Hi all, I have a home made CNC running on an old XP machine and it runs ok.

I have been given an oldish Dell Optiplex 780 and would like it to run my CNC, I formatted all the old stuff it and installed Windows7 32bit OS, installed Mach3, plugged it all in and....................nothing? Double checked all pin configurations etc and they matched what I had on the old XP machine. Put the old XP PC back on and away it went. Now reading through all the relevant threads here it only states that Mach3 will NOT run on a 64bit OS, now after digging around on the Dell website I have found the documention for the Dell unit and the processor is a 64bit unit. My question is, is it the OS or the processor that needs to be 32bit???
The main reason for changing the PC from XP to 7 is so I can easily network to my office PC were all my AutoCad and CamBam files are and my sons PC (Windows8.1).

Sorry for asking another question on a long and painful subject.

Thanks in advance for your help and support.

Stewart

The OS needs to be 32 bit.

I have my XP machine control on my network, and copy files to it from my Windows 8.1 machine.

Thanks for the responce Gerry, seems I don't need to change PC then, just learn how to network XP, 7 and 8.1.......................

You need to use old fashioned workgroups, and not the new Homegroups.

Also, I've found that I can't map the XP drive with 8.1, because it wants to constantly look for it, and it really slows down the PC when the XP machine is not on, which is most of the time.

I'm not a networking expert, but this is what works for me.

Thanks for the tips Gerry, appreciate your input.

Stewart