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A friend of mine has an elderly handicapped husband who plays Bicycle Bridge (from Expert Software around 1998) almost continuously. Currently they're running it on an XP laptop.
They are about to get a new laptop to run some specialist speech software for him. It will probably have Windows 7 Home Premium rather than Vista.
I've tried it on Vista (Home Premium) and it installed and ran without doing anything special.
Is it likely to run on Windows 7 ?
Tony
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The answer is: Probably.. But you can't know for sure until you try..
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If they need to have Windows 7 and it does not work, they could always upgrade to Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate and run it in XP mode.
Mike
If you have to swallow a frog, try not to think about it. If you have to swallow two frogs, don't swallow the smaller one first.
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Register (or login) on our website and you will not see this ad.
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If the laptop has a big enough hard drive (or if it will accept a second drive), he could get a "dual boot" partitiion installed, and run Windows 7 and XP.
I've found that a lot of XP software will run on Windows 7 in XP mode, but sometimes drivers may be required, which are not available.
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Windows XP mode works rather nicely. I just built a new system running Windows 7 Professional 64 bit. Canon don't provide 64bit drivers for my Canoscan 3200F scanner but running XP mode gets my scanner working again.
Two nice features about XP mode; all the host drives are mapped in the XP VM so you can write straight to your host disks should you wish, and apps installed in the XP VM are available in the host start menu.
Regards,
Steve
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Hmmmm, it may be worth upgrading then as my Kenwood Keg in my wife's car only has XP drivers and haven't been able to update my music on it since the Vista upgrade around a year ago.
Ian
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Just make sure your hardware supports hardware-assisted virtualization - MS have a tool here to check..
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I just installed the demo and the two games it makes avaliable, (crazy eight, and gin rummy) work under win 7, 32bit. - at full screen and with sound.
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Ah yes, now I remember why I didn't do it during the beta phase. My laptop doesn't support it 
Ian
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You could try VirtualBox instead. That will work on hardware that doesn't support hardware virtualisation so if you have a copy of XP you can use that could be a solution. With XP mode, Microsoft are providing the licenced copy of XP but if you use Virtualbox you have to provide your own.
Regards,
Steve
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I couldn't get the USB passthrough working with Virtual Box on Windows 7. I have gone back to Vista so may try again with that.
Ian
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Regrettably Bicycle Bridge didn't work on Windows 7. It rejected the install/setup program. Even trying variants of compatibility mode (or whatever) I couldn't get it to go. Sadly he'll have to get another Bridge program.
Tony
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I found that the Bicycle Bridge will run on Windows premium 32 bit but not on 64 bit windows
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Just discovered this!
Copy entire Bicycle Bridge folder from an XP machine onto a storage device (flashdrive, etc) and copy to a folder on Win 7 - put in the CD and go to the app icon in your copied BB folder and double click - you don't have to run the install app - just copy the folder
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Thanks a lot for that. I'm going round on Wednesday morning to give it a go.
(Someone else suggested to them they needed to buy a 'key' - no further details - for around £120. Goodness knows what that would be for).
[Edit: Just found that £120 is the cost of upgrading W7 Home Premium to W7 Professional. It's $90 in the USA and �180 in Europe. So it's not even £1 = $1, at current exchange rate $90 is about £56 - usual $/£ rip off]
As a matter of interest, is there any ready-to-go and easy-to-use virtual CD software for Windows 7? As the CD drive on their previous XP laptop had failed I used the MicroSoft Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel to mount an ISO image of the CD so it didn't need the CD to be always loaded. Indeed, given the amount of Bicycle Bridge he plays that could have contributed to the CD drive failure. It seems it might be a good idea to do something similar on W7.
Tony
Edited by cheshire_man (Mon 11-Jan-10 20:38:58)
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To create the iso - ISO Recorder
to mount the iso - PowerISO
 A friend surfing in |
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Just tried that method on an XP netbook that has never seen Bicycle Bridge. Didn't use the CD just a .ISO of it and MS Virtual CD.
Worked perfectly. 
So fingers crossed for Wednesday morning.
Tony
Edited by cheshire_man (Mon 11-Jan-10 20:59:13)
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Along similar lines to VirtualBox is the free VMware Player. I use VMware Player at work and at home, it costs nothing for either, whereas iirc VirtualBox's licence wants money for commercial use - fortunately not applicable to the OP. VMware is far trendier too so that means it must be better, right? Maybe. I have had mixed success with VMware's host/guest file system, which allows the guest OS to access files on the host without needing to use a file share for the job.
Folks interested in VMware may also be interested in www.EasyVMX.com
I don't think VMware Player needs any particularly flash/recent hardware virtualisation support, but can't say for sure.
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I use the free Alcohol 52% for my virtual CD/DVD needs on Windows 7.
Regards,
Steve
Edited by sjr (Mon 11-Jan-10 21:19:29)
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Post deleted by cheshire_man
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It worked!
I also installed Alcohol 52% to avoid the need for the CD to be always loaded.
You can't appreciate how delighted the couple are.
To all here who replied and gave ideas, suggestions, and solutions,
a big THANK YOU
And they rather liked the idea of having some 52% Alcohol on their desktop
Tony
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Windows 7 is a 64 bit software and Bicycle bridge will not run on it. I know first hand
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Rubbish, Windows 7 can be 32 bit or 64 bit.
Ian
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There may be some incompatibility (possibly overcome with the compatibility options ) with particular software but all of my 32 bit software is running just fine on Win 7 64.
"If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders."
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It does not - I tried it and there is an incompatibility message.
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It does work on Windows 7. With the help of others earlier in this thread it's now working fine on W7.
Reading the thread in Flat mode may help to see the solution.
Tony
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I realize this is an older post but it helped me install Bicycle Bridge (older version) on Windows 7 64bit. I had been running VMWare with Win 7 32bit as a virtual machine. Now with what I read from the thread, I copied the Expert Software folder from the Virtual Machine and installed it in the Programs folder of the 64bit computer and it worked just fine. Thanks to all who replied above.
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