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dan99t
Gerbil First Class
Topic Author
Posts: 169
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2012 8:19 am

Can Dell's New Workstation 3660 run Windows-7 ?

Mon Jul 25, 2022 9:22 am

Hi,

I bought a new Dell workstation 3660 with

i-7 12700
2 NVIDIA T-600 Cards To Run 8 Monitors
Win-11 Pro
3 M.2 512GB NVMe & 3 SATA 4TB 5400 RPM HDDs
Eight 24 inch Monitors ( 1920 x 1200 ) Resolution

I am facing several issues like Font size + Clipped Fonts in Windows explorer file & folder names if I try to increase Text size or scale + 2 Monitors out of 8 has different resolution, Microphone does not work or detect etc. Very similar issues faced by many people using Windows-11.

Currently I am using 10 year old Dell workstation T-7500 with 12 Monitors & Win-7 with no issues for last 10 years. But now cpu & other fans are making noise & age gets to me so I bought above new Dell 3660 Workstation.

4 different Dell engineers have been working on it for last 2 weeks with no results.

I have never used any newer versions of Windows like Win-8 or 10. I have to finish the current project that I am working & I feel very comfortable with Win-7 even without any updates since 2020.

So my question is can I install Win-7 on a different New M.2 NVMe SSD & use it in current new system that I just bought with specs shown above ? And if yes or no, what problems would I run into it ?

Thank You.
 
tfp
Grand Gerbil Poohbah
Posts: 3413
Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2003 11:09 am

Re: Can Dell's New Workstation 3660 run Windows-7 ?

Mon Jul 25, 2022 9:25 am

The biggest thing will be drivers for Windows 7. If you have drivers then you should be fine to install Win7 on another drive. If not the default drivers might not behave well.
 
dan99t
Gerbil First Class
Topic Author
Posts: 169
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2012 8:19 am

Re: Can Dell's New Workstation 3660 run Windows-7 ?

Tue Jul 26, 2022 3:33 am

tfp wrote:
The biggest thing will be drivers for Windows 7. If you have drivers then you should be fine to install Win7 on another drive. If not the default drivers might not behave well.

(1) Fortunately Dell Drivers website still works where they have listed drivers for my current Dell T-7500 workstation. Only a new one is Bios ( 2018 Version )
I also have saved drivers like BIOS, Graphics Card, Chipset & Network all downloaded in 2015.
So would those work in new Dell 3660 Workstation ?
(2) I have Windows -7 ( Just OS )with all drivers & MS updates on a 500 GB SATA HDD which I use to clone a new HDD if something goes wrong with the current HDD which is also a 500GB SATA. Would that help to to just transfer to new 512GB M.2 NVMe ? If yes, can you please explain how ?

Thank you for your time & help.
 
tfp
Grand Gerbil Poohbah
Posts: 3413
Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2003 11:09 am

Re: Can Dell's New Workstation 3660 run Windows-7 ?

Tue Jul 26, 2022 10:44 am

I would not expect all your current drivers to work for the new hardware. You will want to check the Dell website for win7 or worse case the windows server version that is compatible with win7 for your new hardware. If they don't exist, I would look at the manufacture of the different chips on the dell hardware to see if they have legacy OS drivers to use. Sometimes the newer OS drivers would work maybe Windows 8 or 8.1 on Win7, but I can't remember when/if they changed structure in a major way. Outside of this I would do a quick google to see if anyone else has tried the same.

If you want to try to use your existing OS on the new Hardware by cloning, there is an off chance it works but I would expect you'd have to do a repair of the install to get it to boot fully. I remember doing this many many years ago but it's kind of a pain and no guaranties it would work. For cloning an OS to a new HD there are software packages that can do it but normally they cost money, I haven't looked in years as well.

All this said Windows 10 is perfectly fine and unless you have software that restructure you from using Windows 10, I don't think I'd bother with all this effort.

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