Windows 7 with b450 and Ryzen 5

[ey_tony]

Ok so this might sound stupid but I'm about to pull the trigger on a new b450 mobo and Ryzen 2600 to replace my old Phenom 11 x 4 955 BE cpu and Gigabyte mobo and I need the following info regarding the new mobo/CPU and Windows 7 support before I upgrade as I'll explain.

My computer is multipurpose which I use for both everyday computing and now gaming ...I have both Windows 10 and Windows 7 (only 32 bit) installed on a dual boot system on an SSD as some of my older software doesn't work on Windows 10 and my old professional quality photo printer and pro quality negative scanner both of which which still work a treat, won't work on anything later than Windows 7 due to lack of available drivers so I run a dual boot system and it works great!
I stick to Windows 7 for all my domestic/everyday actions such as using surfing, Word, Excel, PhotoShop etc and that leaves Windows 10 uncluttered and free for games which are stored on a dedicated HDD.

I also have a GTX 1060 installed and together they allow me to play most of today's popular games, surprisingly without issue whatsoever given the age of the CPU so really the only reason I'm upgrading is so that I can have a go at the most recent titles, many of which are much more CPU demanding than games of the past 2 - 3 years, hence the upgrade.

I've narrowed my b450 mobo choice down to any one of three which will meet my need of the ability to connect 6 SATA devices but I notice that in each case, from what I can gather, according to the specification details, it appears that the b450 mobos + Ryzen don't support Windows 7 which would be a right pain if it's correct...is this correct or have I got hold of the wrong end of the stick as so often happens with me?

 

[Indus]

They should work just fine as long as you can place windows 7 on a USB stick and don't update it to the latest version. A pre 2017 version of Windows 10 should work just wine.

The only thing is you might have to put windows 7 updates on perma off. Since I've run Windows 7 on an X370 and B450 board but then had issues after windows update and it said it was incompatible. However it works fine with a fresh install.. go figure!

 

[mikeymikec]

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/please-recommend-cpu-for-win7.2537840/

includes info on how to get updates on Win7 without getting blocked.

 

[ey_tony]

They should work just fine as long as you can place windows 7 on a USB stick and don't update it to the latest version. A pre 2017 version of Windows 10 should work just wine.

The only thing is you might have to put windows 7 updates on perma off. Since I've run Windows 7 on an X370 and B450 board but then had issues after windows update and it said it was incompatible. However it works fine with a fresh install.. go figure!

Thanks for the reply.
Obviously Microsoft wants everyone eventually moved over to Windows 10 so that they can charge a monthly fee or whatever, in order that they can start making a profit from their software ( said with tongue in cheek) which was why I was able to download Windows 10 free of charge.
Adobe did that with the old copies of Photoshop CS2...I had a HDD failure about 3 months ago and when I tried to install my original copy of CS2 onto a new drive, I found they had removed the servers which verified the software and made it obsolete and unuseable. Fortunately after digging around on the Adobe site, I found there is a free download of CS2 but no security updates. They now I believe charge monthly for their latest equivalent for CS2 which I'm not prepared to pay for seeing as how I bought the original copy at quite an expense and have no serious need of it these days.

The problem is that if Windows 7 without updates will work on the b450 + Ryzen, then I'm presuming here that it wouldn't allow security updates also which would present a risk which wouldn't be a good idea.

I love having both operating systems available on boot up on one computer but I may just put this old mobo and cpu into another case which I was intending to do and use the dual boot on there and use the Ryzen etc upgrade dedicated to Windows 10 only.
It's less convenient but solves the issues of security and the important software I want to retain doesn't need to be connected to the internet so it could be used offline if needed, in fact I have two or three irreplaceable legacy software progs which only run on XP or earlier so I might have to go with plan B and construct a dual boot for XP and Windows 7 and install the mobo in the old computer I have retained for running only legacy XP software.

If I put the old mobo etc straight into my old backup PC so that I've got a fully functioning dual boot win 10/Win7 PC and then build the Ryzen upgrade into this case and do a fresh install of Windows 7 to see if the R 2600 and b450 will play ball and if not, I can go with plan B.

I hate software!