XPS 9560 - Any luck getting Win7 on this thing?

Hello All,

I recently purchased my DELL XPS 9560 with i7-7700HQ Kaby Lake processor but am having a hard time with Windows 10. I have tried win10 for over 2 months, i really dislike it.

I understand that Microsoft has placed restrictions on Win7 being used with my Kaby Lake processor but i have also read that there is a work around to the problem -- read more here.

Question is, has anyone actually managed to get my model working nice in Win7? Would you care to post a link to the guide you followed?

If i can establish that it is even possible then it will be a very helpful starting point. My goal is to eventually dual boot between Win7 and OSX as i use both OS's frequently, but for now i am just focusing on getting comfy with my XPS, and using windows 10 is really not helping matters.

Many thanks in advanced to all who share and this wonderful forum.

My full spec can be found here (expand "BUILD MY DELL")

 

What is the issue with W10?
Yes it takes a bit to get used to but it’s better than W7.

 

Its just really sluggish. I have disabled pretty much everything i could find but its just not as responsive as Win7. Things take longer to open, it just doesn't feel quick.

Plus there is all the privacy stuff (though i must say i haven't paid it much mind) i've seen littered across the web.

 

I am not a big fan of Win 10, but one app I use that seems to make it tolerable for me is Start 10 from Stardock. best $4.99 I spent.

It gives the look and feel of Win 7 interface on your Windows 10 OS.

 

*Bump

Can anyone (other than Win10 fanboys please) confirm whether they have successfully got Win7 to work on this laptop? It is VERY painful for me to use Windows 10 even for a single day longer and am considering wiping the entire SSD with all recovery partitions and just starting again fresh in the hope that the drivers downloaded from DELL will work in Win7.

For anyone wondering why i need to kill windows 10, ask your self this... Do you even remember what a fast, stable and non BSOD oops i mean GSOD functional laptop feels like?

Windows 10 is not it! It is however absolute garbage.

 

judging by the fact that no one has commented on this thread since you started it I would say it's limited. You should search reddit to see if anyone there has done it, or just try it yourself.

I have 0 issues with win10 on mine, but if you're not happy then try to figure it out.

 

Happy to try it myself and report back findings, though i'd prefer to mitigate bricking the unit if possible- hence my posts across several forums.

I guess i'm on my own on this one *sigh

I cannot believe other XPS owners are happy with the performance of Windows 10. I find Win10 to be so piss poor, unstable, focused for touch (even AFTER changing the shell) all copies of it should be buried with the Atari E.T. game cartridges in New Mexico. And there they shall rot together in an orgy excremental inconvenience until they finally meet their maker Lucifer, whom will gather all copies and return them to the underworld from whence they came. Goodbye to Bad rubbish. I'm wiping my drive. Up yours MS and your silly ultimatums.

 

I don't know how installing an OS would brick your laptop. If you manage that then I'll buy you a beer.

My desktop has an up-time of 4 weeks, windows 10 is plenty stable. It would likely have a longer uptime but I just installed a few more 8tb drives.

 

Well lucky you. Enjoy your Win 10 laptop man. I on the other hand have had enough of constant green screens telling me windows 10 is 'preparing' my system. Crap. I would wager a bet if i get Win 7 working correctly on here that i can accomplish tasks faster than another XPS 9560 same spec system running Win 10. I have no doubt. Nor will i suffer the inconvenience, nor the GSOD, nor the privacy, nor the....

 

Let us know how it goes.

 

So hit a wall (as always) Windows 7 installer cannot see the internal m.2 SSD.

Found this champion guide. Super determined to kill Win 10 http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...an-nvme-ssd-from-a-usb-3-0-thumbdrive.783921/

Hope this helps someone. Will report back.

 

I mean none of those are the fault of MS. Windows 7 was released July 22, 2009 (long before NVMe or USB3). Welcome to the world of installing an out of date OS (good OS, but out of date).

 

I know the feeling. I've tried Win10 and have vowed it will never be my OS.

I have no experience with the XPS 9560 so can't be specific, but I have successfully installed Win7 on a Kaby Lake Latitude E5470 a few months ago. I'll share my notes, in case they help you at all. The process involves patching your Win7 install media with USB3 and M.2 drivers.

===========================================================================
E5470 Installation Notes

Optional: Before nuking Win10, install "dell-usb-recovery-tool_wjfv2_win_2.0.2.0_a00.exe" to download Win10 OS Recovery image from support.dell.com. That way, you'll be able to reinstall Win10 if Win7 doesn't work for some reason.

To install Win7 on E5470 with M.2 SATA SSD, first use Intel's USB3Creator to patch both USB3 drivers and IRST/NVMe drivers into the DVD or USB boot media. Trying to "browse" to drivers during installation never seems to work; the install media sees the drivers but can't install them, so embed them in the boot media instead.

