[Guide] Installing Windows 7 on an NVME SSD (from a USB 3.0 thumbdrive)

I’m going to show you how to install Windows 7 with a USB key onto an NVME-based SSD such as the Samsung 950 Pro.

Along the way, you’ll be creating a bootable installation partition on this SSD. When we’re done, you can delete that partition and extend the OS partition to reclaim this space.

Here’s a brief overview of what we’ll do:

• Format the USB and copy W7 installation files onto it
• Modify those installation files so that setup has ‘native’ driver support for USB 3.0.
• Load a set of NVME drivers onto the installation USB
• Prepare BIOS for the installation
• Boot from the USB and “F6” the NVME drivers
• Using the command prompt from within setup:
  • Create the installation partition
  • Copy all files from the installation USB to this partition
  • Make the partition bootable
• Restart and boot to the installation partition
• Install windows with no difficulty!
• Delete and ‘re-integrate’ the installation partition

Here we go!



Properly format the USB Thumbdrive

On your ‘working’ computer:

1. Acquire a Windows 7 ISO file, and save it to C:\w7install
2. Take a USB 2.0 or 3.0 thumb drive (3.0 recommended) with at least 4GB capacity and plug it in.
3. Prepare the thumb drive for files:
   • Note: you can probably just quick format the thumb drive to NTFS, but to be safe, follow the procedure below.
   • Note: This will erase everything on the thumb drive
4. Open up CMD.exe as an administrator, then enter the following commands (press enter after each line):

Code:

diskpart

list disk

*Find the # of the disk corresponding to your USB stick* Then enter:

select disk # (replace # with the appropriate disk number)

clean

convert mbr

create partition primary

select part 1

active

format fs=ntfs quick

assign

exit

Copy W7 installation files onto the Thumbdrive

1. Go to https://wudt.codeplex.com/ and download and install the “Windows USB/DVD Download Tool”
2. Launch the Windows USB/DVD tool and follow the steps, selecting the ISO file you placed in C:\w7install, selecting “USB”, and then selecting the appropriate USB disk. Note: the drive letter for your USB thumbdrive may have changed due to the diskpart procedure, select carefully.
3. The tool will work for a couple of minutes, extracting files from the ISO and copying them to the USB drive. Once complete, close the program.

Modify the W7 installation files so that setup has ‘native’ driver support for USB 3.0.

1. Go here: http://www.sagernotebook.com/drivers.php
2. Select your model number. In my case, NP9758. Accept the License Agreement and press search.
3. Use Ctrl+F to find “USB 3” (or just scroll down), and download the “USB 3.0 Driver for Windows 7 64 BIT”. As of writing, the file version is 4.0.1.40, released 15 Oct 15.
   • Note: the following instructions and images were copied nearly verbatim from the following website: http://codeabitwiser.com/2014/03/how-to-install-windows-7-with-only-usb-3-0-ports/

Extract the Drivers
Once you download the drivers we will need to make a folder to place the drivers in. For the purpose of this example lets just call it “USB3 Fix”.



Inside that folder create 2 separate folders: “USB3” and “mount”.



Now extract all of the drivers into that USB3 folder.




Get the “boot.wim” and “install.wim” files
** Thanks for all the comments pointing out that you also need to update the install.wim file! **

Next we need to get the files we need to install the drivers into. Open up your USB thumb drive that has your Windows 7 image on it and go the Sources folder. Move the “boot.wim” file and “install.wim” into your “USB3 Fix” folder we created earlier.




Update the “boot.wim” and “install.wim” Files
Open up your cmd shell as an administrator. (Click Start on windows 7, or Windows Key + Q on Windows 8, type in “cmd” and then right click on the cmd application and choose Run as Administrator.)

Once open, navigate to the USB3_Fix folder in the cmd shell, and type in the following commands in this order to update the boot.wim file:

Code:

dism/mount-wim/wimfile:boot.wim/index:2/mountdir:mount

dism/image:mount/add-driver:"usb3"/recurse

dism/unmount-wim/mountdir:mount/commit

It should look something like this:


Next do the same thing to the “install.wim” file. This file has a couple different index values depending on what type of windows you are installing. You can list all of the indexes and their contents by typing in:

Code:

dism/Get-WimInfo/WimFile:install.wim

It will give you the output of the different installers and their indexes:


If you want to update all of them you will have to repeat the below process for each of the indexes you want to update. For me, I’m just installing Windows 7 Professional, so I’m going to just update that one.

