While it's true that we don't officially support Windows 7 since 2020, when it went completely out of support, we are still getting reports and complains by users that some GSX update broke Windows 7 compatibility.
As we tried to explained so many times, there isn't a single line of code in all our software that is made to intentionally block Windows 7. Quite the opposite, we had a few changes in the recent past to ensure it will not, it's just we don't test it, and a Microsoft update can easily prevent our code from working on Windows 7, for example a C++ library update that we MUST use, in order to support *current* OS.
We started alerting users for a long while this COULD happen and, being unsupported, means nobody at FSDT ever uses Windows 7 anymore, and we can't offer any support about this. However, getting angry messages from Windows 7 users complaining about having "abandoned them" is neither nice nor productive, because you need to reply to each of them about the issues of running a completely unsupported OS.
So, today I spent some time to get to the bottom of this, and made this test:
- Installed a brand new copy of Windows Pro 7 64 bit + SP1 on a Virtual Machine, using my favorite VM software ( Parallels Pro on a Mac ). Using a VM shouldn't affect the results of this test, because IT IS the real Windows 7 that is running.
- Installed FSX + Acceleration Pack. It runs surprisingly well under the Parallels VM, with good fps.
- Downloaded the "Convenience Rollup", which is a collection of ALL updates released after SP1 in a single package:
https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=Update%20for%20Windows%207%20for%20x64-based%20Systems%20%28KB3125574%29Note that, this might require the "Servicing stack update for Windows 7" extra patch to be installed first.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/april-2015-servicing-stack-update-for-windows-7-and-windows-server-2008-r2-437ee749-51e0-6265-be9e-73fbd115d315- Downloaded the 4.8 .NET Offline installer:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/microsoft-net-framework-4-8-offline-installer-for-windows-9d23f658-3b97-68ab-d013-aa3c3e7495e0- Finally, I installed the latest GSX Full installer available on this site, which proceeded with no errors, and started the current Live Update, getting all the updates that has been posted online until today.
- Started the sim, and I can only confirm
GSX, latest release, works just fine in Windows 7
