I have just built a new Computer here and have installed both operating systems so I could do some testing, I have some interesting results. Here is my setup ASUS P5WE Pro mother board 8 Gig Ram Quad DuoCore Q9550 CPU 750 Gig Hard drive set up for dual boot with a shared Data partition. The first test was with the release version of PowerSDR 1.18.3 and the latest Firmware and all the tricks and things turned off so things run right. Under WinXP 32bit every thing ran as expected and was a good test bed for the built in Mother Board Firewire Hardware. ALL Microsoft updates were installed, DOTNET stuff installed Using the default firewire driver I had NO problems unless I was installing some other software and the Flex would slooooooow way down but did not lock up , worked OK, Using the much pushed to use (Legacy) drivers I had NOTHING BUT PROBLEMS and a lot of lockups (pretty disappointing) Using the normal Driver (Same Driver name as legacy driver but NOT the legacy version) This Driver works GREAT and just runs really well no lock up's even if I'm installing other software as I did in the first test. I then installed the old reliable Firewire card I have used for a year and a half with NO problems on my other Mother board in to this machine and It worked well but was about like the built in card using the Mother Boards default Drivers. Using the Legacy Drivers on this card ALSO made it very unstable which makes me think Microsoft's updates have some goofy Firewire hacks. I tried ALL of these test using the PAL Radio Firmware and PAL-Pretty Betty and got the exact same results with the above drivers. I then removed the old reliable Firewire Card. Then I booted to WIN7 64Bit, Of course this is a different animal all together First thing I did was to load AVAST antivirus then after doing the Microsoft updates is to turn off permanently the Driver signing (do at your own risk! the Control panel turn off didn't work). I had to do it in the CMD shell to make it permanent Load the DOTNET stuff required as required Load the Firewire Driver and PowerSDR 1.18.3 using admin Privileges I did the same test as with Windows XP with the Firewire drivers on the WIN7 64 Bit and the funny thing is I had the EXACT same results as on XP, the only Driver that failed was the (Legacy) driver. Then load using admin privileges the Tortoise SVN 64 bit, VSPMGR and create COM Ports, VAC and create the Audio cables, and what ever other Software like HRD or what ever you need. (MAKE sure if something tells you to reboot then do it BEFORE you load anything else other wise some of your settings and programs won't work) Power the computer down completely and reboot and make sure everything is still there and works if it has disappeared or some settings (like VAC or VSP Ports) I had this happen but I have not been able to track it down yet, maybe I forgot to reboot. Conclusion: Just don't take it for granted that the Legacy or any other driver is the best one to use and if you have recently did a Windows Update on ANY version of Windows and your Flex hangs more then it used to, try one of the different Drivers listed for the Firewire port. FLEX has done a great job and I think with either Windows OS you decide to use with the released version of PowerSDR you should have good luck if you do the pre-requisites that are recommended by FLEX and others. When the new PAL Firewire / Firmware / PowerSDR version comes out I am sure most of the work around for installation of PowerSDR and the FLEX on WIN7 will be eliminated. The main problem I had and incompatibilities was with the 3rd Party Software and was the main reason for the other main workarounds and will have to be addressed by the software creators so FLEX is ahead of the curve getting things working on WIN7 64Bit. Stability: So far I find that WIN7 is quite a bit faster and has been quite stable after the initial installation, I have ran my FLEX Radio for weeks with out restarting the XP Computer or FLEX 5K which says a lot for my installation of XP by it self so I hope that WIN7 will be as stable, only time will tell. Hope this helps someone out and saves someone else some time and of course YOUR Millage WILL vary. 73's Bret WX7Y _______________________________________________ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List [email protected] http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kc.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ Message delivered to [email protected]