Drivers to patch include:
USB3 drivers
M.2 drivers

Intel's USB3Creator is designed for inserting Intel USB3 drivers into USB boot media for installing Windows 7.

Download USB3Creator from https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25476/NUCs-Windows-7-USB-3-0-Creator-Utility . Note there are two versions, depending on the host system on which you're doing the patching of your Win7 install media.

For M.2 support, download "f6flpy-x64.zip" from https://downloadcenter.intel.com/do...d-Storage-Technology-Intel-RST-?product=55005 .

Copy the f6flpy-x64 drivers into "USB3Creator\USB_Drivers\x64" folder.

Win7 installation files must be writable, so convert your iso or DVD to USB media and patch the USB stick, or extract DVD contents to a temporary folder for patching and then rebuild iso.

USB3Creator expects boot.wim and install.wim to be in \sources of root folder, so if extracting contents to a temporary folder use subst command to assign a substitute drive letter to the temporary folder.

If patching a DVD or iso file, extract the contents of the DVD or iso file into a folder of its own, then use subst command to assign that folder a drive letter, then run USB3Creator and select that drive letter in "USB Drive Path". Click "Create Image".

===========================================================================
Additional notes:

You may need to be resourceful in identifying various hardware devices in Device Manager and locating Win7 drivers for them. I found "E5470-W7-driverpack.zip" somewhere on Dell's site, which appears to be an assortment of E5470 drivers for Enterprise installers. It came in handy when resolving an "Unknown device" in DevMgr. I'm not sure if Dell has something like that for the 9560.

Microsoft's KB2920188 patch is only needed for PTT/BitLocker on x64 version of Win8+. PTT is not supported
on Win7 nor the x32 install of Win8+, so disable PTT in BIOS to avoid the Unknown device
"ACPI\MSFT0101" in DevMgr.


The above are my notes from installing Win7 on a Win10 Kaby Lake E5470. Hopefully, some of that might help you figure out how to do the same on a 9560. Just glancing over it, the method you linked to in post #11 appears to accomplish the same goal (patching the install media), though in a somewhat different manner.

 

I know that I'm new here but maybe this will work:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads...SkyLake-KabyLake-CoffeLake-Ryzen-Threadripper

You can take a vanilla win 7 iso and it inputs into the iso all the drivers that and other things that are necessary to run win 7 on new hardware and have it recognized. IE NVME, USB 3.1, etc

It takes a while to update the iso so be patient. Mine came out to 5.34gb when completed. Look at the web page to see what it can and can't do. I didn't try it on my system to test, but it's another direction you could try. If it does anything to your machine I am not responsible. As I said, I only used the program and created the iso, I didn't install it.

If this has been posted already, apologies. I'm new here.

 

Dell 7577 here with Windows 7 running lovely. You will likely need to hunt down a few drivers manually or be clever and pull them from an older model Dell with a generation older hardware or that offers Win8 support though.

I use this tool:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads...SkyLake-KabyLake-CoffeLake-Ryzen-Threadripper

and a stock copy of Win7 iso to start with and it will press a fully updated image ready to be copied to a bootable USB drive which you can make with Rufus. The tool takes about ~2 hrs to do everything from start to finish. In Rufus I made my USB boot disk a GPT disk for UEFI booting on my multiboot system. There are a few other tools worth getting prepared beforehand as well just in case you find you need them to recover from a mistake. Things like: BCD Editor, Visual BCD, Dual Boot Repair, and Linux Ubuntu (or just Gparted).

 

Dell 7577 too
Have you guys been able to find proper Synaptics touchpad driver?
The generic one is removed from Synaptics site, and all drivers I could find on Dell just don't work properly.

 

See my post above. Maybe I will see if I can't dig my touch driver out later today for you.

 

@enkod

Dell 7577 - Windows 7 x64 - working touchpad driver:
https://mega.nz/#!paBg1SwJ!3fQLbPViQb87p198l-j536x9acZDxpWtchxZuSe2Pjk

The EXE Dell driver file was pulled from Dell's website January 2018. There is an additional folder labeled extracted with the contents of the EXE already unpacked for you. Use 7Zip to open the zipped file linked above. Cheers.

 

@Maleko48

Awesome, many thanks! The darn thing is working finally, much appreciated.

(Now the only thing left is to find out why the hell Bluetooth is not appearing in Device Manager, but that seems to be a HW issue)

On a general note, I don't remember having any issues installing Windows 7 itself onto 7577, but I did have to fiddle with chipset driver, hacking .ini file so that win7 can pick correct entries.