900 (Update Mode)"
  3. Press "Next"
  4. Press "Next"
  5. Save .inf file
  6. Press "Install Now"
  7. Press "Install this driver software anyway" on warning message.
  8. You should get "Installation successful." and press OK.

• Check Windows Device Manager for "libusb-win32 devices", expand and verify "Nokia N900 (Update Mode)" can be found.
• Now you are ready to run Flasher 3.5 with your parameters.