Most of my computers are shockingly old. I never throw out tech unless it just flat out stops working. Instead, I repurpose it for other uses.

I run all the really old stuff (even MS-DOS) in Virtual Box or Oracle VM.

I even run the new stuff there as soon as VM supports the new functionality.

That way I NEVER need to customize my host machine. All of the customizations are totally isolated to particular VM instances.

If you haven't gone that path yet you might want to start looking into it. There is just no way to multi-boot a current pc to run old OS's and software - only emulation in VM can do that. You might not have that need - but I still have to support some of that old crap for friends.

I hate to be the buttcrack here, but Windows 10 flaked on me at least 4 years ago by killing driver function (well that was the result) for various hardware in my workstation and after getting responses from those hardware manufacturers they did not intend to put resources into fixes or development of new drivers I was a bit upset. It happened right after one of the last main Win 10 updates. Not sure the number right now, but it boat anchored my Audio Interface, WiFi adapter, a FireWire Buss & half my USB connections. That’s all that took and I saw the writing on the wall to hop right to Windows 11 Pro and haven’t looked back. 

So in short I wouldn’t expect Yamaha/Steinberg to expend resources on Win 10 support. I admire your tenacity, but too much has changed to keep with Win 10 for mission critical content creation. 

I don't disagree in principal, but from a practical perspective there are still a ton of perfectly useful computers out there running Windows 10 because they don't meet the requirements for 11. If I replaced every computer in the house that couldn't run 11, it would cost well into five figures, so as long as things keep working, I plan to ride that pony until it drops.

If the problem is rooted in op codes or registers implemented at the machine code level of a piece of software (ESP) then I don't particularly see the relevance of operating system here unless somehow Windows 11 sports an interpreter that "transcodes" the machine language to fit CPUs that would otherwise not support a given instruction or register.  I didn't think this was a thing.

ESP explicitly supports Windows 10.

The stated compatibility is for Intel i5 4th Gen and up.

If you have a machine that fits those requirements and still are having these issues then that's a Yamaha bug.

I would interpret Xeon as being squarely in the "and up" side although the generation of Xeon would still have to line up in terms of capabilities in gen4 i5 s.

I'm not sure how this maps to AMD.  There's probably a table somewhere if you've got AMD.  The compatibility with AMD is not explicitly stated.

Apple Intel (which I have... And no ESP though) states 2015+ (with at least i5).  This is a year of availability for the machines themselves and whatever Intel i5+ processors were in those boxes at the time.

My main music workstation (Xeon based) runs Windows 10. 

Yeah, gone are the simple days when dinosaurs roamed the earth and Intel was the only Windows CPU. Compatibility was a lot easier to determine back then.

If this was .Net / MSIL then the version of .Net and possible the OS would be relevant, but I would imagine most plugin developers use C++ or a similar low level language for performance. They're also using the JUCE library, so I don't know how much that factors into what's supported.

Doesn't matter much to those of us without ESP, though. Either it works or it doesn't.

If the problem is rooted in op codes or registers implemented at the machine code level of a piece of software (ESP) then I don't particularly see the relevance of operating system here unless somehow Windows 11 sports an interpreter that "transcodes" the machine language to fit CPUs that would otherwise not support a given instruction or register.

Unfortunately it isn't that simple anymore to identify the genesis of a problem. There are configuration options at the motherboard, bios and driver layers that can affect the 'relevance of operating system'.

There is no single definition of Windows 10/11. What works depends on how those related components are configured. Change a bios setting and what used to work in Windows either doesn't work at all anymore or may work differently.

You may, or may not, remember the early days when floating-point co-processors were all the rage. The early CPUs didn't support native floating-point and weren't fast or efficient enough to do emulate it in software. But that emulation is what was done until motherboard makers started adding those FP co-processors.

Then things worked one way if you had a co-processor and another way if you didn't. Those two ways weren't always, or necessarily, identical. Precision might be different and corner cases caused problems.

