Now, normally the nightmare is changing the OS, re-format, load up, find you have 640x480 res on your 1920 screen, no drivers, etc etc-

But this isn't the case... I picked up a couple of 're-used' win7pro 32's for $20 each. I found that to change over one of my trusty Dell XP's (which originally came with 7) was to simply start XP, and run the win7 install program. It saved all my old files (not that I need them), and it worked perfect right out of the box!

The only reason I'm upgrading at all is because Firefox, Stamps.com, Flash, just to name a few, are forcing the 'get the hell off XP!' issue, making XP life miserable. I've been using 7 on my 'main' most-used computer and I've learned to like it. But I have several items around here that aren't 64bit friendly- My GCC Explorer, my trusty old HP Laserjet in the office, and my '05 Quickbooks are 32bit machines, so that's why I got 32bit versions.

Speaking of 32bit, my fiber came with a laptop, running 32bit win7 EP...

Now to the nightmare- even tho my 2.5.3 version of EZcad started out with a 32bit 7, and it's worked with a 64bit 7 and 2 different XP machines, when I try to open the same program files on my new upgrade, I get "unsupported operating system"... umm...???? To get it to run, I have to run it in XP compat-mode! WHY!?? I also had trouble getting the dongle & driver board to 'take', but they finally did, so it works fine, as an XP machine...

Second nightmare: I've been using Gravostyle for almost 20 years, on every OS from 98 to win8.1 with no issues other than the 5.x versions must run in XP compat-mode, but that's because they WON'T run on a newer version. But now, I can't get the dongle driver to work. It SEEMS to load fine during the main program install, but Windows says there's no driver... Loading it manually, I get "unable to start the hasplms service", which seems to be the main problem; it's the service that verifies the dongle's license number, without the service, the dongle is useless. When I attempt to start the service, it just times out...

My New Hermes rep drop-boxed me a newer dongle driver compatible up to win8 machines, it too seems to load up fine, but the service still won't start. I've never had a dongle issue.

SO, any of you computer geniuses have any ideas why this 32win7 is suddenly 'too new' to run an old EZcad or what causes services not to start?

The big Triumph is online, the GCC is online, and the fiber is finally online. But until I get the GS dongle to work so these two tool machines here in the garage will run, this new computer is useless...