Windows SOLVED: Installing Windows 7 on NVMe using USB stick "A required CD/DVD... "

unfortunately, this didn't work.

 

I forgot that you could also be missing the XHCI drivers. I have an ISO uploaded if you need one with those already slipped into it.

 

Are the xHCI drivers different from the USB3 drivers, or am getting myself confused?

 

How are you getting on with this, Phinix? Fwiw, I've just managed to install Win 7 on my Samsung 960 EVO NVMe with relatively little messing about.

I used a Win 7 SP1 ISO and ASus "EZInstaller" utility to create a Win 7 USB stick with USB3.0 driver support built in. I created a folder in the root of the same USB stick and saved the Samsung NVMe drivers there. I downloaded them from the site you linked to in post #6, and chose the "pure" x64 drivers, then unarchived the RAR and saved the four files in the folder on the USB.

The UEFI showed the NVMe quite happily, but Windows initially failed to see it for the installation until I clicked "Load Drivers" and navigated to where I'd saved them. Once the driver was selected, the installer thought about things for a minute or two, and then off we went. I think I was on the Windows Desktop 12 minutes after the first POST to BIOS.

I had the USB stick plugged into a USB3.0 port, fwiw, and didn't have to do any unplugging and plugging back in or anything like that. The Asus EZInstaller claims to be able to slipsteam NVMe support into the Windows USB at the same time that it does the USB3.0 drivers, but I couldn't get that option to work - it kept throwing up a "DismAddDriver" error at 78% completion. Unticking the "NVMe Hotfix" option and manually saving the drivers onto the USB worked just fine, though.

I used v1.03.06 of the EZInstaller, if that's any help. You can download it directly from the ASus website (it's listed in downloads and tools for my board, amongst others - I have a Z170i Pro Gaming).

Anyway, hope you've managed to get things sorted, and if not then I hope the above might help you. I was braced for a bit of a nightmare getting Windows 7 installed on NVMe but in the end it was reasonably straightforward once the initial prep was out of the way.

 

What motherboard are you using?

 

Cool. Finally got it working.

Guess what? All those nVME drivers and usb 3.0 from Intel didn;t work.
At some point after 2am... yep, I wanted to get it working... yet another attempt worked - I have copied over all MSI drivers from their www. Then used this Windows installation patcher to add them all to my installation pendrive. This worked fine. Apparently it needed MSI USB3 drivers. Those generic form Intel's page didn't work.

So it's all working fine now, I can finally compare my 980Ti frames with new 1080Ti.

Guess what switching from 4670K in stock (boost at 3.8GHz) to new i5 7500 (non K, boost same at 3.8GHz) gave me better frames in games. In general I changed mobo, cpu and RAM (from 8GB DDR3 to 16GB DDR4) - this gave me around 10% fps increase. Strange, didn't expect this much, but glad to see it anyway

Thanks guys for all you comments and suggestions.

 

Excellent, glad you're up and running. Enjoy the new setup!

 

Thanks! I hope you are enjoying yours!
Last night, played Wildlands till 2am, nice game

 

Thanks man, I've just gone from an E8500 to a 6700K so it'd be fair to say that it's a little bit faster

 

Ooft, I'm sure you noticed huge difference there

Cool