Switching to an out-of-support Windows version on a MacBook

As has been stated repeatedly, your Window 7 media is useless on an M-Series (ARM64) Mac architecture. You can obtain a Windows 11 Pro license from StackSocial for around $12USD. Then download the ARM64 version of Windows 11 Pro from Microsoft. The only installation that won't bite you would be into a Virtual Machine guest.

A couple of free Virtual Machines come to mind that run on M-Series Macs: 1) the free VMware Fusion 25H2 version, or 2) UTM. The Broadcom support portal will expect you to create an account and sign in before downloading the VMware Virtual Machine. Additional VMware support can be found here. Help with installing and configuring Windows 11 Pro in either VM is outside the scope of Apple Support Communities.

There is a third free Virtual Machine: VirtualBox 7.2 or later. I don't recommend it.

If you have an M-series Mac, then you can no longer dual boot macOS & Windows.

If you want to use Windows 11 on an M-series Mac, then you will need to use an ARM version of Windows installed into a Virtual Machine....older versions of Windows are not supported. There are some restrictions on what will actually work on the ARM version of Windows. Here is a Microsoft article about it:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/options-for-using-windows-11-with-mac-computers-with-apple-m1-m2-and-m3-chips-cd15fd62-9b34-4b78-b0bc-121baa3c568c

You cannot run Windows 7 in any useful way on a M-series Mac. That is an Intel/AMD-only system.

M-series Macs do not support Boot Camp / dual-booting Windows at all. Even virtual machines require the use of ARM versions of operating systems. There are emulators, but those are horribly slow, and I do not know if there are any that can even emulate a whole machine well enough to run Windows 7 at a painful crawl.

Hey so you have options regardless of your MacBook. On M series macbooks, you should use VMware fusion to virtualize a Windows machine. Honestly, it doesn't run the smoothest, but there are many tutorials to cut down on the performance of Windows. It still lets you browse, run indie games, go through files and etc. If you do not have a M series Macbook, which I assume as you are talking about Windows 7, the process is typically downloading the Windows iso image onto a flashdrive, plugging it into your macbook, then booting from it. If you want more details on how to dual boot, either ask me or look at the many tutorials online. Good luck!

Have a check to make sure that the Windows 7 activation servers/system are still online. Last time I installed it (years ago) the registration was via a recorded telephone call.