Code:

dism/mount-wim/wimfile:install.wim/index:3/mountdir:mount

dism/image:mount/add-driver:"usb3"/recurse

dism/unmount-wim/mountdir:mount/commit

Replace the “boot.wim” and “install.wim” files
Now you’re done! Simply copy the modified “boot.wim” and “install.wim” file back into the “sources” directory on your Win 7 iso bootable USB thumb drive (yes to overwrite) and you're done with this section!



Load a set of NVME drivers onto the installation USB

1. Go to the following page: http://www.win-raid.com/t29f25-Recommended-AHCI-RAID-and-NVMe-Drivers.html
2. Scroll down to section G – “Samsung NVME Drivers” – and download the appropriate driver for your SSD. As of writing, mine was v1.4.7.16 WHQL.
   • Note: if given the option, get the pure driver files, not the installer set.
3. Open your W7 thumbdrive and create a folder named “nvme” in the root of the drive.
4. Copy all of the NVME driver files you just downloaded to this folder

Prepare BIOS for the installation

Ok! Now we’re done with the “working” computer and are ready to install windows. On your Sager/Clevo:

1. *Don’t insert the thumbdrive just yet*
2. Power-on the machine, and press ‘F2’ repeatedly until the BIOS setup appears
3. Move to the ‘Boot’ page, scroll down and enter the UEFI Setting menu
   • Note: your BIOS layout may be slightly different than what’s written here, depending on whether or not it’s currently in UEFI Boot mode, or if you have a custom bios installed, so hunt around until you find the right setting
4. Locate “UEFI Boot” and set it to “Disabled” (this step is strictly mandatory!)
5. Now, insert your USB thumbdrive into the laptop.
6. Go to the ‘Exit’ page in bios, and Save Changes and Exit.
7. The laptop will restart - start repeatedly pressing ‘F7’ to bring up the boot device selection menu.
8. Manually select your thumbdrive.
   • Note: if you can’t find the thumbdrive, make sure you disabled UEFI and properly formatted (using diskpart) the installation thumbdrive as listed in the first section.

Boot from the USB and “F6” the NVME drivers

1. Click through the initial windows setup pages, selecting your language and then press “Install Now”.
2. After accepting the License Terms, under “What type of installation do you want”, select ‘Custom (advanced)’.
3. You’ll now see a list of drives and partitions on your computer. If you have a non-NVME secondary drive, it will be listed here – but since Windows 7 does not yet have drivers installed for NVME, it won’t recognize any NVME SSDs. Let’s fix that.
4. Click: ‘Load Driver’ below the list of drives
5. Select Browse, and then expand the thumb drive (Likely labeled ‘Removable Disk’)
6. Select the ‘nvme’ folder, and press OK
7. You should now see a Samsung NVME Controller. Select this driver and press ‘Next’. The driver will be installed.
8. Once complete, and you’ll return to the disk selection screen and should see the NVME SSD (you may have to click refresh).

Create the installation partition & copy installation files

Note: The majority of the next section comes from the following website (modified slightly to create a separate installation partition to allow for easier removal of the installation files once setup is complete): http://druss.co/2014/07/fixed-setup...installing-windows-8-18-7-vista-etc-from-usb/

1. From within the Windows setup program, press “Shift+F10” to bring up the command prompt.
2. Enter the following commands:

Code:

diskpart

list disk

*Identify the disk # for your NVME SSD* Now enter the following commands:

select disk #  (replace # with the appropriate disk number)

create partition primary size=30000  (you could increase this number (which represents MegaBytes, but don’t make it any smaller).

