How to Install Windows7 on NVMe and USB3 Systems

Long story short after about 70 hours wasted trying to get bootable media like a DVD or USB drive working to install Windows 7 on a machine like the 7510 and 7710 with NVMe drives here is how to do it.

Dell's recovery image DOES NOT have the proper USB3 and NVMe drivers in it regardless of what is posted and that may change. But if this procedure applies to most any Win7 install disk even if you don't use the Dell media.

(For PXE Boot and WDS MDT, you can inject these drivers into your boot WIMs but using PE3 it won't install using UEFI you must use a Win10/PE10 boot wim to install Windows7 for UEFI from your server)



1. Downloaded Latest Dell Recovery Image: WGC5Y_2FR1DA00_W7SP1PRO64_ENG.iso (Using 7710/7510/7470 Service Tag)

2. Create a bootable USB3 thumb drive using: rufus-2.8.exe – External Download (Using GPT Partition Scheme for UEFI)

3. Create “Driver” folder on the root of thumb drive, copy the following driver folders into the “Driver” folder provided by pro support. (I added x86 NVMe driver and NIC Driver)

a. IRST x64 and x86 (From Pro Support)

b. NDIS65 (NIC driver from Intels site)

c. NVMe x64 Driver from Intels site: IaNVMe.inf (Only if using x86)

d. NVMe x86 Driver from Intels site: IaNVMe.inf

e. USB3 Driver x86 and x64 (Provided by Pro Support)

4. Copy the Inject_Driver.bat and Inject_driver.exe to root of USB Drive (Provided by ProSupport)

5. Run the Inject_Driver.exe as administrator and script patches boot.wim

6. Prep Machine with NVMe drive (7510, 7710) and use the following BIOS settings

a. Boot Sequence: UEFI

b. Advanced Boot Options: Enable Legacy Option ROMs

c. SATA Operation: RAID On

7. Insert USB Stick and Boot Machine using F12 at Dell Splash Screen

8. The boot menu will show an option for UEFI Boot and the USB stick will be an option. If it does not show then the stick was not configured correctly with Rufus.

9. Boot to UEFI USB Stick

10. Once “Setup is Starting” window appears your external mouse and devices should be working on USB3

11. Setup should continue to show drives and partitions. If not and an error occurs browse to the X: drive and browse to $WINPEDRIVER$ folder and select the NVMe folder, and uncheck hide devices. The NVMe driver should show in list then select it and setup should continue and you can select drives.

12. Randomly during setup it will not find this drivers for the NVMe/drive controller, makes no sense but you can manually choose it and continue if you have injected the drivers correctly.


If someone has a way for me to upload the boot.wim that is already patched or a place for me to upload the files let me know.

 

Just as an additional info I post my solution to the same problem here as well: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...e-ssd-samsung-sm951-in-precision-7510.791344/