Sunday, March 29, 2009

How To Install Google Calendar Sync on XP 64

Since I'm knee deep in a project between my company and Google, I've started using Google Calendar Sync at work to sync my Outlook Calendar to my Google Calendar. It's turned out to be a neat little tool and I've been meaning to install at home. However, I use Windows XP Pro 64-bit edition at home and Google Calendar Sync does not support it. Fortunately, with a simple little "hack", I've got it up and running just fine.

Get the Google Calendar Sync installer.

1. Right-click on the installer file and select Properties.
2. Next, select the Compatibility tab.
3. Turn on "Run this program in compatibility mode for:" and select
Windows XP from the drop down box.
4. Click OK.
5. This will run GoogleCalendarSync_Installer.exe in compatibility mode for XP 32-bit, allowing the program to run on an XP 64 system. There are no issues that I have found running it this way.

Now, this trick works surprisingly well for a lot of software that does not support XP 64. Give it a try and let me know if there are any questions.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:34 PM

    I just tried your tip and it seems to be working great! Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous9:11 AM

    Yes, a quick and simple but very useful post.

    ReplyDelete
  3. When I tried it, the installer threw an error writing the files. I didn't see just the Windows XP option in the drop down menu from the Compatibility tab. I did see Windows XP (Service Pack 2), which I chose. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong since it seemed to work for others.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Molly, what version of XP 64 do you have? I have not seen the Windows XP (Service Pack 2) compatibility option listed that way before. Windows XP is all that I see on my XP 64 machines.

    Are you attempting to do this via Vista 64? Vista 64 has the compatibility option listed the way you stated, but Vista (all flavors) should work with Google Calendar Sync by default, without requiring any changes.

    XP 64 bit is the only unsupported OS by GCS.

    ReplyDelete

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