32-Bit AutoCAD on a 64-Bit OS

A lot of people are upgrading to Windows 7 these days. I made the move a couple of months ago and I’ve actually enjoyed the new OS– though somehow I still can’t use a ribbon created by anyone other than Autodesk. At the same time, there’s a big push to upgrade to 64bit machines. The problem is that not everyone who’s ready for a new machine is ready to upgrade their Autodesk products. For instance, I’ve gotten quite a few calls about  installing Land Desktop on a 64bit machine. Try to install and you get:

The solution in this case is fairly well known, but I wanted to share it with our readers because it’s so simple and helpful. What you need to do is copy the content of your installation disc to your hard drive. Then open the Setup.ini file, located in the recently copied installation folder,  using notepad.

Near the top of the file you’ll notice two paths, X86_IMAGE_PATH and X64_IMAGE_PATH. When the installer recognizes your 64bit OS it uses the x64 path and says you can’t install. If you change the value to the right of the equals sign to x86, you’ll be able to install. Just save the Setup.ini file and run Setup.exe.