Windows 7 and Microsoft Dynamics GP

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David Meego - Click for blog homepageToday, I saw that MSDynamicsWorld.com have posted an article titled: Pleasant Surprise: Expect Microsoft Dynamics GP 10 to Work with Windows 7 Right Out of the Box. This is great news which Andy on the Inside Dynamics GP blog posted a while ago.

The reason I am bringing this topic up again is that I have just upgraded my work laptop from Windows Vista to Windows 7 (RTM).  It took a couple of days to re-install all the tools and applications I needed but it is now fully operational.

The interesting thing about my system is that I have three Microsoft Dynamics GP installs on the machine and to date (very early stages) I have not found any major issues.  I need multiple installs as I need to be able to work with the different "supported' versions for my role as Escalation Engineer for the Asia Pacific Dynamics GP support team.

I have the following configurations installed:

  1. Microsoft Business Solutions - Great Plains version 8.0 Service Pack 5 running on SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 4.
     
  2. Microsoft Dynamics GP version 9.0 Service Pack 4 running on SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3.
     
  3. Microsoft Dynamics GP version 10.0 Service Pack 4 running on SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1.

Note: I have installed these applications in C:\Dyn800, C:\Dyn900 and C:\Dyn1000 folders respectively, so this might have avoided issues that can be caused by installing under the C:\Program Files folder.

At this stage I have left User Access Control (UAC) running and only found that I needed to use the "Run as Administrator" option when first running version 9.0 so that it would extract the chunk (cnk) dictionary files.

Also with version 9.0, I needed to install the .Net Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 upgrade to allow the Service Pack to install. This is described in the Knowledge Base (KB) article 932781.  I just wish I remembered that before I wasted time trying everything else.

Note: On a 64 bit Windows, first install the Microsoft Dynamics GP v9.0 from the CD to get the 32 bit .Net Framework 1.1 installed.  Then you can install the .Net Framework service pack using the link above. Then you will be able to install the GP v9.0 service packs.

So while the official line is that only version 10.0 is supported.... because only version 10.0 has been regression tested, it looks like the older versions of 8.0 and 9.0 will work too.  For the official position, please look to the System Requirements documentation:

System Requirements for Microsoft® Dynamics GP 10.0 Secure Link

Disclaimer: Just because I have installed older versions of Dynamics GP on my system and played around with them, they have not been tested in any way.  These environments are not supported and are not recommended for live customer installations. 

However, a partner consultant or developer that needs to work with multiple versions from their one machine should be able to upgrade to Windows 7 without issues.  You can always use virtual machines or remote desktop sessions to work with other environments.

David

09-Apr-2010: Added note about installing v9.0 on 64 bit Windows 7.

17-Nov-2010: Added link about Windows 7, bitmap fonts and Microsoft Dynamics GP.