Hey Lindsay,
I also tried but no luck with Win 7 64-bit.
It does however, run fine on a 32 bit install of Win 7.
I ended up reformatting a Win7 machine I use for many of my radios with the 32 bit version of Win7 and found that most software will run just fine.
I originally did not want that as I wanted to be able to use more than 3.x GB of ram but after I changed that machine over to 32 bit, I realized a lot of the older software I was running hardly used any ram anyway so it all worked out very well in the end.
The Icom RS-R8500 software will also run on a 64 bit Win7 machine using the free XP Mode Virtual PC software but I was never a big fan of that as it can be slow to start. It runs okay once loaded up but running the RS-R8500 software directly from a Win7 32 bit install just runs or feels better and you don't need to wait for XP Mode to start up. XP Mode also has limits on the amount of serial or com ports. I think I was able to get up to 8 or 9 serial ports running under XP Mode but that was not enough. I needed 14 or so when I first set it up.
If you have a spare machine laying around that will run Win7 32 bit, set that up and load it up with 3 or 4GB of ram and you should be happy.
I used a couple 4 port serial port cards sold by SIIG (I think) but used Oxford Semi drivers along with a bunch of FTDI based USB serial adapters for over 20 serial ports total and everthing plays together very well.
Has anyone been able to get the Icom supplied R-8500 control and programming software running on Windows 7? I cannot get the installation to run with any compatability settings.
Any ideas?