Running old WinXP and Win7 programs on Win10 and future CPU's.

nicologic

Solid State Member
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Location
Spain
Hello everyone.

This might be a silly question yet that's my level when it comes to OS.

I have one computer which is almost 10 years old and still running on WinXP. I've been keeping that old PC because I use a few programs that date from late 2000`s. They're all Win7 compatible too, but that's it, there were no further updates for the versions I have. One of them (ProTools 8 LE) depends on external hardware whose driver is only compatible with XP and Win7. I've never planned to replace that PC for a newer one as it works perfectly, but I recently read something on future Intel and AMD processors about being Win10 only. Thus, I am not sure If I should buy a new PC now that Skylake's still are Win7 compatible and ensure using my programs for, let's say, 10 more years. I am worried about a possible breakdown of either my Core2 CPU or Motherboard in the next very few years (which would not certainly be a surprise coming from a computer set a decade ago) and not being able to use my programs any more, despite buying a new PC. As far as I know, modern versions of Windows feature the so called "compatibility mode" feature, which fools the software into thinking it's running on the older Windows it requires. Also, there's the possibility of installing either a original XP or XPmode into a virtual machine, but will this solutions work for future CPU's that are supposed to be Win10 compatible only? Maybe it's a bit of stupid question, but it's messing with me...

Thank you all.
 
A virtual machine would probably work fine for most of your software, but it's the specialized hardware driver that concerns me. You might have issues passing that through to a VM. You could buy more modern hardware now that will still support your needs, or you can wait and find it on ebay later. I suppose the choice depends on how crucial these programs are to you.
 
A virtual machine would probably work fine for most of your software, but it's the specialized hardware driver that concerns me. You might have issues passing that through to a VM. You could buy more modern hardware now that will still support your needs, or you can wait and find it on ebay later. I suppose the choice depends on how crucial these programs are to you.


Thanks for the info. I just found this: Is Windows 10 Backwards Compatible With Your Existing Software? , where it can be read "...Any application or hardware that requires an old driver will be a problem. If you depend on an application that interfaces with a Windows XP-era hardware device and the manufacturer has never provided a driver that works on Windows 7, you're likely in trouble. On the other hand, if there is a driver that does work on Windows 7, your hardware should continue working properly on Windows 10", so there's some hope since I do have hardware drivers for Win7. Time to take some risk I guess...

Thanks!
 
The best thing to do would probably be to try this software and drivers out on Windows 10 now and see how it goes. Then you'll know what you are dealing with before you're stuck without your windows XP computer working anymore.
 
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