{DISCLAIMER - I'm a linux nerd -- I haven't lived with W7. I haven't used Windows daily since W98SE, and I only know XP as a gamebox. So there will be obvious things that are not obvious for me. But the TweakGuides Tweaking Companion for W7 has helped a lot with that. Archived here.}

I've got a freshly retired W7 box: 2011 i7-2600. It was the lightly-used web appliance of a senior. It was updated regularly to last month. It's very clean, and very default.

I'd like to preserve it as an offline gamebox. Since I can't re-install it, I'm only going to add the DX10/11 games that XP can't run.

Things have been pretty straightforward, but what about this Validation business, where W7 needs to phone home? I've found bugger-all solid information about that.

The only thing I've found like a proper technical description is the XP-era breakdown of WGA at Groklaw.
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story … 060608002958907

Do we know what to expect for W7? This is an uneasy mystery.

----
Back to fun, here's the project so far.

I found the machine is very clean and very sorted, except for a mass of errors when you open Task Scheduler. Turned out that's what happens when someone does a roll-back from trying W10. Fixed that: https://github.com/Dijji/RepairTasks

I found about 300GB of orphaned user files. Apparently this is because you can delete a user and choose to leave their files behind. The box had arrived showing only User1, with pass 1234 and no files.

Tried srm (secure-delete) to clean things, but that left about half the files behind because they were hardlinked. Apparently this is a common complaint, but with no-one providing an explanation or a solution. So I used bleachbit instead (thank you Hillary).

And I've cloned the HDD so I can return to this clean state.

Next up:
- Swap in some graphics cards and run benchmarks. I'll probably use the HD5870; PSU is 600W. My understanding is W7 will not pull a validation hissy-fit if I swap cards a few times, and I'm hoping that's true.
- Then pull things completely apart for a wash. There was very little dust to remove, but there is a slight smell of dog.

Games:
- Maybe FSX only. I'm really well covered by consoles and XP/DOS hardware, so this box may become a dedicated flight sim. That would also solve the dog problem.