u/NinjinGamer2003

there is this dvr that i have access to (and that i recently fixed) and every single time it reboots or loses power,, even before i repaired it due to a potentially related issue, it forgets all of its settings, requiring me or someone else to reconfigure it each time. i already have replaced the clock battery, and also reflashed the firmware, but to no avail. the dvr doesn't have a physical reset button, and at this point i'm not sure what it is. could it be a firmware-related problem? shouldn't be, because it's the official hikvision firmware straight from their website. it's a ds-7216huhi-f2/n 16-channel dvr.

Hello everyone. as someone who has continually used windows 7 since 2011-2012, and i have some really old computers still running it... I have two newer computers that i'd really like to run windows 7 on, but they seem to be too new for the os to run on them.

the first computer i'm having issues with is my lenovo ideapad gaming laptop. i had it for about three and a half years already and i have tried installing windows 7 multiple times, but to no avail.

i tried following various youtube videos to see if i could somehow force it on there, but unfortunately nothing i tried seemed to work. here is what people in the videos typically said:

• you need uefiseven. i tried this but the installer still wouldn't work.
• slipstreaming drivers into the iso. i don't even know how to do that and a couple of videos left me confused.
• need to have csm or legacy mode enabled. my laptop doesn't have csm nor legacy.
• you need to modify your laptop's bios to "unlock a hidden csm mode". that video is fake. you cannot modify insydeh2o bios. it's encrypted, plus i could end up bricking my laptop and i don't want to do that. it cost me 1100 euro and literal years of saving up for it.
• put the windows 7 install.wim into a windows 10 iso. i did that, and it could install... on my hard drive... since it couldn't detect the nvme, but it would bootloop, crashing at the splash screen.

at this rate i have given up and it still pisses me off to this day that i'm forced to use windows 10 on this thing, which i have debloated to the best of my ability.

the second computer i'm having issues installing and running windows 7 on is my recently acquired dell optiplex 5050, featuring a kaby lake i5-7500. In this case, the bios has legacy mode since it's an older computer, so i enabled it. the windows 7 installer could boot, but it couldn't detect my ssd, which is just about the most ordinary sandisk sata ssd possible, and yet it can't see it.

however, since the ssd is easily removable, and sata, i took out the ssd from the dell and put it in my thinkpad t430 which has a missing hdd caddy, and used it to install windows 7 on that ssd. then when i put the ssd back into the dell, to my amazement it would boot (albeit with legacy mode enabled, since the graphics doesn't load when i have legacy mode disabled)...

unfortunately now i ran into another problem. even tho i can use my keyboard and mouse, and i have sound, it cannot detect usb drives nor external wifi adapters, meaning i can't install drivers. but hey, at least i can technically run it... right???

i'm gonna try putting the ssd back into the thinkpad, use the thinkpad to manually load the driver installers onto the ssd itself, and then put the ssd back into the optiplex and i hope that will work, because i read somewhere that you won't be able to use intel hd 630 integrated graphics with windows 7, which is unfortunate as the only low profile graphics cards that i have, that could fit into the optiplex are old, horrible and way slower than the intel hd 630 graphics in the i5 (talking about gt 630 tier cards... absolute garbage).

if anyone has had success installing windows 7 on amd ryzen laptops with nvme ssds and encrypted bioses or on kaby lake systems... let me know.