MSD Chemstation D.03.00 and Windows 7

[pacerlaser]

I'm trying to see if I can get a Windows 7 computer to work with a 5973A/6890 GPIB GC/MS system using MSD Chemstation D.03.00. Technically, Windows 7 is not suported in this way but I currently have a Vista computer (which is also not supported) running a 5973/6890 GC/MS system and it works great. Everything works fine except when I go to load a tune file, it says the file is invalid. I've tried using tune files from different versions of chemstation (C.00.00, E.02.02, and B.01.00) but no luck. If I could fine a way to open up the tune file and manually edit it, that could potentially work as well but I don't know what program the tune files use as an editor. The file extension is ".u" and it doesn't work with notepad or another text editor. Any help would be greatly appreciated! I've thought about trying to run it throught Windows XP mode in Windows 7 but that could be even more difficult.

[MSCHemist]

You really need E02 for Win7 which is impossible for GPIB controlled instruments. Otherwise I'd build either an XP or Win200SP4 computer and keep it off the internet.

[James_Ball]

Different versions of Windows do strange things with MSChemstation. We had been using the NT4/C.xx to quantitate LC files with no problems at all( it reads them as GC files). We then put the LC files on another computer with XP and if you pulled them across the network from that computer it would not open them because it said they were an invalid MS file. Problem is (and an Agilent software expert said the same thing)is the MSChemstation determines if the file is GC or MS by an extension on the data file that says .GC or .MS . If you copied that file to the NT4 computer it would open it no problem, or if you read the file on another computer it would open no problem, but for some reason trying to read across the network from XP to NT4 would crash it. Even Agilent could not explain that problem.

Also does you new computer have a RAID setup? I have seen those cause problems with Chemstation reading files too.

[pacerlaser]

Thanks for the replies, the computer doesn't have a RAID setup. I'm thinking about trying Windows XP mode through Windows 7 and see if that will work. I guess I never figured a tune file would be the holdup with Windows 7. Of all the things that could have caused issues, a tune file would have been last on my list.