Going back to Windows 7 from 10: how?

[hutch--]

If you are using Intel hardware, its often useful to try and get the Intel drivers. On the two Huananzhi boards that have Xeon v3 CPUs installed, I had to rat through the Intel site to find the right drivers for the Xeons and once I got the right ones, all of the missing bits in Device manager disappeared. Funny enough, with the Gigabyte boards, Win10 installed the right drivers for them.

You can still get most stuff with Win10 but Win7 64 is a pain as Microsoft levered the hardware folks to drop Win7 support. Some of them still kept the older stuff but its getting harder to get. I installed my Win7 64 Ultimate and it ran but after being used to Win10, it was very out of date. I could use the Win7 serial to update to Win10 so I did.

[deeR44]

I installed Win 7 Pro. on my old Dell computer that was running Windows Vista (I saw in Cmd (Win 6.1). Anyway, I had no trouble installing in several days ago. It is running fine and is now running Vedit text editor without a problem. It needed no drivers or anything that wasn't on the Windows 7 Pro. CD. Tonight, or tomorrow, I'm going to install MASM32 SDK on it and I expect no trouble at all. The old Dell is running an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. I think it is also called a "Centrino". Best of luck to you!

[greenozon]

Windows 10/11 collects more information about the user than any previous version of Windows,
and it's impossible to turn it off completely.
After the initial release in 2015, Microsoft faced over two years of massive criticism about what data it covertly collects from both the EU and private entities.
After the initial backlash, they overhauled the privacy settings, introduced new tools which spies even more, and disclosed some of the data they gathered

Win7 must have been the best ever OS from MS...
Very soon it'll die forever as Extended Security Updates (ESU) support alive until January 10, 2023

[NoCforMe]

So I just sent off my order for a Windows 7 "downgrade" (from eBay). Weird: many of the items there include a non-working hard drive that, for some strange reason, they say eBay makes them include in the package. ??? Anyhow, it looks legit, includes a product key, so I should be good to go. If I need drivers I can get them from Dell's web site. (The installation package does include a lot of drivers, so at least I can get up and running.)

Then I can exit Windows 10 hell. I especially hate just the whole look of everything about this OS. For instance, the goddamn scrollbar thumbs are so faint as to be almost invisible. What genius came up with these color schemes up there in Redmond?

[Vortex]

Then I can exit Windows 10 hell. I especially hate just the whole look of everything about this OS. For instance, the goddamn scrollbar thumbs are so faint as to be almost invisible. What genius came up with these color schemes up there in Redmond?

Hi NoCforMe,

I agree with you. Win10 is a puppet \ toy operating system.

[zedd151]

Win10 is a puppet \ toy operating system.

"They" also said something similar about Windows xp in that era, when xp first came out. Actually referring to the cartoonish interface. 

[NoCforMe]

I wish I could go back to XP. In my experience that was the most reliable and easy-to-use version of Winoze ever. Too bad.

The only cartoonish thing about it I remember was that stupid paper clip "office assistant" that everyone couldn't turn off soon enough.

[daydreamer]

I wish I could go back to XP. In my experience that was the most reliable and easy-to-use version of Winoze ever. Too bad.

I still have old AMD xp box,newer gfx card, had dvi to Hdmi cable to my hdtv

[NoCforMe]

Heh; I still have my old Windoze 2000 system set up and running. It's my scanning station (flatbed scanner, film scanner and sound card for analog-to-digital audio transcription). Works great.

[jj2007]

I wish I could go back to XP. In my experience that was the most reliable and easy-to-use version of Winoze ever

Wrong! This version is really good

[hutch--]

Out of the oldies, WinNT and the derivative, Win2000 were the ones I liked the best, both very robust industrial OS versions. XP improved on both of them with larger disk capacity and far better facilities and Microsoft had to work hard to force people into using later versions.

Win7 64 bit was a big move forward as it introduced 64 bit to most people interested (even though there was a 64 bit version of XP) and for the era it was introduced, it worked well if a bit overhead heavy with its MAC style interface.

I tend to build computers for a specific OS version and with all of the Win 10 64 bit boxes, this is what I have done. For licencing reasons, I installed my Win7 64 Ultimate on one of the more recent ones but only to use its serial number to install Win 10 over it.

I am no fan of Win 10 but after years of using it and knowing most of the tricks to knacker telemetry, it can be configured to do most things well, as long as you keep turning off the "idiot" features that they try and add to it with updates. Fortunately they are far less regular than they used to be and most of the irritations of Win10 have been fixed.

Now as far as back installing Win 7, it looks like the establishment of the "Old Fuddy Duddies Club" where its members live in a comfortable past that never goes anywhere. There are still folks who live in the world of MS-DOS where time stood still of 1992.

Measuring an OS version with legacy laptops is probably not the way to do it. Any reasonable desktop will eat most laptop alive and they will also run Win10 just fine. My sympathies for any who try and run Win 11. Like Win 10 when it was introduced, it will take years to fully debug it and you are not getting paid for doing this BETA testing for Microsoft.

[jj2007]

My sympathies for any who try and run Win 11.

Windows 11 22H2 is super broken (two weeks ago)

every 2-3rd boot is extremely slow and Windows runs in ~5 FPS and takes minutes to just open a folder until restart.
File Copy to my external Samsung 870 Evo takes almost twice as long as before (write performance tanks non stop)
VLC Player is broken and crashes very often.
the new task manager shows an empty window with zero programs running.
New Explorer with the new tab system crashes randomly when opening new tabs.
the whole PC crashes randomly in games, at idle, under load (or freezes with sound still running)
cursor gets stuck for 3-4 seconds.
Second Monitor is "still there" even after using Windows + P to only use my main monitor.
my printer does not work anymore.

[NoCforMe]

Now as far as back installing Win 7, it looks like the establishment of the "Old Fuddy Duddies Club" where its members live in a comfortable past that never goes anywhere.

That's me. Guilty as charged. I don't want it to go anywhere.

[InfiniteLoop]

Win11 isn't terrible if you remove all the crap. https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/windows-11-tweaks-for-gpu-benchmark.287480/
"Fullscreen optimizations" still need to be turned off manually and no taskbar combine option  is annoying.

[jj2007]

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/windows-11-tweaks-for-gpu-benchmark.287480/

That's ridiculously geeky. I'll wait some years until M$ have sorted out the problems with Win11.