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

Hi again,
I gave up trying to make Win7 aware of USB3 ports, and I made my secondary sata HDD bootable, with Win7 setup onto it, as if it would be my usb3 thumbdrive.

All went fine until, using MiniTool Partition Wizard Free, I deleted the installation partition onto my SSD 950 drive and extended the OS partition: when I rebooted my notebook I received a dreadful "ntldr missing: press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart" message!

How could it be possible? I successfully applied the bcdboot command! I'm going to repeat all the steps, but is there a tool to verify that my OS partition has its Boot Configuration Data, prior to delete the other partition?

Thank you again,
Filippo


[EDIT:]
I realized that now my C: SSD drive holds the boot partition while the D: HDD drive holds the system partition (active). That happened because using a HDD as if it were my thumbdrive I could not be able to remove it as stated *important* in the tutorial. Alas...

I found that I could solve the issue running 3 times Microsoft Startup Repair program, but I cannot do it since it has no usb3 support and again I am against it.

So I must succeed in making Win7 setup recognize my usb3 ports. Could you hep me on this topic, please?

 

That may be a weird issue with your particular usb drive, have you tried another?

 

Hi, I tried to install (through the setup.exe) the usb3 drivers onto my Win7 splitted between the SSD and HDD and it failed because they were not compatible with my hardware! So I downloaded the last ones from Intel and they installed successfully.

So, now, I'm repeating the steps involving modifying the .wim files adding those new drivers instead of the not compatible ones. I hope this would solve all my problems. I'll let you know how it ends...

Thank you again for having replied to me,
Filippo

 

Hi,
the new USB3 driver worked fine and my thumbstick got recognized.

I followed all the steps until step 6 of "Install Windows (finally!)" section, and now problems arise:

If I remove the thumbstick and press Next to proceed with installation, Windows says "Windows is unable to install to the selected location. Error: 0x80300001."

If I don't remove the thumbstick (fearing to get then the boot partition in one place and the system partition in another one) the installation proceeds copying files and decompressing them, but when I remove the thumbstick during this process I get "Windows cannot install required files. Make sure all files required for installation are available, and restart the installation. Error: 0x80070015" and the installation aborts. WHY the hell Windows uses my thumbstick, that is meant only to provide the nvme drivers?

I feel very frustrated...

 

The files are required throughout the setup process. You should be fine leaving the drive inserted; I think the partition issue you mentioned is more prevalent in Win 7 than 10.

 

It should not put the boot partition information on a USB device either.

 

Hi,
I left my thumbstick inserted during the installation of Win7 and all went fine. Now it comes for me to use MiniTool Partition Wizard to delete the 1st partition but I think it wouldn't be a good idea. Opening Disk Management interface I can see that the C: partition (the big one) is for Boot, Page File, Crash Dump while the "hidden" partition (the 30GB one) is for System, Active. If I delete that latter partition, would Win7 never start anymore, since the system partition is gone?

I wouldn't have to redo averything from the beginning!

Filippo

 

@effebruno - I don't think the 30GB partition is relevant to your new install of Windows. Were you not able to delete that partition during the Windows setup?

 

Hi all,
I made a big breath and followed the tutorial, deleting the 30GB (SYSTEM) partition and... I was not able to boot anymore!

I plugged in my thumbstick, F7 after the POST and booted from it again, chosing to repair windows. When I rebooted it MiniTool Partition Wizard did no change as it realized that some change had taken place. Then, I was again with my Win7 running, with the system partition on the 30GB partition and the boot one on the other one.

I SOLVED MY ISSUE (pure luck!!!) after I went in Disk Management interface, right-clicked on my "big" partition and set it "active", despite windows warning me I could boot no more. When I rebooted my machine, all went ok and I found the 30GB partition without the "system" attribute and visible (as D). I then launched MiniTool Partition Wizard to delete it and extend the big one.

Consider to update this great tutorial adding the advice to make the "boot" partition "active" before deleting the other partition and extending the other one.

