I was recently tasked with a small challenge. Given that we have a fair amount of circa-2005, quad-screen workstations running Windows XP for which we know the clock is ticking, is it possible to upgrade them to Windows 7 even if they have ancient Matrox graphic cards?
The answer is, yes, with some limitations. Matrox doesn't have a clear stance on Win7 support for the G450 series. By downloading their latest driver which is supposed to support Win7 SP1, the installer fails without even a hint of what is going on.
By searching for and trying various older drivers, I found out that the WHQL drivers do not support the G450, but the non-WHQL do. To get these drivers, you have to go to the "archived support drivers" area and scroll down to the latest non-WHQL driver you can find for your platform. In my case, it was version 211_00_183. The driver installs and the graphic card works. Case closed.
Of course, by using non-WHQL drivers, you might be asked by Microsoft to remove these drivers if you run into problems and ask for support.
For the curious, these workstations have been limited to being quad-screen ICA clients a long time ago, so I don't expect any performance impact by moving them to Windows 7. If we move on with this scenario, we'll be saving the company some money by extending the life of this equipment for a few more years.
