Windows 7 Professional

About this release

There are still a great many machines that this is the correct system for. Workshop computers driving a cutter or a lathe, laboratory benches with an instrument that only ever had a driver for this generation, small office terminals running a line of business application that nobody has money to replace. On all of those, this image is not nostalgia, it is the version the hardware was sold with.

The Professional edition is the level worth installing. It carries the group policy editor, remote desktop hosting, domain join, the backup tools and the compatibility layer for older business applications, none of which are present in the Home editions. On a machine doing real work, those are the features that separate a usable install from a frustrating one.

The image is multilingual, so the display language, keyboard layout and regional format are chosen during setup rather than fixed into the build. Additional language packs install afterwards without a reinstall, which is useful on a shared machine or in a mixed language office.

Setup is the classic sequence: write the image to a stick, boot from it, partition, and let it run through to the desktop. Driver coverage in the image is good for hardware of the period, though very recent chipsets will want storage and network drivers loaded during setup. The installer offers a clean install or an upgrade that keeps files and applications in place.

What it does

Professional feature set

Group policy, remote desktop hosting, domain join, backup and the application compatibility layer.

Multilingual image

Display language, keyboard and regional format chosen during setup.

Classic desktop

The window and taskbar generation that a great deal of older software was designed against.

Strong legacy hardware support

Drivers for the period hardware this generation shipped alongside are present in the image.

Clean or in place install

Wipe the target partition or upgrade keeping files and applications.

Light on resources

Runs comfortably on machines that struggle under current desktop system generations.

Changed in this version

• Image refreshed with the final servicing rollups folded in.
• Additional storage controller drivers added for setup on newer boards.
• Language selection screen simplified.
• Setup no longer stalls on some machines with mixed drive types.

System requirements

Install order

1. Write the image to a USB stick with a tool that produces bootable media.
2. Back up anything on the target machine before you begin.
3. Enable legacy boot support in firmware if the board defaults to pure UEFI.
4. Boot from the stick, choose language and edition, then partition and install.

Worth knowing before you start

File details