Does Pro Tools First 2021.7 work seamlessly after upgrading to Windows 11

[Bill O]

I'd like to upgrade, but don't want to lose the 40-plus songs I've recorded. Has anybody had any issues?

[albee1952]

The big question is: are your 40 songs done as "sessions" that are on your hard drive or "projects" that are living in the cloud? Sessions on your drive should be fine, but while you upgrade your OS, I would also dump PT First and get PT Intro. It is also free and tons better than First ever was.

[Bill O]

They're on my hard drive and as far as I know they're projects.
The problem I have with the new free version is the track number limitation. Almost everything I've done has too many tracks for the new version to handle, so I wouldn't be able to open nearly all of them in their entirety.

I am thinking about upgrading to Windows 11, but I don't want to have any issues with PTF not being able to load my songs.

Even though you're not 'supposed' to, the last time I upgraded PTF I had to rebuild all the songs I had at that point from the .wav files in the project folder which I had backed up. Took me 10 full days.

[albee1952]

Hmmm, here are my thoughts:
1-generally, anything that works on Windows 10 will work on Windows 11.
2-I forgot the track limit on PT Intro. Have you considered PT Artist? Its $9.99 per month or $99 per year.
3-as with any update(small or large), you don't need to fear if you have a backup strategy(and you SHOULD!). Drive imaging is the least you should be doing. Another option would be to clone your current C: drive to another similar drive, install the clone and update it(leaving your current C: drive untouched and unchanged)
4-if you can't afford PT Artist, might you be better off with another DAW such as Reaper or Cakewalk by Bandcamp? Those 2 are free to try(Cakewalk is just plain free) and both are very capable programs with none of the limitations of PT First

Of course, before diving into anything new, you would need to open each of your old song sessions, consolidate all audio tracks, print any instrument tracks and export the files to separate folders so you could import the files to another DAW(which is something worth learning how to do anyway)

[Bill O]

OK, thanks for the help. Some of that is a bit above my current computer savvy, but I can get help locally for it. PT Artist might be the way to go. I will look into it.