can't get into 64 bit mode in Snow Leopard

[Pants]

My MacBook Pro is an A1226 with Snow Leopard originally installed, and Snow Leopard is still installed.

Holding down the 6 and 4 keys doesn't force 64 bit mode. Looking in the System Profiler under Software there is a "No" next to Kernel Extensions.

Looking in Activity Monitor it doesn't show 64 bit for the kernel_task loaded.

I also tried setting 64 bit mode in the command line. It said it "saved" the configuration successfully, but it's still not going into 64 bit mode.

I have no particular need to using 64 bit mode, I'm just experimenting right now.

 

[Markverhyden]

Did you try this?

With 32-bit firmware, you cannot boot into 64-bit kernel; it’s not possible.
bits

To determine if your Mac has 32-bit or 64-bit firmware, copy/paste the following command shown in red into Terminal (Terminal is found in the /Applications/Utilities folder):

llcMP:~ lloyd$ ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi
| | "firmware-abi" = <"EFI64">

from http://macperformanceguide.com/SnowLeopard-64bit.html

 

[Pants]

Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I ran the command and it shows my Mac DOES have a 64bit EFI.

 

[Markverhyden]

Well, hard to say then what is going on. My MBP is a little newer than your and I'm running 10.8 so it's all 64 bit.

I know you said it's not a big deal but I'm assuming you have the recovery disk. If so you could boot into recovery and try to repair the disk and then fix perms. Of course you could also boot into recovery mode and then do a install on a USB drive to see what that does.

To be honest I've never paid any attention to that since none of my customer's have. Don't have anyone in the graphics business, etc who might be interested in that performance improvement.

 

[Pants]

I've got a Snow Leopard install disc. I don't have the original disc that came with this system, though. I bought this Mac used, and I bought a Snow Leopard (version 10.6.3) install DVD separately.

 

[Markverhyden]

The install disk should have the same utilities as the recovery disks.