Windows 7 Guest on a non Windows 7 compatible Intel Processor

[ChristopheFourn]

I wonder if it is possible to install Windows 7 as a Guest on a machine where the Intel Processor is not compatible with Windows 7 (Intel Gen7) and thus running a Windows 10 Host.

Any idea ?

[bluefirestorm]

I don't know if it will work or not but you could try masking the CPU family/model/stepping to a generation that is supported.

You add the following line before you install the Windows 7 OS into the VM, or if the Windows 7 VM already exists, power it down and add the line to the vmx configuration file

cpuid.1.eax = "0000:0000:0000:0101:0000:0110:1110:0011"

This masks the CPU to look like it is Skylake (Gen 6) CPU.

The brand string should not matter but if you like to you could also add it, too.

cpuid.brandString = "Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz"

or

cpuid.brandString = "Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz"

But the brand string can be any value (even your name if you want).

[wila]

Hi,

Interesting question. Totally forgot about that.

On a Gen8 machine I have here, there's a Windows 7 guest.

So I just tried to boot the VM and it appears to have no issues at all.

Even the System screen just display that the machine has an Intel Core i5-8400 CPU.

I did not have to do anything to mask the CPU.

Hope this helps,

--

Wil

[bluefirestorm]

I don't have a 7th generation or newer CPU, but I would also think there should be no problem installing Windows 7 VM as the Windows 7 installation media would not have the capability that can do the checks for a newer CPUs that didn't exist back then.

But I have the impression, the problem of non-supported CPU would kick in if the Windows 7 machine (whether physical machine or VM) tries to connect to Windows Update to download updates.