Windows 7 on E-2286G (Dell 3630) - any hope?

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Terry Kennedy

Well-Known Member
Jun 25, 2015
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New York City
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I have a newish Dell 3630 with an E-2286G CPU (using an AMD Radeon 7100 video card, so I don't care about the on-board graphics). The Microsoft / Intel conspiracy to sell new CPUs / Windows licenses (which would be a bit less annoying if Intel actually had the CPUs to sell) means that Windows 7 on this generation is officially unsupported. The Dell website implies that purchasing the 3630 with an older generation CPU is supported under Windows 7.

Booting a Windows 7 SP1 DVD on this system results in a hang with the startup orb pulsing forever. Before I go and try it myself, does anyone know that it definitely will (or will not) work if I put a drive that has a Windows 7 install with all the latest updates already installed and try to boot it? Bonus points if you know which KB article(s) provide the support.

I'm asking instead of trying because it isn't just a case of taking the drive out of an existing system and trying it - the 3630 has an NVMe boot device, which none of my Windows 7 boxes do.