The main issue is that I'm just not tech savvy enough to deal with all the issues that would come with even attempting it.
You have to find compatible drivers for everything and if they don't exist you have to find a component that has compatible drivers. I'm limited by a laptop, narrowing down my choices even more. Not sure where you can even get a laptop configured this specifically. I'm not confident I could built my own. (I assume it would be trickier than building your own PC, and honestly I'm not even sure I could pull that off.)
The compatibility issue starts with the motherboard. Not every motherboard works and even with the ones that do, you have to configure something in the BIOS to make it possible to boot Win7.
Even if I manage all that and get Win7 installed, there's no telling what will happen if I encounter some issues between a program I'm running and the hardware drivers. I sure couldn't fix it on my own and with a such specific configurations, I'm not confident I could even find help on the internet.
All of this sounds unfamiliar to me, or like it's an issue specific to laptops. I don't think I've ever heard of drivers being an issue for Windows 7. I think what you're more likely running into is that fresh builds, be they laptop or desktop, need to simply have motherboard drivers installed. Usually you just need to find out the motherboard model or in your case the laptop model and then go to the manufacturer's website and download the drivers. It's just a bunch of .exe installers you gotta run before stuff like your network interface card will work properly.
I think you're getting into your own head with this one. The real hurdle I ran into with running 7 for so long was that Chrome stopped supporting 7 and you started running into some weirdness there.
Oh really? So it should still work or mostly work even on new hardware? (If the BIOS works that is.) When I looked into it almost 2 years ago, everywhere I looked people just wrote that almost no new hardware has drivers for Win7. And the 1 or 2 posts I found about someone who managed to get it running successfully, were complaining about what a hassle it was to get everything working.
This really makes me curious, but I'm not sure, if I'm brave enough to wipe Win10 off my harddrive... Although, I did get a USB with my laptop that should be a proper installer and not just a backup that requires Win10 to be already on there...
Whatever you do, make sure you have all your files copied over to something other than the laptop before you start and make sure you have installation media for your original OS on hand. Also keep in mind that I'm just some dumbass who made his rig last for 13 years straight, so those driver issues might be legit and I just never ran into any problems on account of running off of a motherboard that was around when W7 was everywhere.
What stopped you?
The main issue is that I'm just not tech savvy enough to deal with all the issues that would come with even attempting it.
You have to find compatible drivers for everything and if they don't exist you have to find a component that has compatible drivers. I'm limited by a laptop, narrowing down my choices even more. Not sure where you can even get a laptop configured this specifically. I'm not confident I could built my own. (I assume it would be trickier than building your own PC, and honestly I'm not even sure I could pull that off.)
The compatibility issue starts with the motherboard. Not every motherboard works and even with the ones that do, you have to configure something in the BIOS to make it possible to boot Win7.
Even if I manage all that and get Win7 installed, there's no telling what will happen if I encounter some issues between a program I'm running and the hardware drivers. I sure couldn't fix it on my own and with a such specific configurations, I'm not confident I could even find help on the internet.
All of this sounds unfamiliar to me, or like it's an issue specific to laptops. I don't think I've ever heard of drivers being an issue for Windows 7. I think what you're more likely running into is that fresh builds, be they laptop or desktop, need to simply have motherboard drivers installed. Usually you just need to find out the motherboard model or in your case the laptop model and then go to the manufacturer's website and download the drivers. It's just a bunch of .exe installers you gotta run before stuff like your network interface card will work properly.
I think you're getting into your own head with this one. The real hurdle I ran into with running 7 for so long was that Chrome stopped supporting 7 and you started running into some weirdness there.
Oh really? So it should still work or mostly work even on new hardware? (If the BIOS works that is.) When I looked into it almost 2 years ago, everywhere I looked people just wrote that almost no new hardware has drivers for Win7. And the 1 or 2 posts I found about someone who managed to get it running successfully, were complaining about what a hassle it was to get everything working.
This really makes me curious, but I'm not sure, if I'm brave enough to wipe Win10 off my harddrive... Although, I did get a USB with my laptop that should be a proper installer and not just a backup that requires Win10 to be already on there...
Whatever you do, make sure you have all your files copied over to something other than the laptop before you start and make sure you have installation media for your original OS on hand. Also keep in mind that I'm just some dumbass who made his rig last for 13 years straight, so those driver issues might be legit and I just never ran into any problems on account of running off of a motherboard that was around when W7 was everywhere.