When migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7, one of the issues to overcome is application incompatibility.
Most of the applications will work or will have an upgrade available but for those that won't you will need to understand what's the root cause of the incompatibility and then remediate it. If remediation is not possible than you should consider stop using the application, replace it or adopting a virtualization solution like MED-V or TS.
The most common issues when migrating to Windows 7 are:
Session 0 Isolation
In Windows XP both services and applications run in the same session, the session 0. This is a security vulnerability because of the elevated privileges required to run services which malware can try to impersonate.
In Windows 7 that has changed. Now only the services run in Session 0 and the user who logs on to the computer would be in Session 1.
Some legacy applications that interact with services will fail to run appropriately in Windows 7. If the call from the application to the service generates an UI then the application will hang because that UI will not be visible to the user.
Hard-coded Paths
Some applications have hard-coded paths that do not exist anymore or that a standard user does not have permissions to write to.
Operating System Versioning
Some developers used to hardcode in the application installation package some code specifying that the application could only be installed in a specific OS, specific version or greater than some OS version.
User Access Control
In Windows 7 even administrators run applications as standard users. If the application or installer require elevated privileges it will prompt for permission.
Hence any applications or installers that require elevated priveleges or try to write to places which they do not have write permissions might fail.
If you are considering Windows 7 64-bit then you should consider the issues above and applications that have 16-bit binaries or 32-bit drivers which won't run in a 64-bit OS.
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