select part 1

active

format fs=ntfs quick

assign letter=R (you could change R to whatever drive letter you’d to assign to your installation partition, but from now on when I mention ‘R’, I’m referring to this letter)

list volume

*Identify the volume letter for your USB thumbstick. In my case it’s D, and that’s how I’ll refer to it from now on. Don’t worry, this will be removed prior to installation, so no need to change it*

exit

d:

xcopy d: r: /e /h /k  (again, d: is the temporary letter assigned to the thumbdrive, r is the letter you chose for the installation partition)

cd boot

bootsect /nt60 r:

1. Close the command prompt
2. Remove USB Thumbdrive from your laptop
3. Exit windows installation (click the X at the top of each window). The computer will restart.
4. Upon restart you *should* be greeted by “Windows is loading files”, similar to what you saw before. If not, and you instead receive a message to the tune of “Insert boot media”, do the following:
   1. Restart, and immediately start pressing f2 repeatedly to enter BIOS setup
   2. Once there, go to the boot tab, and explicitly disable every other boot device except for the NVME SSD.
   3. Restart, and the installation partition should be found.

Congratulations! You’ve now booted from your NVME SSD for the first time!



Install Windows (finally!)

1. Again, select your language and agree to the license terms
2. Select the Custom (advanced) installation.
3. You will then be greeted by a message asking you to load a required driver.
4. Re-insert your thumb drive, and select browse.
5. Locate the NVME folder as you did before, and install the driver.
6. Once that’s complete, *remove the thumbstick* (important)
7. You should now see all drives in your computer. From here, perform a standard clean windows installation as normal:
   1. Click “Drive Options (advanced)”
   2. Select the unallocated space on your NVME SSD
   3. Create a new partition (click “New”) and select the size (it defaults to maximum)
   4. Click Format
   5. Ensure the new partition is selected, and click “Next”.
   6. Have a cold one while Windows does its thing.

Note: Once Windows is done with the first phase of its installation , it will reboot. After the Sager logo, you’ll get a brief 3-second flash of the Windows Boot Manager with two options: Windows 7, and Windows Setup [EMS Enabled]. Windows 7 (the first option) is selected by default. This is the correct option. On subsequent restarts, the selection delay will increase to 30 seconds. If you’re really impatient, go ahead and manually select the Windows 7 option.

Windows is installed! Hooray!!



Removing the additional start-up entry

The Windows Setup startup entry is still lingering around, so let’s clean that up before we remove the installation partition.

1. Launch cmd.exe as an Administrator
2. Type ‘bcdedit’ and press enter.
3. Find the entry for “Windows Setup”. The words “Windows Setup” will be found in its description field.
4. Select the identifier corresponding with this entry (including the brackets), and copy that text.
5. Now execute the following command: (replace {id} with the text you copied).

Code:

bcdedit /delete {id}

Removing the installation files and partition

This final step will allow you to reclaim the 30GB installation partition used during this process. First we must move the ‘Boot Configuration Data’ off of the installation partition and onto the OS partition.

1. Open cmd.exe as an administrator.
2. Type the following command (assuming c: is your OS drive letter – and yes, that’s not a typo, you do reference c: twice).

Code:

bcdboot c:\windows /s c:

3. Restart your computer.

Now that we can safely boot without the installation partition, we’ll remove it and reclaim its space:

1. Download and install ‘MiniTool Partition Wizard Free’ from here: http://download.cnet.com/MiniTool-Partition-Wizard-Free-Edition/3000-2094_4-10962200.html
2. Launch the Partition Wizard.
3. Locate your installation partition. It will be ~29 GB, and on the same disk as your C: drive.
4. Right-click and delete volume. It will become unallocated.
5. Now Right-click on your C: volume, and select “Extend”
6. Move the slider all the way to the right to consume the entirety of the free space, then select Ok.
7. Now press “Apply” (Top-Left of window)
8. The tool will not be able to perform the extension without restarting the laptop. Allow it to do so.
9. Once the tool completes it’s magic, you’ll return to Windows. If you’d like to confirm the operation was successful, do the following:
   • Start Menu > type ‘Create and format hard disk partitions’, and select the listed item
   • This opens the Disk Management interface. You should see your OS Disk as having a single volume which completely occupies the disk.

