Hi,
Does anyone have experience running Filemaker with Windows 7 64 bit?
We run Filemaker Pro 8.5 on several laptops through a simple LAN, accessing Filemaker from a PC. We are looking at upgrading our computers and making the leap into 64 bit. Filemaker Australia says V10 is supported for Windows 7 32 bit, but that 64 bit is not only "not supported" but probably won't work. This info came form someone who didn''t seem very confident and I see postings on the web that suggest otherwise. The Windows compatibility site says V10 is compatible with 64 bit.
We have no problem upgrading to V10, but there is no point if it still won't work.
Any guidance much appreciated.
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Thanks my friend and while I would love 64 bit from a purist point of view, unless FM works seamlessly in our office environment it is a worse situation that just going with 32 bit. 30 day trial noted but we don't want to be the pioneers here, which is why I was hoping someone had some experience that we could use.
i currently run filemaker pro 10v3 on windows 7 64-bit and noted a number of problems:
- windows 7 often shows a warning that the filemaker application crashed when closing filemaker. this doesn't block using filemaker, it's just an annoying message. this message is a known problem on any 64-bit platform.
- database connectivity doesn't work any more, i cannot connect to a SQL-2000 server bcause i cannot see the odbc defined database any more from in filemaker. this is a blocking problem, that i cannot solve yet.
filemaker server is repported as running quite good on a 64-bit server (though as a 32 bit service)
but for the client filemaker states in several knowledgebase entries it is not supported on any 64-bit platform (xp / vista / 7). see http://filemaker.custhelp.
so i think filemaker 10 is not ready for production use in 64-bit clients; a major upgrade is needed.
experimental and development use is possible with known problems.
i just tried compatibility mode to xp (thanks lesouef for the interesting suggestion),
and was surprised that filemaker 10 doesn't run at all, it immediatly crashes on my machine.
also database connectivity (odbc drivers) is embedded in the OS, switching an application to compatibility mode doesn't solve related driver 64-bit issues.
64-bit problems in windows will be annoying for the next years to come, especially for external devices (document scanners, cameras, etc), special hardware (audio, video), when software is related with drivers, libraries, embedded software, etc. this is due to the old windows architecture. it seems like mac os x has not many problems in this area: filemaker 10 runs fine on a mac with more then 4gb.
FileMaker, Inc. has some important information on compatibility of its products with Windows 7:
http://thefmkb.com/7453
h
At this time the only FileMaker Pro version we expect to run correctly on Windows 7 will be FileMaker Pro 10.0v3. There are a few minor issues, but we expect it to run.
No previous version of FileMaker Pro is compatible with Windows 7. If you plan to run FileMaker Pro on Windows 7, you should be running version 10.0v3.
christinesephton: the info you mention is for filemaker running on a 32-bit system.
but these 2 additional minor interface issues on 32-bit will also be valid for 64-bit:
- List control may get garbled when scrolling
- Opened file names are not added to the Recent list
I just read that new 64-bit odbc drivers will be neccesary (previously the source for filemaker odbc drivers was datadirect sequelink). I hope filemaker is working hard on a major 64-bit rewrite since memory usage is pushing harder now in windows 7; the issue was known since xp 64-bit and vista 64-bit but probably requires a rewrite in many filemaker components.
i find it amazing that microsoft publishes filemaker 10 as 64-bit compatible. looks like the info at microsoft is not so good. well microsoft tells me windows 7 boots much faster as xp or vista, for me that's not true either: it's the same as xp: a cold boot takes almost a minute.
Thanks guys! Obviously different people are having different experiences and I guess this may depend on exact setup, configuration and usage. The bottom line for me is that it's not worth the risk of disrupting our business for the ideal of 64 bit when FM10 should work on 32 bit, albeit with a couple of glitches. I hope/assume FM will remove whatever glitches there are in future updates, since they do claim to support Windows 7 32 bit.
i found some important info on odbc connectivity in 64 bit environments like windows 7 (64-bit).
see http://support.microsoft.c
"
The 32-bit version of the Odbcad32.exe file is located in the %systemdrive%\Windows\SysW
The 64-bit version of the Odbcad32.exe file is located in the %systemdrive%\Windows\Syst
"
If you're used to select the system-DSN tab, you get intotroubles. If you want to access 32-bit drivers in a 64-bit os, you use the user dns or the 32-bit odbc admin tool (Windows\SysWoW64\Odbcad32
I hope this helps if you get into troubles trying to select an odbc driver.
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by: lesouefPosted on 2009-10-27 at 01:45:13ID: 25670176
not tested myself, but there is still the compatibility mode in windows 7 like in vista 64bit.
so, if it would not be automatically detected, you can always switch to an older version compatibility mode.
easiest way is probably to try with a 30day version.