Screen calibration query

I have a Spyder2 Pro, but it is old and not supported on Win7. It does however still work perfectly well on WinXP.

Is there any reason I couldn't put a very small WinXP partition on the system, just to boot into and calibrate the screen with, to make an ICC profile, then reboot and load that ICC profile into Win7 ?

 

I cannot think of any reason why that would not work other than it will mess with your Win7 boot configuration files and make Windows 7 not load. You would then need to repair it the win 7 boot config.

Another idea might be to load Win XP in a virtual machine and then install Spyder2 pro

 

Datacolor has "Spyder2PRO 2.3.5 Setup for Windows" on their download site.

Spyder2PRO 2.3.5- Win - Powered By Kayako SupportSuite
Doesn't that work on Win7?

 

Thanks for the suggestions.

Spyder2 isn't be seen by the virtual machine sadly. Every other USB device works, so I can only conclude it's due to a driver issue in Win 7.

Ok, so XP via BartPE or similar.

The 2.3.5 version doesn't work on 64bit Win 7, even in compatibility mode. I'm a bit annoyed at that to be honest, as Win 7 was around when I bought the unit, but they've never added Win 7 support to the software. The 64bit drivers install, but the software just doesn't work.


The main thing I was concerned with is whether the colour profile would be different between the two OS on the same hardware, or whether it would be different enough to be a pointless exercise.

 

The color model as well as the hardware driver model changed drastically between XP and Win7. Don't assume that any ICC files you may be able to generate via a virtualized XP session will be valid/correct for Win7.

Screen calibration tests the entire video system; OS drivers, gpu/vbios capabilities, screen capabilities, and color definition/model. If any of that changes (such as going from XP to Win7), calibration needs to be re-run.

Additionally, depending on how old your Spyder is, it may not even work properly with modern flat LED/LCD panels regardless of what OS or software you choose to use.

 

Thanks, that's what I feared. What a pain!

I don't suppose you know of any other calibration software for Win7 that works with Spyder2 ?

It has an LCD baffle specifically for use with LCD screens, so I'm pretty sure there's no issue there. It states it can be used on LCD screens with the baffle, CRT screens, and even projectors. It also has something that is supposed to compensate for ambient light, but I've not had the need to use that for the work I do.