Wine has made vast strides, thought it is far from perfect. As for hardware support, sometimes better, sometimes worse, but at least there are solutions.

I fought a long hard battle to keep Windows 10 (and just as importantly all the spyware updates that came out after for Windows 7 and 8 platforms) of my main systems.

Windows 10 just represents a corporate ideology shift from MS that i just can not support or condone, it is the worst of the modern era of thinking about personal data gathering (ie it does not matter), and as a product i have found it inferior to Windows 7 to work with on a day to day basis, my games run better under Windows 7 most of the time too.

So yeah Windows 10 was the fumble from MS that pushed me towards Linux Mint (and i'm happily typing this message from that Linux machine).

Now for ALL people that like their Windows 7 installs, or want help with anything to do with Windows 7 going forward you need to bookmark this link:

https://www.sevenforums.com/

That will have all you need to know to keep your Windows 7 install well and healthy and indeed if you find you need to reinstall from scratch it has help threads to get you through the 'mines' that MS has laid for you now in that process.

Treasure your Windows 7 installs, treat them well, have good image backups in place, as Windows 7 is going to go down in history as the last good MS OS made primarily for the customer, rather than turning that customer into a data mining cash cow and privacy concern.

Which games? Most games will run fine under 10, a few will need a bit of patching but will run then.

Lucky you. When I tested W10 there were plenty of issues with "named games", including:-

- Age of Mythology crashes if any settings are changed in-game (W10 can't handle in-game resolution changes - and this is a Microsoft game...)
- No One Lives Forever had stutter introduced from W8-10 (due to changes in the DWM) that was never there pre-W8
- Other games here, eg, Commandos Ammo Pack, Sam & Max Season One, etc, are unlisted by GOG for W10 compatibility
- Several games including Maniac Mansion Deluxe were squashed into the top-left 1/4 of the screen after ALT-Tabbing
- Others have Fullscreen Exclusive broken but not all games support Borderless Windowed or play well with 3rd party Borderless Gaming utilities

The biggest problem I have with W10 is its inherent release instability + forced consumer upgrades. Eg, DirectDraw has already been deprecated. It's still possible to install it via "Programs & Features -> Turn Windows Features On/Off - Legacy Components" - today - but that's also something that could be removed at literally any point in the future, possibly followed by DX7-10 games. Unless you have Enterprise LTSC, the forced rolling nature of regular consumer builds means you're constantly at Microsoft's mercy of whether you'll be "permitted" to continue to play older games on every 6 month upgrade in a way we never were with fixed but stable release / Service Pack images.

That alone drives the Bullsh*t-factor through the roof in now requiring constant bi-annual retesting, making sure games still work on every major "feature" update once or twice a year (vs once a decade for XP -> W7), no I want to install my own normal drivers not have rolling online-only "Windows Modern Drivers" keep trying to auto-override and cause yet more audio stuttering (that hasn't been seen pre-W10 since Win9x) or the newer ones that broke printer drivers, why did you just reset telemetry settings again do I really need to recheck this every 6 months, etc? Life is too short for this nonsense.

I had an issue like that with Win 7 on my laptop. I never did find a solution. Pain in the backside wiping it clean haha.

Whilst it’s nice that people have the option to still run win 7 and it was a great os (and other totally mad people insist on running vista and win 8), the simple fact about life is that it is all moving the way of win 10. From tv renting like Netflix and prime, games streaming, fridges and cookers being net controlled. Talking about win10 collecting some system information whilst other companies are installing facial recognition in the streets and wallet scanners in shops etc. Is a waste of breath. The only way to really reverse this trend is to stop the internet which fuels all of this, and considering most people do not know or understand any of that it’s not going to happen.
Sad days, yes, skynet, quite possibly, but that is the way things are and it’s really not going to change anytime soon.

What make me mad in your opinion since I run 8.1? (unless you mention 8 exclusively)

Windows from NT to 8 had their service packs which contained feature updates too. Certainly not twice anually but not never either.

The sound stuttering is horrible in Windows 10 removing the joy in gaming.

Microsoft shifting the nature of windows from PC(Personal is the key) OS to a service where you cant control it as you wish is a shame, the solution for me at least for now is to keep a pc with 8.1 for daily use till support ends then shift to linux and for gaming as most of my games are old is a W7 laptop and a desktop build new(and kinda cheap) this year that runs both XP and 7 in dual boot which combined with a nice 4:3 lcd monitor plays wonderfully all my games.

Windows 8 specifically, though win 8.1 was also pretty bad. Vista however has to rule supreme as the worse. I would fully recommend windows 10 over all of them except XP, 7 and possibly specific versions for specific things over 8 or vista.
I went from 7 to 8, then had the .1 upgrade, then reverted to 7 after a few months. Now I have been on 10 for several years and not gone back to my 7 machine. Would rather go Linux than 8 or vista.

I read somewhere here the argument that legacy operative systems aren't as prone to viruses simply due to the small number of people using it. I wonder if that will be true for Windows 7 as well, with the popularity of Windows 7 and the widespread dislike for Windows 10 in mind.

I suspect that Windows 7 users might have a hard time down the line with the combination of relative popularity and no further security updates.

