I recently wrote an article about software and supported operating environments.  If you have not read it yet here is a link to it.  In it I try to explain and give some examples of why a software vendor may not "certify" a particular OS or combination of hardware and software.

In the article I also mention that even though something might not be certified, that it may still run and there is a reason that its not certified.  I also recently ran into a situation that may explain this a little more clearly.

I received a call from a customer that went against what CCS recommended and installed an unsupported OS with his new software.  All things seemed to be working OK, but there is a certain task that he was trying achieve that kept giving him an error message when working on the Server.  This task could be completed without error on other workstations (which do have a supported environment) but when tried on the Server, always error ed.

Luckily the error message was clear enough to see exactly what was happening, and after a little research, I was able to find a couple of resolutions.  Unfortunately, as soon as I tried the most logical resolution, I received another error message giving the real reason for the problem.  We have to remember that most software has more than 1 file that activates or runs a particular function, and all those files must work and run for the function to run.

 The cause of this problem was 1 file was not compatible with the underlying environment, hence the error message from the software, and the task failure. This business has other machine's where this task could be accomplished. Being able to run it on the Server could have cut down on the time to find a PC that is not in use, or the need to work remotely from home or anywhere else for that matter. 

As explained in the previous article, the software may install and seem to run fine even though the underlying OS is not "certified", but there is a reason it is not certified and it can be anything.

If you have any question on supported hardware or software for your environment, contact the CCS Retail Systems Support Department at 800-672-4806 or email_us.

-Bryan