Anyone have success installing Windows 7 on 7370?

When I boot the Windows 7 install, it can't find the storage or USB 3 drivers. Have tried slipstreaming drivers from Dell's site into the install image, but it still doesn't work.

Anyone had success installing Windows 7 on this laptop?

 

Did you disable SecureBoot in the BIOS? If not that then it's probably something else which needs to be temporarily changed.

John

 

This worked for me on an XPS 9350.

 

I am able to actually boot into the Windows 7 installer, it just can't find the local hard drive when it gets to the point where it's looking for the disk. Would secure boot affect this?

 

I recall that it took me a couple of attempts to get Windows 10 to install on a new SSD in my E5570. That was fixed by changing something in the BIOS but I can't remember the details. In your case you will also need the Intel F6 driver but that should have been covered by the slipstreaming.

Or is your problem caused by the storage drive needing to be reformatted by MBR? Windows 7 might be totally confused by a drive with the UEFI-compliant partitioning? See the link provided by Alex Hawker.

John

 

This is a Windows 7 install so I really don't think experience from Windows 10 is going to be comparable. This laptop has NVMe, and USB 3.0 only, which Windows 7 would have no clue about. Win10 would be able to deal with those better I think. The Win7 installer simply can't see any storage devices, so it can't install. It is not booting in UEFI mode.

I probably do need another driver in there somewhere, just not getting the right one I suppose. Maybe the Intel F6 that you mention might do it.

 

Have you seen the guide here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...an-nvme-ssd-from-a-usb-3-0-thumbdrive.783921/

 

Looks like a good guide. Will give it a try.

 

Another possible impediment is the SATA mode in the BIOS. By default this is RAID but I would recommend AHCI. Make sure Secureboot is disabled (you can re-enable it when everything is working) and also try Legacy or UEFI in the Boot sequence.

The BIOS supports USB 3.0.

John

 

SATA mode is AHCI. BIOS support for USB 3 is not relevant because the Windows 7 installer is active at that time, so it's the installer that needs USB 3 support. The BIOS knows enough to boot off USB 3 and load the initial stages of the installation program, but then it passes control over to the installer and the BIOS is no longer in play. Since the installer has no USB 3, it can't see any flash drives that might have additional drivers on them.