Number of users is irrelevant in a lot of circumstances. Most of these things are automated, and designed to attack specific vulnerabilities found in software. One of the big arguments to upgrade is that the OS makers are always working to fix these holes as they occur. When support ends that means the developer will no longer fill those holes. And remember those security holes might not just be viruses and things to damage your system, they could become part of botnets, or used in further spreading of whatever it might be. Now wether M$ are actually filling these holes, or just making other issues is another issue.
Disclaimer is that this isn’t a complete answer, there is always user as weak point, no security can stop joe bloggs clicking on that email link. But it should help with specific attacks.

I know this is an issue, it just hasn't impacted me at all yet. If it ever does maybe I'll get a copy of 7 and install it as an offline "old games player," which I doubt will be that hard. I think people worry too much about could-bes and might-happens, if you catch my drift.

Only game I played on 10 from your list was NOLF, which played fine. Did you use the modern version distributed for free? I believe it had some fixes. I know some act like Fallout 3 doesn't run on Win10, but that has a super simple fix. In any event I'm not saying zero games have Win 10 issues (some games had Win7 issues), just that I haven't run into any and people rarely give examples. PC Gaming Wiki should make a database of games with serious Win10 issues, if they haven't yet.

A Windows 7/Windows 10/Linux user here.

So, which games give you a problem, and what kind of problems? Just interested to try out if they are easy to fix on Windows 10.

Two recent examples for me which had some problems specifically in Windows 10, but were relatively easy to fix:

Icewind Dale 2:
I suppose this same problem is with all the other Infinity-engine RPGs too, like the original Baldur's Gate series etc. (not the remakes). The GOG version works fine for me in Windows 7, but in Windows 10 I got very jerky scrolling of the screen, and some display errors like the jaggy fog of war etc. that I didn't see in Windows 7. Both systems had a Nvidia Geforce mobile GPU, different generations though.

While some ingame changes or Windows compatibility settings seemed to help a bit, the best solution was to use DDWrapper with the game, which replaces the game's own ddraw.dll with a more Windows 10-friendly ddraw.dll. Now the game works great also in Windows 10. (I presume dgVoodoo would have also possibly solved this problem (like with the next game), but with IWD2 I happened to use DDWrapper; google for it).

Might & Magic 9:
In Windows 10 I had some known display problems like when you are underwater, everything is dark and you can see shit.

Using dgVoodoo2 with the game solved this problem.

Geometry Dash:
This is not a GOG game but a Steam game. In Windows 7 the game ran butter smooth while on Windows 10 it was a bit jerky. Apparently Windows 10 has problems with many full-screen games, so the solution was to set the game to use "windowed fullscreen" instead of generic "fullscreen" in the ingame options. Then the game ran butter-smooth also in Windows 10.

So, yeah, if it is display problems that you have, I suggest you look into DDWrapper, dgVoodoo2 etc.

About going back to Windows 7: if your intention is to replace Windows 10 with 7, then I'd say no, due to 7 not receiving any more security fixes next year. What I am going to do though is that I keep Windows 7 on this laptop, but I will disable its internet connection (only going online with it if I really have to, not visiting porn sites with it anymore etc.).

I have also Linux Mint installed on the same PC (dual-boot) so I use that if I need to go online and be more or less productive.

My Windows 10 PC is a separate PC altogether, my work laptop (which is ok for running games too).

I have some older PCs too where I have done the same with Windows XP, ie. disabled its internet connection and installed Linux (Mint) on the side. My Windows XP and 7 PCs will be used only for those older games that may have severe problems in Windows 10 (or Linux).

EDIT: Mainly I think my Windows 7 and XP machines may be needed if I am trying to play some of my older retail CD games, as I've understood some of their copy protection mechanisms (like SecuROM) and such will simply not work on Windows 10, period. My understanding is that it is still possible to make those copy protections work on Windows 7 by changing some settings (MS disabled the support for them also in Windows 7, but they can be still enabled if needed), and on Windows XP they work fine of course.

Not sure if all Windows 10 users will have the same problems or whether it depends on the graphics card (in my case NVidia Geforce), but:

Icewind Dale 2 (and possibly all the other Infinity Engine RPGs). Very jerky scrolling, display problems like jaggy fog of war etc.

Might & Magic 9 (e.g. pitch black if you go underwater, and possibly some other display errors I don't remember now)

Geometry Dash (some stutter in fullscreen mode)

And yes, I did find a fix for all those three in Windows 10, either using DDWrapper/dgVoodoo2 or using "windowed fullscreen" (or was it "borderless windowed"?) instead of generic fullscreen, if available in game options (like it was available in Geometry Dash, luckily).

Sometimes you might have to see the game side-by-side on Windows 7 and 10, to realize there is a problem. Like, if you run Geometry Dash on Windows 10 fullscreen, it might appear to run fine and you think that is how it is supposed to run... but after seeing it running on Windows 7, you realize something is off, like that the game seems to run at 60 fps on Windows 7, while something like 20 fps on Windows 10. Maybe this is related to Windows 10 "emulating" fullscreen DirectDraw or something, causing a performance problem.

And in the case of Might & Magic 9, you don't necessarily realize at first something is wrong... but at some point you might start wondering why everything is so dark when you dive underwater. You wouldn't necessarily know that is wrong unless you saw the game running also on Windows 7 and realize you ARE supposed to see your surroundings also underwater.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and of course the fact that apparently many of the old copy protection methods don't work at all anymore in Windows 10. Naturally this will not affect you if you never play any old CD/DVD-based games anymore, but since we were talking about compatibility with old games, this is still quite relevant to many of us.