Sorry for the slow reply. I have not had much time to play with it. Decent (e.g., Dell Inspiron) laptops can be quite inexpensive. I haven't decided to go that route yet and may try the VM route first. I will probably go with a new laptop or VM before refurbished desktop, mostly for space reasons. I have plenty of monitors, keyboards, and mice if needed. The laptop could stay downstairs where I do the sort of stuff needing Win 10.
As for alternative sites to open and/or download software, thank you. Earlier today, I tried Archive.com. I was aware of the way back machine and had wrongly assumed it was just a visual image of a site's pages. After a bit of fiddling, I was able to get to and download Capture NXD v.1.2.1. It installed and seems to work. Not sure whether its date is Nov. 28,2014 or Feb. 6, 2021. It does allow running in "Windows Vista compatibility" mode which I take as a sign it should work with Windows 7. Attached is a RAW/NEF capture that was opened with that program. To be usable, Capture NXD will take a lot of learning. That is, it is not as intuitive as Photoshop CS3.
I will also try RawTherapee.
Thank you for the help.
Regards, John
EDIT#1
I just downloaded and installed RawTherapee. It seems a little easier and considerably faster than Nikon's Capture NXD. There even seem to be, at least on Google, more user resources on the web. Thanks again.