Btw, I wish to thank you all of you for this great tutorial: you are the only ones (I found) that have proven that I could install Win7 over a Samsung 950 Pro. The reseller of my notebook just told me it was impossible, and that I was forced to install Win10.

Regards,
Filippo

 

I got an easy way to clone the Windows Partition from a SATA SSD to a NVMe SSD without data loss, may i share? Booting also works..
Just made an account to share this

 

Thanks for following up, @effebruno ! Too bad to hear about the hassle, but glad you're all set up now.

 

Hi,
all went fine installing Win7 but what happens now is that the whole Win7 boot process takes a very long time, compared with that of my old pc using a mechanical HD!

On my old pc, when I switch it on, I see the BIOS messages, then a black screen with a static message "Windows starting..." and after 2 or 3 seconds I can seen the animation with the coloured flags that come in. After a bit of seconds I am asked to insert my credentials.

On this new notebook with Win7 installed on the Samsung 950 Pro SSD, the phase before the flags animation takes a very long time (25 seconds) with the hd led continuously flashing. After that, I see a green progress bar at the bottom of the screen (the same I saw the very first time I run the Win7 setup on the unformatted/unpartitioned drive), that is not part of the boot process on my old pc.
This phase with the progress bar ends quickly and the animated flags come in, and I am asked my credential very soon.

Could it be that the boot process is very slow because Win7 does something "unuseful" before giving control to the normal boot sequence (the flags animation phase), like to load an entire s.o. image to begin a new setup (the progress bar makes me suspect this)?

How could I troubleshoot this?

Thank you again for all your help,

Filippo

 

@effebruno

I have never seen any progress bar at the Windows splash. Did this begin happening before you installed any drivers and Windows updates? Or after?

 

I think it has always done this way from the beginning.

Today I booted Win7 in safe mode to be able to edit the hosts file and I saw that it is very slow when it loads the various drivers (1-2 every second, instead of a quick list of drivers scrolling down). Could it be a useful clue?

 

The only green progress bar I recall is the one seen when running recovery options; it's identical to the one that was used when Windows Vista would boot. I think there's a small issue with your installation, as your boot up time should be fast with a 950 Pro (and I don't think you should be seeing any green progress bar, nor should Safe Mode take that long to load drivers).

You can try the command line: sfc /scannow

I doubt you have any file integrity issues, though. It's hard to say what is causing this.

 

I followed all of the steps up until booting from the nvme drive for the first time. after i copied all of the files from the flash drive onto the internal drive, i restart, and it just boots into the bios boot manager. selecting the nvme drive or anything else does nothing and just returns to that page. disabling all other device in the bios doesnt change it at all, and switch the UEFI back and forth doesnt help either.
Anyone have any ideas on how to get it to actually boot to the drive?
This is a laptop from lenovo, and it previously was able to boot into windows 7. I had to re-image it because it was GPT and i needed MBR (which I changed it to)

Does anyone have any clues as to how to fix this?

 

dism /mount-wim /wimfile:install.wim /index:3 /mountdir:mount
did not work for me because the files were locked (downloaded from internet)

I had to download streams.exe from
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897440.aspx
and do

Code:

streams -s -d USB3

The full procedure was

Code:

cd USB3_Fix

streams -s -d USB3

mkdir mount

dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:boot.wim
dism /mount-wim /wimfile:boot.wim /index:2 /mountdir:mount
dism /image:mount /add-driver:"usb3" /recurse
dism /unmount-wim /mountdir:mount /commit

rmdir mount /s /q
mkdir mount

dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:install.wim
dism /mount-wim /wimfile:install.wim /index:3 /mountdir:mount
dism /image:mount /add-driver:"usb3" /recurse
dism /unmount-wim /mountdir:mount /commit

P.S. don't forget to copy boot.win, install.wim back to usb stick inside sources

Read more about unlock on Windows 7
https://blog.nicholasrogoff.com/2010/09/01/how-to-bulk-unblock-files-in-windows-7-or-server-2008/

 

I've been messing around with my laptop MSI GS60 6QE-098XPL using several guides, and thanks to a kind poster from Tom's Hardware I ended up trying this guide here.

