Laptop 2016 - I want to install Windows 7 on

roytom2

I have an older laptop that came with Windows 8.0 but upgraded to 8.1.
I want to carry on running CorelDraw X4 that won't work on Win 10 or 11.
It's been suggested that Win 7 run on this old laptop would work well with CDX4 - and will not be connected to the internet.
But I can't get the Win 7 installer to work.
Changes need to be made to the laptop's UEFI firmware settings. And I've been using GParted on a small usb bootable linux drive.
If I change the hard disc partition table using GParted to MBR (and format the hard disc to Fat32) the installer says it needs GPT. A message box says "Windows cannot be installed on this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to GTP disks."
Back to GParted - when a GPT partition is created instead (with an empty space to be formatted by the Win 7 installer) the installer won't work on this. I get the message "Windows cannot be installed on this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style."
In the laptop's UEFI system settings Launch CSM needs to be enabled for the Win 7 installer to work at all - I think this turns off Fast Boot and Secure Boot as these don't seem to be visible if launch CSM is enabled.
As always any suggestions gratefully received.
Thanks for reading.

Neil_Jones

If the laptop came with Windows 8 the issue is probably caused by Secure Boot which was added in Windows 8.  You should be able to turn that off in the Laptop BIOS and possibly the Compatibility Support Module (CSM) option as well to Legacy mode.

Secure Boot support to 7 was added like years later unofficially, but by that point it was EoL.

What’s the laptop model?

Seems to be that CorelDraw may work if you upgrade to 10 (from 7 or 8) but not if you install 10 clean.

forgotmyname

Why not install a virtual machine with Windows 7 on it?

roytom2

It’s very interesting what Neil_Jones says about what could happen if CorelDraw X4 was already installed when Windows 7 or 8 is upgraded to 10 and therefore should continue to work. I have never thought to try this but it does sound brilliant. This would be the ideal solution. 

I really don’t think I can afford to upgrade CorelDRAW to a more recent version as it’s just too expensive for me.

Many thanks for your replies. 

jshm2

You should be able to run old Coreldraw in a windows 7 VM