There are now several classes of instructions (e.g. SIMD) that may, or may not, exist in a CPU and they can impact the 'relevance of operating system'.

I provided Yamaha support with the full particulars of my AMD/Win10 setup and they said it was supported. But that didn't fix/solve the problem.

For me the obvious place to install and try new software is on a system I am already using if that system is supposed to be supported. So if it doesn't work on that system it makes sense to me to both report the fact that it doesn't work and to try to find out why.

But, as Chris said, it is time to move on since the reality of the situation conflicts with the reality of the info we are getting.

There's some good information here, I was just trying to steer clear of red herrings like "Windows 10" as a contributor.

Posted by: Chris Duncan

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I don't disagree in principal, but from a practical perspective there are still a ton of perfectly useful computers out there running Windows 10 because they don't meet the requirements for 11. If I replaced every computer in the house that couldn't run 11, it would cost well into five figures, so as long as things keep working, I plan to ride that pony until it drops.

There's a simple, free method to upgrade your Windows 10 hardware that's not Windows 11 "certified". Just download the Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft, mount it on your Win 10 instance, issue a couple of command line instructions and within an hour or less you'll have a working instance of Windows 11. I've used that method to upgrade at least three ancient Windows 10 laptops to Windows 11.

Posted by: Stu

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There's a simple, free method to upgrade your Windows 10 hardware that's not Windows 11 "certified". Just download the Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft, mount it on your Win 10 instance, issue a couple of command line instructions and within an hour or less you'll have a working instance of Windows 11. I've used that method to upgrade at least three ancient Windows 10 laptops to Windows 11.

That's a cool trick. Would you happen to have a link to an article that talks about said command line instructions?

Posted by: Chris Duncan

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Posted by: Stu

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There's a simple, free method to upgrade your Windows 10 hardware that's not Windows 11 "certified". Just download the Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft, mount it on your Win 10 instance, issue a couple of command line instructions and within an hour or less you'll have a working instance of Windows 11. I've used that method to upgrade at least three ancient Windows 10 laptops to Windows 11.

That's a cool trick. Would you happen to have a link to an article that talks about said command line instructions?

 

There are several methods, all getting you to the same place. Here's one method I just found that has you download the Windows 11 ISO, extract it to a folder using 7zip, modifying an installation file to remove all checks for compatibility and then just running the setup executable to upgrade your win 10 instance.

Bada Bing, Bada Boom 💥 

Stuart. 

https://youtu.be/4IUFmUeBEwA?si=VPaJIVegmJXpO6j3

There are several methods, all getting you to the same place.

I'm not saying not to do that but there is the obvious caveat that the 'same place' is an OS that isn't guaranteed to run properly on your hardware.

Seems clear to me that the compatibility checks are there for one, or more, reasons and I'm not sure those reasons are documented well enough to know just what problems you might run into.

It could be as  simple as Microsoft saying 'we are not going to fully test each 'compatible check' to ascertain just what might break if you don't meet the conditions for that check.

Or it could do some rather terrible things that you might regret later.

Everyone is free to take whatever level of risk they are comfortable with.

Past experience tells me that many, if not most, of those 'compatibility' things are aimed more at the corporate market to make it clear that Microsoft won't provide support (persuant to any support contract) for installations on incompatible hardware.

Many corporate environments can ill afford to forego support for their primary infrastructure and a stern, upfront warning provides a clear RED LINE for them from a legal perspective.

For the common user I doubt if there is much to worry about.

Posted by: Toby

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There are several methods, all getting you to the same place.

I'm not saying not to do that but there is the obvious caveat that the 'same place' is an OS that isn't guaranteed to run properly on your hardware.

Seems clear to me that the compatibility checks are there for one, or more, reasons and I'm not sure those reasons are documented well enough to know just what problems you might run into.

