downgrade from 7 to xp

[whitesox4life]

Wirelessly posted (LGE-VX9100/1.0 UP.Browser/6.2.3.2 (GUI) MMP/2.0)

I do not like Windows 7 (more like dont trust until SP2 or 3 is released) and absolutely hate Vista. I know that without a discthat comes with PC to revert to XP, it is time consuming to revert to XP from Vista. Will i have the same issue with 7 with reverting? I tried to revert my aunts computer to xp from vista and it would not do it even with bios changed to disc drive as only boot option with my xp disc. Will i be able to do the revert without issue from 7 or am i screwed?

 

[N_Jay]

If it shipped with 7, I would leave it alone.

I have three 7 machines now and all run very well. (Better then Vista or XP)

 

[rdale]

It won't be easy (if not impossible.)

No reason to "distrust" Windows 7. It's the best version they've released in ages.

 

[n0nhp]

So far ( I have had 7 since first "public" beta) I have found only one thing that wouldn't run on Win7 as well or better than it did on XP. That is a 16bit ISA radio card. It didn't surprise me, that is why when I tried 7 on that machine, I found an old disk drive, wiped it and tried the spin on that.

And if you really want to wait for a SP to come out, don't buy for another three months, SP1 is in beta right now although I don't really think there are too many issues to fix, just a rollup of the security updates.

Bruce

 

[whitesox4life]

Wirelessly posted (LGE-VX9100/1.0 UP.Browser/6.2.3.2 (GUI) MMP/2.0)

the machine i am going to be purchasing has 64 bit version on it. I have been talking to some radio/scanner programmers and they advised me that alot of my programming software will not run using 64 bit.

 

[rdale]

I'd say they were wrong... I've not had an issue with any scanner program on Win7 64-bit.

 

[n0nhp]

I second rdale, I am currently running Pro96com, ProScan, HamRadioDeluxe, TalkPCR, Win96, the entire BK radio suite and several others on Win7. No problems at all.
Buy it and try it before you make up your mind.
Worst comes to worst, wipe the disk and install 32bit XP. You will NOT be able to downgrade from a 64 bit system to 32. It must be a clean install. Win7 also makes it super simple to partition the drive and install a dual boot. I'll bet you don't need it though.

Bruce

 

[bpsmicro]

Old 16-bit apps will not run on 64-bit Win7. One scanner program that I know won't work it Butel's ARC780. But pretty much everything newer than that is probably 32-bit, and will be fine.
For those very few (if any) 16-bit apps that you run into, you should be able to set up Virtual PC and set up XP in a VM, though you *may* have issues with some hardware devices in a VM.(I never could get ARC780 working, but that may have been because I'm using a USB->Serial adapter with virtual driver).

So like Bruce correctly tells you, if you actually *do* run into the situation where you have to downgrade the OS to XP, you'll have to do a full reinstall. Frankly, if it came to that, I'd recommend you consider looking for a used old notebook or desktop running XP. Get a KVM switch to share monitor/keyboard/mouse if you so desire, and use the klunker for the old apps until such time you can replace them.

Brad.
VE3BSM

 

[kb0nly]

Win 7 hasn't caused any problems here... From Scanner programming to Motorola CPS for radio programming, everything has worked perfectly without problems.

Why go back to the age of Windows XtraProblems.... Blechhh...

 

[kc8mvw]

I did the conversion from Vista to XP; but got the 7 upgrade on my new laptop. I did it because 7 wasn't released and I have too many HAM programs that are NOT supported on 7. It took me about 4 hours to do it not counting the research to find if the system was down-gradable. Not all systems will be able to downgrade; especially on newer laptops.

If you are running 7, spend the money to go to 7 pro; that allows an XP pro install as part of the disk for background programs. This would let you utilize the new OS for other uses and still have XP to go back to should you need it.

 

[mike_s104]

Leave Windows 7 alone like others stated. Try the software and see if they work. If not, download the XP VPC only for Windows 7.

Download Windows XP Mode


If you have an older PC, load it with XP SP3 and use it when needed. I have probably 15+ PCs at home and out of them 3 are XP (others are Server 2008 R2, Server 2003 R2, Win7 and Vista).

 

[kb0nly]

I did the conversion from Vista to XP; but got the 7 upgrade on my new laptop. I did it because 7 wasn't released and I have too many HAM programs that are NOT supported on 7. It took me about 4 hours to do it not counting the research to find if the system was down-gradable. Not all systems will be able to downgrade; especially on newer laptops.

If you are running 7, spend the money to go to 7 pro; that allows an XP pro install as part of the disk for background programs. This would let you utilize the new OS for other uses and still have XP to go back to should you need it.

Dos based?? I run a bunch of old ham software on 7, works fine.

 

[kc8mvw]

Dos based?? I run a bunch of old ham software on 7, works fine.

Some were DOS based, others are the programming software for older radios that I have. I did try to test one on my girlfriends machine while we were traveling and it wouldn't install at all. Kept giving me errors, and it'll run on XP just fine.

Some of the programming softwares that are out there are no longer supported, so if you don't have a copy squirreled away, they are hard to get ahold of.

I prefer to stick with what works. I still have a machine running 2000 Pro, it isn't connected to the internet anymore, but has yet to give me a quarter of the headaches I've gotten from XP or 7!

 

[tuckyguy]

If you want a chance of running XP apps on 7, make sure you have Win7 Professional or Win7 Ultimate. These two versions have a feature where you can run in an XP compatability mode.
Win7 Home edition does not have this feature.

 

[kruser]

Old 16-bit apps will not run on 64-bit Win7. One scanner program that I know won't work it Butel's ARC780. But pretty much everything newer than that is probably 32-bit, and will be fine.
(I never could get ARC780 working, but that may have been because I'm using a USB->Serial adapter with virtual driver).

Brad.
VE3BSM

I would say it is your usb to serial adapter. I was able to get ARC780 working under Win7 64bit and the XP mode virtual machine after some tinkering. I tried several usb adapters and the FTDI based ones were the ones that ended up working for me.
I since purchased ProScan as it also does direct database downloads from RR were ARC780 did not offer that back in the day.
I do still use ARC780 but mainly to load my old arc780 files and then I read the 780 and save them in ProScan's XML format.
It is getting rather rare that I need to go into XP mode VM these days.