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Known Participant
March 27, 2025
Question

Framemaker - Windows 11 Compatibility

  • March 27, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 1044 views

Hello there,

Our organization is in the process of upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11 . Will Adobe Framemaker 7.2 be compatible with Windows 11?

 

Thank you in advance for your assistance with this query.

 

 

3 replies

Community Expert
March 28, 2025

Hi,

Does any of your colleagues have Windows 11? Or do you have it on your private PC/laptop?

Then I would just test it, although I would not be too optimistic.

And yes, I think that a virtual machine with Windows XP is a good idea. Or Windows 10, as you run FrameMaker 7.2 on Windows 10 successfully. Still there might be new issues on a virtual machine.

Best regards, Winfried

Known Participant
March 28, 2025

Yes, we do plan on testing it but I thought I might get some feeedback from the community here. Thank you for your valuable feedback.

Jeff_Coatsworth
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 28, 2025

Was there some reason why updating to FM2022 wasn't in the cards?

Bob_Niland
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 27, 2025

siddiqui: Will Adobe Framemaker 7.2 be compatible with Windows 11?

For installing and running FM7.2 on Win11, very doubtful.

 

I have an old off-line Windows 7 Pro laptop with FM7.0 running on it, but even there I used Windows XP Mode (a VM) for the installation. MS no longer offers XPmode.

 

If you have any virtualization subsystems available for the Win11 machine, and they can emulate WinXP, you might get it to install. I presume you still have the CD Key. And you cannot safely give WinXP or earlier, whether native or VM, access to the internet.

 

For bringing forward FM7.2 documents into any later FM, no problem. Any newer FM can open them, and will do a one-time conversion of FM internal characters to Unicode. Upgrading document text, that had to rely on codepage/overlay fonts, has to be done by hand, but isn't urgent, as long as all the original overlay fonts are still available.

Bob_Niland
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 27, 2025

I  might add that I haven't deeply explored the possible issues.

  • While MS can make API changes from time to time that break old code, any Windows versions prior to 10 are off life support now, and are risky to connect to the internet. In some cases, MS has no real choice about that because APIs are inherently insecure and can't be fixed without breaking user code. So any app reliant on API behavior might not run on 10+.
  • Old code is also apt to be Win32, and might have problems on that basis.
  • Old code could also include some 16 bit code, which might not run at all on modern processors in 64b mode.
  • Really old code may include or rely on "real mode" drivers, which would be entirely blocked.
Known Participant
March 28, 2025

Thank you for your valuable insights!

Jeff_Coatsworth
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 27, 2025

Highly unlikely, but @Bob_Niland is more of an expert in antique FM editions than I am. 😂