You can also make App-V packages (wherein your application is technically running virtualized with conditions that match your Windows version of choice), but is otherwise effectively running within your Windows 10 environment. Where you may have issue is in terms of permissions and needing to "run as Administrator".īut, when all of that fails, Microsoft has an Application Compatibility Toolkit, wherein you can create shim files that you inject into your installed application to make it work in Windows 10. For a majority of apps that will work without issue out of the box in Windows 7, but won't in 10, this works just fine. On the really quick and easy side of things, you have compatibility mode which tells the operating system to present the app you're trying to run on it as close to an environment of the older OS as is possible. Keep in mind that there are several methods for getting apps that, in theory, "won't work with Windows 10" to work with Windows 10 that aren't widely publicized by Microsoft (and yet, are designed by Microsoft for this exact scenario). I'd also heavily firewall it since you're basically inviting all sorts of malware and malicious intrusion into your environment by sticking with Windows 7 seven months after it has been cut off from support. If you BADLY need Windows 7 I strongly suggest getting either VMware Fusion, Parallels Desktop, or Oracle VirtualBox, and cloning your existing Windows 7 machine to a VM in use on one of those programs. Given the above, my strong recommendation is to do a clean Boot Camp setup with a fresh installation of Windows 10.
Unless that driver is baked into whatever Windows installer or installation you are using (which the Boot Camp Assistant will do for you), your Mac won't even recognize whatever cloned Boot Camp partition you even have.
The SSD is controlled by the T2 chip and Windows needs a driver for the T2 chip's storage controller in order to recognize your internal drive, let alone to install and boot Windows from it. (4) Even if you could clone Boot Camp partitions, you now have the T2 chip to contend with. Nor can you on the equivalent PC hardware either (you have Microsoft, Intel, and AMD to thank for that nonsense). Also, you DEFINITELY can't boot anything older than Windows 10 on a 2020 iMac, let alone any 2017-and-newer Mac. 7 is neither supported nor safe unless you have paid extended support from Microsoft (but even then, it's not really worth it considering 10 can do everything 7 did and then some). (3) We're past January 14th, 2020, so I have to throw in the obligatory, "why the hell are you running Windows 7 and not Windows 10?!" song and dance routine.
That's ordinarily a REALLY bad practice as far as Windows is concerned because, unlike with macOS, any given Windows installation isn't going to have the drivers for more than the PC/Mac it was originally installed on. You got lucky being able to go from a MacPro3,1 to a MacPro5,1 by merely swapping the drives like that. (2) You will not be able to easily clone Boot Camp partitions.
So, you're not getting that iMac to natively boot and run Windows 7 outside of a VM environment (which may be the route you want to go in terms of getting a previous Windows 7 environment to run on this new Mac anyway). (1) Macs made in 2015 and newer (also including the 2013 Mac Pro) cannot boot Windows 7, let alone have drivers support for Windows 7. You're going to have a few MAJOR issues here: