Hi,
Does anyone know if this is possible? Just as title - I have a Windows 10 laptop, and I want to be able to send the screen to a Windows 7 laptop (same local WiFi network) - preferably at no cost
Screen Mirroring requires Miracast is not natively supported in Windows 7. You will need a third party program to do this. I don't have any experience with this so can't help you with that.
I have sent the screens of one computer to another with Windows 10 or 11. It is straightforward in Windows 10 or 11 to set this up. Note this works with both desktops and laptops as long as they have WiFi.
There are a number of remote desktop programs that should work for sharing a screen with Win7.
"Teamviewer" has long been a standard in this space, and is allegedly free for personal use ... but they have a reputation for annoying their free users by randomly accusing them of being commercial users and locking their accounts, even for relatively infrequent use.
"Anydesk" is another alternative. This is the program I still use for free when I need to provide support to my family, who live in different States. Though they seem to be trying to phase out the free tier, it's still listed on their "Pricing" page.
"Distant Desktop" is yet another alternative, though their free use is time-limited monthly, so I don't know if that would be a factor for you.
The Achilles Heel with all of these is the traffic goes across the internet, so it's kind of silly if you're merely connecting two machines on the same LAN. Also, they're reliant on the companies' servers to make the connection between your two computers. AFAIK, your traffic doesn't actually go through their servers, but their server is required to transfer IP tokens to both machines and then the programs on your machines take over with a direct internet connection between them. But that paradigm leaves you at the mercy of the company, which can leave you high and dry if they decide to shut off their servers -- as happened with "Mikogo", another free remote screen sharing app that simply disappeared.
I believe the open-source "TightVNC" is supposedly designed primarily for screen sharing on the same LAN, but I haven't actually used it so can't comment further. If you can get it to work, that might be your best bet.
thanks for the responses. I've actually found an acceptable solution. given that the target Windows 7 laptop is literally (or even actually) going to be less than 6ft away from the W10 source and not moving, I'm going to use an HDMI to USB input adapter, and take the HDMI output from the W10 laptop using a 2 metre long HDMI cable and feed it into the adapter, into a USB port on the W7 laptop. then run OBS studio (W7 compatible version, not the latest) to display the HDMI --> USB input
Then I have a nifty bluetooth remote control for the W10 laptop, which gives me enough control over the W10 laptop which is now 6 feet away (play, pause, forward back vol up down mute)
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