10. Congratulations....You’re done!

Sources:

• http://codeabitwiser.com/2014/03/how-to-install-windows-7-with-only-usb-3-0-ports/
• http://www.win-raid.com/t29f25-Recommended-AHCI-RAID-and-NVMe-Drivers.html
• http://druss.co/2014/07/fixed-setup...installing-windows-8-18-7-vista-etc-from-usb/
• http://www.hanselman.com/blog/SwitchingMyWindows7BootDiskFromDToCWithBCDBootRatherThanBCDEdit.aspx
• And about 14 hours of frustration

Download locations:

• http://www.sagernotebook.com/drivers.php?cat=617
• http://download.cnet.com/MiniTool-Partition-Wizard-Free-Edition/3000-2094_4-10962200.html
• https://mega.nz/#!IJcSDIIB!xdxM-atprqjeTTN6ZxSfyh2dJZXVSi5GsJeIy3iVNk4

I genuinely hope this guide will help out some people. It has taken me several hours just to write, on top of figuring out how to install the dang OS, so I'd like to keep it visible and accurate. If you find any egregious typos or areas which could be improved upon, please don't hesitate to post or send me a PM, and I'll keep the OP updated. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it!

 

Thanks for your work, much appreciated. Gonna need this real soon.

 

Awesome! Please post back and let us know how it went.

 

nice guide, thx for the work uve put into this

although im still wondering why the heck people would go through so much hassle to be able to stick to windows 7.... i mean, that OS is almost 6.5 years old now...

 

Awesome Guide, thank you!

 

It's crazy how much of a process this is, but this guide appears right. We have a similar guide, though we can install 7 for end-users too to save them all of this.

 

It really is wild, isn't it? I kept thinking that I must be doing something wrong, that there had to be an easier way, but several others have validated that this is very similar to the process they had to use.

TBH, because I strongly disagree with MS's 'user telemetry' data collection practices that were implemented into Windows 10 (and back ported into 8 and 7, although you can remove the spyware in 7), and the lack of transparency surrounding this decision. I can't conscionably support their product - even if free, I'm sure they're keeping a count of how many folks are using W10. I guess this is my form of civil protest.

 

Excellent, excellent guide!!!!

I have been lurking and exploring a similar setup. I cannot thank you enough for the time and effort you put into this. This will help me tremendously. Thank you again.

 

;-) worth it!

 

just use O&O shutup10 and problem solved

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

If you want dual boot, you'd want win 7 installed first, then win 10... Meanwhile, all I can see to add to the manual is how to do this with raid...

 

I'm interested.

 

OK, Q1: If you could integrate USB 3.0 drivers into wim files then why not to do the same with nvme drivers?
Q2: why not to simply use rufus for both preparing the drive and transferring windows 7 installation files to flash drive? You can delete "properly format" section.
Q3: Is it mandatory to create bootable partition on SSD for installation if you already launched it from USB drive with proper drivers successfully?

 

I don't have a second 950 Pro so can't be the one to test that out, but I can imagine that it would involve a similar procedure - set bios to RAID instead of AHCI, load your thumb drive up with RAID drivers, and 'F6' them during setup. Just a guess, of course.

 

Great points...

A1 - you probably could, I'm not sure. After 14 hours of trial and error, I'd tried to reduce as many variables as possible, so didn't want to risk introducing another 'unknown'. I knew F6-ing the drivers worked, and didn't add much time to the process, so left it as is. It very well might work though, let us know if you try it out!

A2 - Hadn't been aware of Rufus, could probably work, particular for those without windows running on a separate computer. But I did try to reduce the number of third party applications required. If it can be done natively, why not.

A3- Yes, unfortunately it is- an that's the quirky thing about this installation. Believe me, I tried to install straight from USB. Setup refuses to install to the SSD (citing hardware incompatibilities) unless the installation files are also located on the drive.

 

OK, thanks for answers.
About tird-party programs. You can just launch native disk management (type "format" in Start and choose "format drive or..." and then you will see a window wjere you can delete and spread partitions.
P.S. Rufus is faster than Win7 USB tool

 

I definitely tried that, but Disk Management wouldn't let me expand the OS partition. I believe it's because the installation partition was in front of the OS partition. I've been able to expand a partition using the Windows Disk Management interface in the past, but only when the unallocated space came after the partition I was attempting to expand. Hence the need for a 3rd partition manager.I'm under the impression that the windows 8 and 10 Disk Management interface are significantly improved.

