[LITHE]

I just got pro tools m-box the other week and I installed it on windows xp. The other day my teacher for my web design class said he could get the whole class free copies of windows 7. Is there anything I should know before I try installing pro tools on windows 7? Im asking this because I know that you have to disable a few features on xp before installing it, and windows 7 has a lot of new features...

[LITHE]

http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?...0&itemid=38973

I guess I'll wait a bit to install windows 7 :P

[Yoozer]

You're not alone. I have to wait for RME and E-mu to fix their stuff, as right now everything's unusable .

[Harmony]

"unsupported" doesn't necessarily mean "not functional". I've gotten all of my software/hardware/plugins to work under Win 7 after upgrading from XP. I'd go ahead and try it out, since Win 7 makes it incredibly easy to dual-boot it with XP (or Vista). That way, you don't lose you're old solid XP setup while you're trying out the new Win 7 stuff. If you need something to partition your drives in Win XP for the dual boot, I use Partition Wizard

Since Win 7 and Vista are very closely related, keep in mind that trying some of the Vista drivers may work for you. Even though M-Audio has beta drivers for most of their newer hardware, I initially tried the Vista drivers and they worked fine.

When attempting to install something, if the install doesn't finish properly, Win 7 attempts to diagnose the problem and automatically change the compatibility mode of the installation file to work properly. You can also manually change the compatibility mode (to XP mode, for example) in the setup file's properties windows. That has gotten a few items to work.

Also, especially if you're coming straight from XP and are not used to working in Vista, don't forget that sometimes it's necessary to run installations in admin mode by right clicking and choosing "Run as Administrator". This assumes that your user is already an admin. Some older programs, like Cool Edit Pro 2000, required me to do that to get it to run.

Finally, if all else fails, Win 7 Enterprise, Pro and Ultimate offer a full virtualization of Windows XP SP3 for free! I tried this out the other day and it works flawlessly. The full version of WinXP runs as a window and you can install all of your old Windows XP stuff there. Anything installed in the virtualization windows actually shows up in Win 7 (on your start menu/task bar/desktop) and you can run it without thinking about the virtualization behind it all. Biggest issues with that for me were that I couldn't get 64bit mode to work and there's obviously a CPU hit. For me it was about 10%.

Most of the problems I've had from the upgrade have stemmed not from compatibility, but with the change of all of my software from 32 to 64 bit. Some stuff just won't work in 64 bit, and while that sucks, that's progress.