Compatibility of old(ish) Software with Windows 7

[Helen Borrie]

At 12:47 a.m. 7/02/2014, Carrie Baker wrote:
>Hello,
>
>I don't think I am the only person with oldish software.....
>
>I work in a fairly small company, as a single technical writer.
>
>I have FrameMaker 7, and use with Acrobat 7.

I have FrameMaker 8 and Acrobat 8 (jumped over from FM6 and Acro6, no upgrade path available at that point, since the "new age" Adobe actively prevents it as soon as there is an upgrade-ineligible newer version on the market).  

I started out with the same doubts as you.  The first installation of Win7 I had was on my 32-bit laptop.  I had retained all the FM and Acrobat updates as a hedge against the historical horrors of trying to reinstall on WinXP after a disk death.  After installing from the licensed CDs I carefully applied the updates, one by one, to test my doubts, always rebooting after each one.  I ended up with a perfect installation, not quick, but effective.  No "XP mode".

Encouraged, I followed the same route when I went to install on my development box, a clean install on a 64-bit Win7.  I expected dramas.  Eighteen months down the track, there have been none.  Both products installed into Program Files (X86) and the updates knew where to find them.

With your FM7 and Acro7, I suggest  << Just do it >>.  "It will either work or it won't", as my wise old Norfolk mother-in-law would have said.  If it doesn't, you can run the Uninstall and then download CCleaner from www.filehippo.com, to get rid of the rubbish left behind.

Just a point to those encouraging Carrie to "install as 64-bit" - there's no way you can make a 32-bit application install or run as 64-bit. 

Another point - deriving from the earlier horror experiences of reinstalling on XP - is to install Acrobat FIRST (apply the updates later) and make sure the FM installer doesn't install Distiller or any other Acrobat components.  AFAIR, there's a dialog box that tells you there is an older version of Distiller already installed....you have to tell it to ignore that "problem" because it's not a problem, just bad logic in the installer.

Helen