 

I'm very interested to hear reports from anyone who attempts this. I've now had two completely inexplicable windows crashes - a stuck process & complete freeze in one, and a crash while I was AFK in another - that have resulted in an "Insert Boot Media" message. The only solution at that point was to insert the installation USB and launch a repair console to perform startup repair (after manually loading the NVME drivers).

I'm desperately hoping this is a bug in one of the Windows NVME drivers (I have the latest Samsung one installed).

EDIT: I haven't installed all Windows 7 updates yet, hoping perhaps that will prevent this from happening again in the future. All system drivers are updated with the latest from Sager's website, however.

 

Could the program have screwed up the boot record in reclaiming the space? Contact pro-star and see what they did different.

 

Hopefully getting all the updates on there fixes that.

Are you getting the Sager drivers for that machine with windows 7 and not transitioning them from the W10 drivers?

 

The boot record was fine for a good ~30 reboots, then *poof*, gone. Hasn't happened again, but I've since updated W7.

Yes, I'm specifically downloading W7 drivers straight from Sager's website. The only exception is for the Killer 1535 - I went to their site to get the latest driver as it was having some real issues (why didn't I go with Intel... I know better!), and of course the 950 pro's NVME driver, which isn't available through Sager.

 

Alright, well I spoke too soon. It just happened again. And it was 100% associated with a process failure. Spontaneously Windows hung and indicated that a process had frozen. But at that point there is no response to user input, so I can't diagnose which process hung up. Either way, upon restart, "Insert Boot Media".

I performed a system repair, and this time checked the diagnostic log. The problem was: "The partition table does not have a valid System Partition".

I'm fairly certain this is a bug in the storage drivers.... I guess this is the problem with being on the bleeding edge!

 

Well, in my 16 years of building PCs, this one is entirely new:

I'd say this configuration is not ready for primetime.

This was the result of yet another process hang then crash. BIOS didnt even indicate "Missing Boot Media" or anything, it simply displayed this corrupted string.

 

That's the exact reason why I didn't go with anything that has Killer on it, garbage drivers, it's been almost 2 years since I had the Killer 1200 or whatever the older model number was and I learned my lesson. Never touching anything coming from Qualcomm again!

 

Although you may be able to install Windows 7, HIDevolution (where I bought my laptop from) highly recommended against it. This laptop was made for Windows 10, simple as that.

 

In addition to the boot sector / partition table (not sure which) erasure (likely caused by a faulty NVME driver), the other problems experienced were:

Could not update windows via windows update. Updates wouldn't download, they'd remain at 0%. I tried fixing this for about 4 hours (all the usual and advanced fixes for such a problem)

WIFI drivers (for the Killer 1535) didn't work. Speedtests regularly gave me 50% throughput for about 5 seconds, followed by a complete stall and timeout. LAN was operational.

I'm installing Windows 10. I'll revert back to 7 once (well, if) the drivers have matured a bit, but I have a small window of opportunity this weekend to test out the hardware on this new laptop before hitting the road for 3 weeks. If something's faulty, I need to return it by Monday. So much for my little protest, eh?

 

I actually just ordered an Intel 8260 from Amazon. May send it back if the Killer drivers for W10 work as expected, but WiFi will be essential for the upcoming travel.

 

Great job! at least now you won't have any headaches with drivers and it works great!

Be sure to check
NBR Windows 10 Clean Installation Guide

 

Nice guide, thanks!

 

How much was the card, maybe you can try each anyway and just sell the one you like least?

 

I wouldn't exactly call Windows 7 "bleeding edge"... No offense.

In your guide, it says CMS instead of CSM, you should probably change that to CSM so people don't get confused.

 

Just thought of this, why not create both partitions at the same time, the larger one first, then the smaller one. Then, when you install it, the larger partition it is installed in is the first position on the hard drive.

