3. Success using the original Windows 7 Home DVD from Dell. After installing Windows 7 Home (license was automatically detected), I got the Broadcom Gigabyte NIC driver from Dell to access the Internet. I installed Chrome and downloaded the Windows 10 media creation tool, which allowed me to do an in-place upgrade to 21H1. As a new installation, it forced me to log in to my MS account and to choose a PIN. SSD speed is about x4 faster than the RAID-1 HD.
I purchased my custom XPS 8300 desktop in 2011. It came with an i7-2600 [NAME].4GHz, 16GB RAM, 500GB RAID1 [NAME]. It is still an amazing system and it has required only three significant hardware upgrades so far:- The on-board NIC started failing a few years ago after a Windows 7 upgrade. The issue, apparently due to the manufacturer's decision not to upgrade the driver, was discussed at that time and Dell recommended an alternative. I got an inexpensive ethernet card on Amazon, problem fixed.- A few years back, while still on Windows 7, something like the "black display, loud CPU fan, computer won't boot" annoyance became apparent every few days. Powering down the machine and restarting it seemed to be a temporary fix. For years I've been trying to figure out what the problem was. The machine passed all RAM and other hardware tests successfully; however, only 8GB of RAM was randomly detected. Finally, a couple weeks ago, I decided to replace the RAM: got 2X8GB memory bars and dumped the original 4x4GB bars. As it turned out, that was only half the problem--the loud "CPU" fan was actually the GPU fan, so I also got a better, NVidia GPU. Replaced the CPU thermal paste as well. Problems solved.Windows 10 "Fall Creators Update" runs smoothly on my XPS-8300. I have never had any Windows 10 upgrade issues (other than manually installing an Intel RST update for the first Windows 10 release) and I hope that Microsoft will continue to support this hardware.My only outstanding concern is related to the Intel Management Engine, which is automatically disabled as shown in the Device Manager. From what I read a malfunctioning IME could prevent a PC from booting up. Also, the IME version should match the BIOS version. As the BIOS (A06) has not received an update since Nov 2011, I am wondering if I should worry about this. Any ideas? Edit 2018-07-26: On v.1803 I updated the Realtek HD Audio driver as old driver randomly prevented Windows sleep.  Edit 2018-12-10: v.1809 is noticeably faster than the previous version, it all feels like a brand new rig. Edit 2019-06-22: Update to v.1903 was uneventful. Edit 2019-11-24: Update to v.1909 went well. Edit 2019-12-05: Today Microsoft updated two drivers on my XPS 8300, the Intel 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller - 1C2D and 1C26. This disabled my USB mouse and USB drives but other USB devices continued to work as expected. They fixed the problem five days later in cumulative update KB4530684. Edit 2019-12-19: Successfully upgraded the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver to v.17.7.0.1006. I keep the IntelRST driver & utility because of my RAID-1 configuration. It seldom finds a couple errors in the array and silently fixes them. I see users and vendors expressing doubts about RAID-1; maybe it's just the quality of the hardware but this is my first system without a drive failure in ~9 years.
XPS 8300 & Windows 10 Home x64 v.1709 - v.1909