It could be as  simple as Microsoft saying 'we are not going to fully test each 'compatible check' to ascertain just what might break if you don't meet the conditions for that check.

Or it could do some rather terrible things that you might regret later.

Everyone is free to take whatever level of risk they are comfortable with.

Past experience tells me that many, if not most, of those 'compatibility' things are aimed more at the corporate market to make it clear that Microsoft won't provide support (persuant to any support contract) for installations on incompatible hardware.

Many corporate environments can ill afford to forego support for their primary infrastructure and a stern, upfront warning provides a clear RED LINE for them from a legal perspective.

For the common user I doubt if there is much to worry about.

 

 

 

Yes I would have thought that obvious.

Posted by: Stu

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Posted by: Chris Duncan

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Posted by: Stu

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There's a simple, free method to upgrade your Windows 10 hardware that's not Windows 11 "certified". Just download the Windows 11 ISO from Microsoft, mount it on your Win 10 instance, issue a couple of command line instructions and within an hour or less you'll have a working instance of Windows 11. I've used that method to upgrade at least three ancient Windows 10 laptops to Windows 11.

That's a cool trick. Would you happen to have a link to an article that talks about said command line instructions?

 

There are several methods, all getting you to the same place. Here's one method I just found that has you download the Windows 11 ISO, extract it to a folder using 7zip, modifying an installation file to remove all checks for compatibility and then just running the setup executable to upgrade your win 10 instance.

Bada Bing, Bada Boom 💥 

Stuart. 

 

https://youtu.be/4IUFmUeBEwA?si=VPaJIVegmJXpO6j3

 

 

If your win10 instance is low on space you can extract, modify and run setup from an attached USB or use another method that doesn't require as many of these shenanigans: 

https://youtu.be/rUXLAhYFTtc?si=WBUXDfwGV_9WxhiF

If your win10 instance is low on space

You can also delete any Win10 installation files and update files that aren't needed anymore.

A free app called 'Tidy.exe' comes in handy for cleaning up a lot of unused/unneeded space.

As part of my workflow methodology I never keep 'data' on the OS partition. I usually never keep it on the OS drive even in a separate partition. Makes it easier to backup the OS partition without worrying about data issues.

I use an Icy Dock pcie card that supports a removable high speed NVMe SSD and boot from that. I keep a 'known clean' backup SSD on the shelf. Periodically I boot from the clean copy and then clone it - using the clone for the day and putting the clean one back on the shelf.

https://global.icydock.com/product_332.html

When I do an OS update I boot from the clean copy, clone it, update the clone and put the updated one back on the shelf as a newer version. Then use the newer version in the process.

Whenever I want a different OS or version I just plug in a different SSD. That gives me max control over what I'm running.

I don't often use the above - only when I really need to use a native OS boot. Most of my time the OS installed on the raw metal is just an Oracle VM host. All of the real stuff is run inside VM machines. So my real host never picks up anything bad because it doesn't do anything except host the VMs.

And if a VM picks up a 'nasty' it can't affect the other VMs. 

But that is just me being careful. It is far easier to disconnect one, or more, VMs from the internet that having to disconnect everything from the base machine.

Thanks, Stu.

I always like to have a few tricks in my bag.

That said, I'm not entirely sure I want to run 11. Even if they walk back the latest embarrassment about sniffing your activity and saving it, it's a clear indication of where things are going. That, the arm waving about AI, etc. all brings me back to my standard question. What does this do for me that I don't already have in exchange for all the things that I really don't want in my environment?

I'm sure there are new things since 10 or there wouldn't be an update, but that doesn't mean it's features that I would care about. One day, somewhere over the horizon (or rainbow, I suppose), I'll end up moving to 11, but it'll probably be at gunpoint. The only reason I'm running 10 is a) they turned off antivirus for 7 and b) Cubase no longer supports it. Whenever the day comes that a similar barrel is pointed at my head I'll move to 11, but I have enough trouble in life without actively seeking more.