 

Bout 50 bucks. Still no luck with the Killer in Windows 10, though. I'm starting to think this may be a hardware issue with the card itself. Do you know if individual parts are covered under the warranty without having to send back the entire machine? (I purchased from you guys).

Clearly

Good call. Definitely worth trying, although no clue if it would solve the issue. The issue always happened after a Windows Process froze, so I'm very suspicious of a driver error that resulted in the corruption of the BCD. Unfortunately, moot point for me at the moment, I'm up with Windows 10 so I can give the hardware a good shakeout.

 

@bfishman Give the support guys a call, they will be able to advise you

 

yeah i couldnt get windows 7 working so i ended up just installing windows 10 lol...

 

Ha! Oh well. Probably better for the long haul.

 

In fairness, I'm pretty happy with 10, and with Matrix Leader's clean w10 installation guide and O&O's Shutup10, I'm feeling much better about the privacy issue. Hope that's not a placebo

 

no worries, same here my first install of win10 had a few bugs, i guess that was based on my excessive use of cleaning programs after reinstall and adjustment of the cleaning algorithms pertaining to system files and registry entries, i now got an absolutely fluent and bug free system all with shutup10, naturally....thats an absolute must with this OS!

as for it being placebo: go ahead and try several of the functions it disables, theyre all non-functional

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Yup probably worth it in the end....
everything is windows 10 and i noticed that windows 10 loads a lot faster than 7.
it seems to be better on battery saving too.

With the privacy issue stuff, i downloaded donotspy10 and ran all the actions to disable the privacy stuff completely.
Should be fine....

 

Aye, Windows 8(.1) and 10 are widely regarded as better "under the hood" than 7. The rest is personal preference.

 

Thanks for the heads-up, I guess its time for me to get with the times. I normally adapt to new O/S's pretty easily so i don't think it will be an issue.

 

I should mention - several of the problems I encountered after installation may not have been the fault of W7 after all. It turns out my SSD was a bit loose in the socket (!). I discovered this only after installing W10, however, so can't be sure.

But W10 is growing on me. At least, I've been able to curtail some of MS's bright ideas and make the OS feel like a more professional environment. You named your search bar after a video-game character? Really? No thanks.

I should add a new '0th step' to my install guide: make sure your hd is plugged in all the way

 

Hello all! I used this guide to install W7 onto a Samsung Pro 950 in a Asus Z170-A motherboard. Everything worked out alright. I did have to do a few things differently.

First of all, in the "Create the installation partition & copy installation files" section, at toward the end of the the command line entries I had to change my directory back to R: after the "xcopy" step in order for the "bootsect /nt60 r:" to work properly. Was I supposed to do this?

I'm having a little bit of a problem now, though. When I try to take back that 30GB partition, whenever I go to delete it in the MiniTool Partition Wizard Free program, once I restart it ends up deleting the W7 install and I have to start all over from the beginning. Could this be because I changed where my directory was when I did the bootsect command?

What I ended up doing in the meantime is I shrunk the partition down to 4.5GB and extended my C: partition into that remaining unallocated space. I'm still left with that 4.5GB partition though... Plus, that partition (which doesn't have a volume letter) is listed as "Boot" and then the C:\ partition is listed as "System" (this might be the other way around, I frankly don't remember at the moment). AND the no-drive-letter partition is listed as the active partition on top of all of that.

I sure could use some insight here. I don't wanna leave this guy's computer like this.

One last thing, in the UEFI/BIOS, his motherboard set his M.2 slot as a SATA Express instead of M.2. Is this something that I can change without reinstalling W7? Does that option even matter?.

 

Hello! Apologies for the slow response, I'm not at home and so cannot try to reproduce the issue you're having.

I'm 90% certain you shouldn't need to to change the directory back to R: before running bootsect, as the program most certainly exists on the thumb drive, D:.

I'm inclined to believe you either missed a step or typed something incorrectly. I have done 2 clean installs following my own guide to check it for accuracy. But if you're still having an issue, consider manually changing your boot volume by following the steps in the answer to this question:

http://superuser.com/questions/6936...hat-windows-7-boots-from-the-system-partition

I can't speak to the SATA Express setting in the BIOS... But off the cuff, I think M2 just refers to the physical slot type for the card, and underlying that is a PCI Express connection. Whether or not that's the same as SATA Express, I couldn't say, but I doubt the BIOS would ever make mention of M2.