It seemed pretty hopeful. But a problem surfaced in the step "Install Windows" and in step 7, where I have to select the newly made partition, it just wouldn't let me click on next. I have the following error (0x80300001) like shown on the screenshot, I found somewhere:




I'm wondering if I did something wrong during doing this lengthy tutorial?

Thanks, if you're willing to help me with coming up with a solution.

Cheers,
hellothere1337

 

Thank you so much for this. You basically saved me from a lot of frustrations.... Would be great if first post could be updated!

This is the other problem with the guide. When you load the nvme drivers for the second time, YOU SHOULD NOT USE THE USB BOOT STICK!!! Use another usb stick with the driver on it. Otherwise the install somehow switches back to the boot stick. In your case you could just reinsert the boot stick and go from there, but then the drive letters assignment gets messed up because the boot stick receives C:\

Could it be that the bios is trying to boot from another device? Have you tried disabling all other devices in the bios except for the nvme?

I followed this guide and installed it on a Lenovo as well, but I made it GPT as described, so maybe you need additional steps to make it MBR?

 

I'm not sure if my setup is completely different but I managed to install Win7 direct from my USB pen onto my SM951 drive on my P775.

I used the Intel manager to manipulate the *.wim files automatically. It all went fine for me, the only thing I had trouble with was getting updates to install..... it just sat there looking for updates for hours.

To that end I ripped it out and stuck 10 pro back on. I'm willing to try again though if anyone has any information on what's up with the update process. I tried all the usual manual KB updates but none of them helped.

 

Windows 7 updates taking forever to check for updates is a known issue. You first need to install 2 KB updtaes before manually checking for updates. I did it and it takes a few minutes only afterwards to find all needed updates. Details here: http://www.sevenforums.com/windows-...checking-updates-post3271624.html#post3271624

 

Unfortunately, as I said, I already tried the recommended KBs.... it still didn't work for me. I'll give it another go in the future though.

 

oh sorry, I read too quickly... did you try the "unofficial sp2" too?

 

No worries, no I hadn't heard of that one. I found one that had all the updates until May IIRC. I installed that and tried searching and it still sat for hours doing nothing.

 

Hate to necro bump... can someone upload an iso completed? I failed miserably and I want to install this on my alienware 17 r3 it came pre installed windows 10.. Usb 3.0 samsung 951 ssd and 1 tbb hdd I made a bootable usb but still having the search for drivers window.

 

So, easier way is make a Windows 8 or 10 thumb drive. Then delete the contents and copy win 7 on there with the win 10 boot.wim and setup files copied from the win 10 resources folder over the ones for win 7. Make sure to have the driver for the nvme drive on the thumb drive. Integrate usb 3.0 drivers of necessary. Then load the driver when it asks and try to install.

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

 

Would this write up (which is really well done) work as a Win10 guide for a new desktop build??

 

you make it sound so easy. I can do this but if you can be a bit more clear on the process.

I tried to do it with Nvlite and i put in the drivers but no luck on the boot.

 

So i have it all good to go. BUT i can't get the nvme drivers integrated on the Drive

 

Are you integrating both Windows boot.wim and install.wim?

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

 

W10 should already have native USB 2.0 and NVMe support. It is a really well written guide. If I ever buy another NVMe SSD I'm going to use it.

 

Though I don't have a notebook or a laptop, I am building a desktop PC, this thread has helped me tremendously! Thank you so much for your hard work and clear instructions, bfishman. You have done a truly good thing and a public service.

 

Post deleted

 

i'm not quite done trying this process.


windows 7 home 64bit
960 evo 1 TB
asus rog maximus ix hero z270

this is a brutal process.

