Really Old Peripheral on Windows 10

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kdock
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Really Old Peripheral on Windows 10

Post by kdock »

I think I know the answer to this, but will be delighted to find I'm mistaken.

We have a very old M-Audio USB Sound Mixer. It works on Windows XP. When Vista and Win 7 came along, the fine folks at M-Audio decided NOT to write a driver for later versions of Windows and heartily recommended updating the hardware to one of their latest models instead. :grin:

Someone would like to take it off our hands, but also doesn't have Win XP. He has Windows 10 and wants to know if there is any way to make Win 10 work with the old hardware.

As I recall, I tried very hard to find a way, including compatibility mode, but I don't believe there was an executable to run compatibly other than the driver installer. After installation, the Win 7 OS simply didn't recognize M-Audio.

Would running XP in a virtual machine on Win 10 bypass the driver issue? Or does Win 10 still have something to say about it?

Thanks for any insights.

Kim
"Hmm. What does this button do?" Said everyone before being ejected from a car, blown up, or deleting all the data from the mainframe.

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HansV
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Re: Really Old Peripheral on Windows 10

Post by HansV »

My guess would be that it should work. Keep in mind that the virtual machine is available in Windows 10 Pro, not Home.
Best wishes,
Hans

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kdock
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Re: Really Old Peripheral on Windows 10

Post by kdock »

If he does have Home (not sure), he could probably use VMWare or Virtual Box as long as he matches bit-ness and there are enough resources. I'm unsure of his expertise, and not inclined to be his support person. VMs are great, but they can also be tricky to troubleshoot.

Thanks Hans! Kim
"Hmm. What does this button do?" Said everyone before being ejected from a car, blown up, or deleting all the data from the mainframe.

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stuck
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Re: Really Old Peripheral on Windows 10

Post by stuck »

kdock wrote:We have a very old ... decided NOT to write a driver for later versions of Windows...
This won't help but...

Nikon did the same sort of thing for their high end dedicated film scanners, except they went further and stopped making such devices. Fortunately a geek out there came up with a fix and Google can point you to that fix, which means I was able to acquire a 'redundant' Nikon scanner and get it working with my Win 10 machine :joy:

I suspect you've Google yourself silly looking for a similar happy ending for your hardware.

Ken

JoeP
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Re: Really Old Peripheral on Windows 10

Post by JoeP »

Microsoft includes quite a number of basic drivers with Windows. Perhaps he should just try it with Windows 10 to see if it is recognized. If it is it may work with basic functionality.
Joe