Windows 7

[Einstein]

Bev,

Windows 7 only went to large manufacturers in July as a stable release. It didn't go retail until October (both 2009) so it's reasonably new.

I think I said before what's likely to have happened is they subcontracted the development of this software to a third party company, perhaps own the code or may not.

Either way as there appears to be a low level driver involved the developers have to develop this to be compatible with Windows 7 - their application could be from Windows XP and was tweeked to work with Vista, however, drivers for XP are unlikely to be Window 7 compatible.

So they need to clear the people who wrote the code, wait for their current work to finish, begin the development of the new code and then test it.

Could I suggest you perhaps try downloading a copy of VMWARE www.vmware.com and obtain a copy of Vista or perhaps XP from your friendly reseller - by installing vmware you can then run another operating system within windows. You need VMWARE player which will allow you to create a Windows XP computer under Windows 7.

Enjoy!

 

[Tezzz]

Could I suggest you perhaps try downloading a copy of VMWARE www.vmware.com and obtain a copy of Vista or perhaps XP from your friendly reseller - by installing vmware you can then run another operating system within windows. You need VMWARE player which will allow you to create a Windows XP computer under Windows 7.

Enjoy!

David is right about VMWare. That's what I'm using. It's very good.

 

[bev]

Bev,

Windows 7 only went to large manufacturers in July as a stable release. It didn't go retail until October (both 2009) so it's reasonably new.

I think I said before what's likely to have happened is they subcontracted the development of this software to a third party company, perhaps own the code or may not.

Either way as there appears to be a low level driver involved the developers have to develop this to be compatible with Windows 7 - their application could be from Windows XP and was tweeked to work with Vista, however, drivers for XP are unlikely to be Window 7 compatible.

So they need to clear the people who wrote the code, wait for their current work to finish, begin the development of the new code and then test it.

Could I suggest you perhaps try downloading a copy of VMWARE www.vmware.com and obtain a copy of Vista or perhaps XP from your friendly reseller - by installing vmware you can then run another operating system within windows. You need VMWARE player which will allow you to create a Windows XP computer under Windows 7.

Enjoy!

Hi David,
The computer shop said this is a possibility, but that it is not advisable to have the two running together (dual things can invalidate the warranty apparently) - so they were slightly reluctant to do it. They said they would, but also it could cost a couple of hundred pounds to do it and i didnt really want to have the extra costs.

Of course, i may have completely missunderstood what you meant as i am not good on these things - in which case just ignore me!

Tez, I think (?) this is what your suggesting also? If so, i would rather not mess with my new laptop - just in case it does invalidate the warranty or create more problems for me? Sorry if this sounds ungrateful - its just that i am so useless on computers that i dont have the confidence to change things. But i think i will go back to the computer shop and show them your reply and see if this is different from what they had explained to me today.

Thankyou both for you help with this - your obviously both really well-up on your computers!🙂Bev

 

[Einstein]

Bev,

This isn't a dual boot OS option. It's a piece of software that runs on Windows 7 and then allows you to run a virtual PC on which you can run another OS, Linux, Windows XP, Vista or another Windows 7 os.

It is like running Word or any other software package.

The software from VMWARE is free, it's 90MB and requires one restart to install. Then you need the OS discs for Windows XP or Vista to create your 'new virtual PC'

It is supported by most of the major PC vendors, HP, DELL, Toshiba, ACER, Sony and IBM without invalidating warranties - that's perhaps because they don't know how to do this process. It's now very common in servers, and modern laptops (not netbooks) will work with no problems.

 

[Northerner]

That's very interesting David, I wonder if it will solve my Sony problem? Will look into it!

 

[Steff]

can you still buy mini hard-drives then you can put vista onto that??

 

[Einstein]

That's very interesting David, I wonder if it will solve my Sony problem? Will look into it!

It may well do Northerner - it really does work very well on modern hardware. And they seem to have overcome all driver issues reasonably well.