Cannot install Windows 7 on Laptop

[DamnThatSucks]

Laptop: ASUS ROG GL553VE

OS it came with: Endless OS

 

I have posted about this previously, I think on this forum.

 

I believe some users mentioned possible hardware incompatibilities? I don't really understand how those could be the case. How could they lock you on Win 10? All drivers are compatible afaik and the only thing the motherboard does is launch the bootloader for whatever OS you have which then loads everything else, no?

 

Maybe it's a problem with how my HDD is formatted? (Western Digital 1TB i think)

 

I have tried at least 3 different installations for Win 7 and, although I can't recall what the errors were, weeks of looking it up on google/duckduckgo (sometimes i find stuff i dont find on google there since they use results from multiple other search engines/crawlers) found no fix or real explanation for the errors.

 

Windows 10, however, installed flawlessly.

 

As to my motives for using Win 7 instead of 10, its not really relevant (As last time I asked a lot of people told me I shouldnt use win 7 anyways)

 

What can I do?

[DamnThatSucks]

Also tried tweaking the BIOS options such as the UEFI settings BTW

 

The ISOs were burned on a USB with Rufus

[Eigenvektor]

If you have an existing Windows installation somewhere, you could try Microsoft's tool to create the bootable USB: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=56485

[DamnThatSucks]

1 minute ago, Eigenvektor said:

If you have an existing Windows installation somewhere, you could try Microsoft's tool to create the bootable USB: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=56485

I am downloading a Win 7 ISO currently to try that, but before attempting to install again I would like to hear what could go wrong and why I have not been able to previously install it so I dont fuk it up again

[Eigenvektor]

2 minutes ago, DamnThatSucks said:

I am downloading a Win 7 ISO currently to try that, but before attempting to install again I would like to hear what could go wrong and why I have not been able to previously install it so I dont fuk it up again

Not sure, really.

 

The point about drivers is certainly possible. Windows 10 has more drivers out of the box, so if Windows needs to access some device during installation that the Windows 7 installer has no drivers for, that might be the issue. Or a simple bug working with certain devices that was fixed in Windows 10. The disk format shouldn't matter, since formatting the disk to NTFS is part of the installation process.

[DamnThatSucks]

2 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Not sure, really.

 

The point about drivers is certainly possible. Windows 10 has more drivers out of the box, so if Windows needs to access some device during installation that the Windows 7 installer has no drivers for, that might be the issue. Or a simple bug working with certain devices that was fixed in Windows 10. The disk format shouldn't matter, since formatting the disk to NTFS is part of the installation process.

I was indeed not able to use my trackpad during installation, so thats possible, but besides keyboards and mouses, theres really nothing else i can think of that it would need that it wouldnt already come packed with. after all, windows was built to be able to be installed on all configurations so as many people could use it

 

take for example, debian, which I tried installing on another PC at one point and you had to do some tweaking if, for example, you had an nvidia GPU which was uncompatible with the installation

[Kilrah]

19 minutes ago, DamnThatSucks said:

How could they lock you on Win 10?

They don't "lock you on win10", just that some modern hardware doesn't have drivers for 7, and 7 is just not capable of running on the newest processors/chipset platforms.

[Austinham]

You may need to mod the windows 7 install image to add the chipset and USB3.0 drivers. Your installing from USB right? You will diffidently need to mod the install image to add the USB drivers if installing from USB on a system with USB3.0.

What is the problem when installing 7 anyway? 

[DamnThatSucks]

3 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

They don't "lock you on win10", just that some modern hardware doesn't have drivers for 7, and 7 is just not capable of running on the newest processors/chipset platforms.

And is there anything I can do about it? Which drivers would I need and how could I have them be installed during the installation process?

 

3 minutes ago, Austinham said:

You may need to mod the windows 7 install image to add the chipset and USB3.0 drivers. Your installing from USB right? You will diffidently need to mod the install image to add the USB drivers if installing from USB on a system with USB3.0.

What is the problem when installing 7 anyway? 

I believe that indeed all my USB ports are USB 3. I think I know where to get the driver from but how would I mod the installation?

[Eigenvektor]

12 minutes ago, DamnThatSucks said:

...after all, windows was built to be able to be installed on all configurations so as many people could use it

Sure. All known configurations at that time. As others have pointed out, tech that simply didn't exist back when Windows 7 was current may not be supported. So if you're installing over say USB 3.2 it may not work, because Windows 7 has no drivers for the USB controller and so can't read its files from the USB stick to install itself.

 

~edit: @DamnThatSucks Back when Windows XP was current, I used nLite to mod the installer. There's something similar for Windows 7, though I've never personally used it: https://www.ntlite.com/

[Austinham]

15 minutes ago, DamnThatSucks said:

I believe that indeed all my USB ports are USB 3. I think I know where to get the driver from but how would I mod the installation?

its called slipstream, a quick google found me a few guides.

https://www.howtogeek.com/255540/the-last-windows-7-iso-youll-ever-need-how-to-slipstream-the-convenience-rollup/

https://www.pcworld.com/article/239634/how_to_speed_up_windows_7_installs_with_slipstreaming_and_usb.html

https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/125921-how-to-add-drivers-manually-to-usb-drive-to-install-windows-using-a-usb-3-0-port

[Kilrah]

23 minutes ago, DamnThatSucks said:

And is there anything I can do about it?

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/minimum/windows-processor-requirements

 

 

[Austinham]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/minimum/windows-processor-requirements

 

 

Windows 7 CPU support list is not true in regards to what all works. Wile not supported, 7th gen to 9th gen work fine. At the most you have have trouble finding a few motherboard drivers and get a message stating your CPU is not supported. 

IF you can't find drivers for the motherboard you can just bypass the motherboard making and get the drivers form the chip maker like I did.

 

See below.  

 

[jnkokseby]

What I did was dust off my old disc reader/writer/player/whatever you wanna call it and install windows 7 from that, this makes it unnecessary to 'mod' the w7 installation, this will be rather problematic on a laptop though.

Also yes w7 works perfectly fine on newer hardware, currently running 7700K which is "not compatible with windows 7" - Which it is
They do however 'lock' your windows update so you can't update. You can bypass this by just installing a small program called wufuc, which will make you able to update w7 again.