 

Thanks so much for the guide. I followed it to a "T" except for updating both the Pro and Ultimate images.

All worked well, and I created a boot partition on the 950 Pro, however after booting to this partition and F6-ing the NVME drivers again, partitioning the unallocated space and formatting, I still get an error that windows cannot install to this drive.

"Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu."

EDIT: An update.

So after "booting from the NVME drive for the first time" and inserting the flash drive to F6 the NVME drivers, my system will refuse to go back to installing from the NVME drive. If I remove the flash drive (is asteric'd as "very important") the windows install will error that it can no longer load.

With the flash drive remaining plugged in, the install will continue from the flash drive.

I'll let windows load this way and see if it works.

EDIT2: This method did install windows however, unfortunately when using the minitool to blow away the 30G partition, the system again became unbootable.

 

Hello everyone, quite an impressive tutorial bfishman, took me about a couple of hours to follow all the steps, and now I try to install the win7 on my newly built Z170 pc. I've got a Samsung Pro 950 on a motherboard by As rock, a Z170 Extreme 4+, an i3 6100 and after updating to the last bios/uefi version available, the 950Pro is detected by the uefi in the boot manager. The problem I experience is around the F6 section, loading the NVMe drivers from the NVMe folder created as you described. Both x86 and 64 bit driver detected but the windows installer refuses to load them as they seem non signed drivers. Of course the drivers are Samsung's latest WHQL version, NVMe drivers v1.4.7.17 WHQL downloaded from Samsung. Any clue?
Edit: The .iso image seems had been the problem. I've got a win7ultimate_64_sp1 .iso, the previous one was a 20in1 win7 .iso. I followed the same steps, this time it worked until I had to restart and boot from the ssd, after the 30GB partion been made and moved all the required data from flash drive unto that partition. After restart the system was unable to boot from that 30GB (set active) partition, no matter I tried. In the end I just thought i should skip creating the 30Gb partiton and bypass the installlation from that partition as described in the tutorial, just format the ssd as a single pertition, of course with the additional 100MB one. It worked like a charm, 2 minutes later booting up for the first time into win7 from my new 950 Pro.

 

Interesting. Here, Windows install dialog won't allow windows to install to this partition.

 

Upon getting to the last step of deleting the previous install partition with Partition wizard, a warning comes up stating that deleting this partition may make the system unbootable. Proceed anyway?

 

Yes you should be fine to continue and remove it.

 

Hi,
I'm trying to install Win7 Pro onto a Santech R39 notebook, equipped with a Samsung 950 Pro M2 SSD. I followed your tutorial till the "Prepare BIOS for installation". I press F7, boot from my Sandisk USB3 thumbdrive, Win7 setup windows asks me to choose the language, date/time format and keyboard layout, then I press "Install".

At this time, a window appears telling me that a device driver required for the CD/DVD device is missing. Choosing "Browse" lets me see only a "X:" drive, different from that of the inserted usb3 thumbdrive. No other thumbdrive/SD card is recognized and showed as source to load a driver from.

Even if my keyboard and mouse work fine and do not hang, and during the operations with .wim files I got "operation completed succesfully", I thought the problem is with USB3 drivers. So I put my USB3 drivers ( http://www.santech.eu/oldrivers/index.php?dlid=1101) onto a newly formatted sata hdd and I mounted to the mainboard (Samsung 950 pro still present).

Now I can browse the hdd and choose the drivers, but Win7 still complains, mumbing for a while and then telling me he could not find new devices.
More precisely, If I choose the drivers under the HCSwitch folder, Win7 finds a "PCI bus" driver.
If instead I choose the drivers under the xHCI folder, I must uncheck the flag "hide not compatible device drivers" to show 15 USB3 drivers (most of them duplicated and pointing to the same .inf file), but none of them work.

Could you advice to me other USB3 drivers? My hardware is:

Intel Core i7-6700
MB Series: P7xxDM(-G)
chipset: Intel Z170 Express



Thank you for your support,
Filippo