I’ve got an old HP Revolve 810 G3 that I use for all those weird firmware updaters and other tools that require an actual Windows with actual USB ports. Nothing else.This model was introduced during the Windows 7 to Windows 10 shift, so it is OEM-licensed for both. And I had it running on Windows 10 which was not the smoothest experience. This laptop’s CPU and TPM aren’t supported by Windows 11 and it only has 8GB RAM, so upgrading is not possible. With the upcoming end of support for Windows 10, I was wondering whether there’s a better option than keeping the sluggish Windows 10.And I’ve decided to go back to Windows 7. If I run an (soon to be) outdated Windows, I might as well run a version that’s lean and snappy on this device. To make it not too easy, I wanted Windows 7 to boot from a GPT-formatted disk via native UEFI – without any Legacy mode or CSM enabled.Boot MediumThe first hurdle was to get a working installation medium. Booting Ventoy via UEFI and then booting the Windows 7 ISO from Ventoy had the installer not see the NVMe SSD. Even after installing the Intel Rapid Storage drivers, the disk wouldn’t show up.Setting the boot mode to “Legacy” made the laptop not even see the Ventoy USB as bootable.Writing the ISO file onto a USB flash drive (using dd) didn’t boot at all. Not even when setting the boot mode to UEFI with CSM.After clicking through several links Google spat out, I’ve discovered WinDiskWriter. And after fighting with macOS 26’s malware detection, I was finally able to produce a working installation medium.This (I think) uses the built-in UEFI support, so has to be installed via “UEFI with CSM” for the installer to launch properly.Interrupt 10hDuring the startup splash screen “Starting Windows…”, Windows 7 calls interrupt 10h. This interrupt is usually provided by a classic BIOS, but is absent in a native UEFI implementation. Even though Windows 7 was supposed to be compatible with UEFI, it only is with “Hybrid UEFI” – where there’s the additional CSM, Compatibility Support Module. This CSM is providing the Int 10h feature (amongst others) so the installer (and afterwards Windows 7 itself) can boot without locking up on the “Starting Windows…” screen.As I wanted it to boot natively, i.e. without the CSM, I had to find a way to simulate/emulate that Int 10h feature. Luckily, I was not the only one with that idea. The project UefiSeven provides a small EFI module that gets loaded before the main Windows 7 bootloader to provide that missing feature and make the startup happy.Contrary to the instructions in the README file, for my installation of Windows 7, I had to apply it to the bootx64.efi instead of the bootmgfw.efi.1. Rename bootx64.efi to bootx64.original.efi2. Copy the bootx64.efi from the UefiSeven ZIP file into that folderAfter that, I was able to switch the boot mode to “Native UEFI” without any CSM. And it worked!At some point, I was seeing strange artefacts at the top of the screen:As it turned out later, this is due to the Int 10h emulation. It’s not perfect. And what these pixels represent are messages about Windows 7 scanning the filesystem for errors – e.g. after a crash or forced shutdown. You can cancel the scan by pressing ESC in the first few seconds. Or just wait until it finishes. (The pattern will change a bit and the system will reboot once the scan is done.)Windows UpdatesNow, with a fresh installation of Windows 7 Ultimate SP1, there were still a few hundred updates that came out after this. As Microsoft’s update servers are long decommissioned and you can’t even find most updates in their download area anymore, I had to find a different way.Luckily, Ricki Jensen is archiving all the updates there are in an easy to use ISO file that can be mounted using a CD emulation tool such as WinCDEmu.However, there’s an even easier – but more time consuming – way: Just visit http://legacyupdate.net (that’s http – no s!) using the automatically installed Internet Explorer. It’ll prompt you to update the Windows Updater and then update SSL certificates, some other components and rewire the native update mechanism to point to this website instead. Once done, you can run the built-in Windows Update tool as you would back in the days and it’ll find and install all further updates. (Including having to reboot and the updater finding even more updates afterwards. Just like it was back then.) You can also use the newly added “Legacy Update” option in Control Panel or visit https://legacyupdate.net (now with s!) in Internet Explorer.Windows ActivationWindows 7 is – officially – long gone. And, while this laptop came with a Windows 7 Professional license, I wanted to go ALL the way and use Windows 7 Ultimate. As there’s no real way to get a license for that (apart from some shady eBay sellers) anymore, I wanted to make use of the trusty and well-known Windows Loader by Daz. But, well, that one doesn’t work on GPT partitions.Again, someone had the same problem a long time before me and Redditor execsrss made a new tool called EzWindSLIC. While that GitHub link in the Reddit thread is gone, someone else still has a mirror.Windows 10 CompatibilitySomeone found out that the Windows 10 kernel only adds a few features over Windows 7 and tried to replicate these features using a kernel extension. This resulted in a tool called VxKex. The original version still has a few bugs and the original author has more important things to take care of, so someone else stepped in and released VxKex-NEXT.This allows you to spoof Windows 10 and get some applications running that otherwise would simply refuse to run on Windows 7 (or crash due to the missing APIs). It’s a bit hit or miss whether it’ll work, but better than nothing.Windows 7 Ultimate in full gloryAnd thats it – a fully working Windows 7 Ultimate that runs way more snappy than Windows 10 ever did on this machine. Especially after switching to the classic desktop. It makes you wonder why Microsoft felt the need to make everything fancier – and more demanding – in later versions.

Es gab noch ESUs bis 2023 – ich muss allerdings noch prüfen, ob die bei Legacy Update enthalten sind. Mit Windows 10 wird die Situation demnächst ja ähnlich aussehen. Und ja, prinzipiell wäre ein Linux natürlich sicherer. Aber wie eingangs beschrieben handelt es sich hier um meinen Laptop für spezielle Tools und Firmware-Updater die eben nur auf einem Windows laufen. Ich werde damit nicht tagtäglich im Internet surfen. 😉