Installing NX6 32-bit & 64-bit on Windows 7 64-bit

[phillpd]

I've installed NX6 32-bit on Windows 7 64-bit.

I now want to install NX6 64-bit, but the installation recognizes that NX6 is already installed.

Is it possible to install the 32-bit and 64-bit versions ?

NX 6.0.5.3
Windows XP32

 

[JohnRBaker]

OK, this is a total hack, but it's worked for me with Windows XP.

What you do is RENAME the folder which NX 6.0 is currently installed in, perhaps adding something like '-32_BIT' so as to indicate what it actually is.

Now go to your Windows 'Control Panel' and perform an UNISTALL on NX 6.0. Now the system will do it's thing, purge the information about NX 6.0 from the registry and so on, but since the folder where NX 6.0 is actually is located is no longer named what it was when it was originally installed, the actual deletion of the files will not take place, but rather they will remain intact. Now it may still take a few minutes for this task to be fully completed, but when it is you can now perform a normal NX 6.0 64-bit install.

Now once this is done you will only see the 64-bit version of NX 6.0 in your Windows Start menu which means that you will need to find an alternative way to start your 32-bit version. I would recommend that you create simple .bat file to launch NX (note that I currently have 12 different versions of UG/NX installed on my laptop and I start ALL of them using Batch files).

Note that I've attached a generic batch file which you can use to start a session of NX (before you extract the file, edit the extension from .zipper to .zip. This was done because some systems will not allow you to download a .bat file, even if it's zipped, so we have to fool the system). Please read the contents of the file carefully as it includes instructions on what settings need to be set in the file to make it work.

Good luck and let me know how it all works out.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[joycejo]

We were told by GTAC that this is not recommended. We have some old posts that still use GPM and this does not work on 64 bit machines. We had to install Microsoft Virtual PC to emulate a 32 bit machine. It works for what we need.

John Joyce
N.C. Programming Supervisor
Barnes Aerospace, Windsor CT
NX6.0.5.3

 

[JohnRBaker]

It's only 'not recommended' from GTAC's point of view since they are not willing, and rightly so (after all, I said it was a 'hack'), to respond to calls which might result from something like this. That being said, from a purely technical point of view, there is nothing that I've described which will jeopardize the installation and execution of NX, except in the sense the the system will ONLY know about one version, the LAST one installed. So if you double-click an NX part file in an Explorer window, the 64-bit version of NX will be launched. If you were to attempt to install an update (an MR) it would try to update the 64-bit files. However, the MR installation script is smart enough to check for this and it will not allow you to continue if you had tried to install the 32-bit update (so we've tried to make NX 'tolerant' to this situation, but GTAC is correct in saying that is it 'non-supported').

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

http://www.plmworld.org/museum/

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[tsjaikdus]

just out of curiousity... is it possible to open files created with 32 bit NX in 64 bit NX?

 

[looslib]

Part files are totally independent of the OS for the application. You can open part files in either version back and forth.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[Arkance/PhoeNX]

back to the original question, if you can get a hold of the "windows installer cleanup tool" (made by microsoft but no longer available from them) you can remove the registry entries that the 32bit version was installed. then you can avoid the uninstall and just install the 64bit version in a new location.

still advisable to use .bat files as John has suggested to choose which install you are using.

Anthony Galante
Senior Support Engineer

NX4.0.4MP10, NX5.0.0->5.0.6, NX6.0.0->NX6.0.5, NX7.0.0->NX7.0.1 & NX7.5.0.32-> NX7.5.2.5

 

[phillpd]

Thanks for the information guys.

And yes, GTAC, pretty much said "don't do it".

NX 6.0.5.3
Windows XP32