 

i was going step by step... i did the boot.wim, but error on install.wim. i got an error when it came to

error says
"The user attempted to mount to a directory that already contained a mounted image. This is not supported.
The DISM log file can be found at C:\Windows\Logs\DISM\dism.log "

 

ASUS has it's own guide for integrating USB 3.0 and Windows 7.
http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1151/PRIME_B250M-C/DE170_Windows_7_Setup_Guide_web.pdf

Download the tool from the ASUS website:
http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/misc/utils/ASUS_EZInstaller.zip

 

so i tried that asus ez installer, and a few other brands. the results are always the same. operation failed. when trying to merge the usb files into the os files.

i'm working with a genuine dvd and a brand new flash drive.

 

Try dismounting the image if you are still getting the "failed" message then start over. Replace XXX with file path.
dism /unmount-wim /mountdir:"C:\XXX" /discard

 

so after 20 or so stressful hours of trying, i admitted defeat.

i returned the ssd and got the sata 2TB 850evo. my pc never shuts down anyway, so the extra speed difference wasn't going to much impact on me.

and i got lucky and the store had a copy of windows 7 pro, which let me use my 32GB ram (vs win7home 16GB limit)..
went ahead and got my 1st mechanical keyboard too. cherry mx silent!

so even though this failure was extremely stressful on me, i ended up with some stuff to turn that around.

thanks for the help nonetheless.

 

Thanks for the guide, you obviously spent some good time and effort on it.

Quick question though, why not use Rufus to install in UEFI mode? I would prefer to use UEFI instead of CSM but I wasn't sure if this would cause any problems with installation or boot config.

Regards

 

Late to the show, but i just wanted to throw a couple of additional things in.

Firstly if you try this with a sandisk usb stick, because sandisk drives are marked as fixed disks and not removable like most usb sticks, the windows usb creation tool wont work, instead use rufus from: https://rufus.akeo.ie/

Next after injecting the boot.win file i tried to inject into install.wim and got back an error (The driver package could not be installed), the issue was the files had been blocked, if you have the same you can follow the guide here: http://blog.nicholasrogoff.com/2010/09/01/how-to-bulk-unblock-files-in-windows-7-or-server-2008/

The stream (or in my case stream64) worked a treat and i was then able to inject install.win as well.

 

What a champion you are for making this guide. Thank You!

Don't you mean: dism /mount-wim /wimfile:install.wim /index: 2

I too am running into error when reaching the Update the “boot.wim” and “install.wim” Files section. Is that because i downloaded the usb 3 drivers direct from intel's site for my Dell XPS 9560?
BTW i had to extract the INF file from the .exe learn how to do this here.

===DISM Log File======
note error:
2018-01-27 18:30:24, Error DISM DISM.EXE: No providers were found that support the command(mount-wim/wimfile). HRESULT=0

If anyone knows what this means i'd really appreciate some help. thanks!

 

The hours wait is something i've ran into many a time with Win7. Better off just leaving it on overnight. In my experience Windows update only does this once, then its smooth sailing.

 

be sure to integrate (slipstream) the KB2990941 & KB3087873 hotfixes for Windows 7 SP1.
I'm pretty sure KB2990941 adds native NVMe support to Win7 SP1.

 

I don't wish to reinstall Windows from scratch. I already have "Windows 7" (with working nvme driver) installed to my C: drive and backed up.

I wish to restore the backup to my nvme (970 Evo on an x4 card) and then boot from it, either using a bootable USB thumbdrive with the necessary boot files, or from my Linux/Grub boot menu (I have a dual boot PC with Linux on another drive. When Windows is not found, the boot drive with Linux on it automatically loads the "Grub" boot menu. It lists Windows but can't boot it.)

Is this possible? TIA

 

Many backup softwares for windows create recovery media for a USB stick so you can restore a backup.

 

Windows 7 has basic backup & restore features built in (Control Panel/Backup and Restore), but you can do more with third party programs like Macrium, Acronis, etc.

 

My ISO copy of Win7 does not have an "install.wim" file. It does have a 3GB "install.esd" file. Should I use that instead?