Crying shame, that MS doesn't update the Windows 7 ISO images, for modern (SKL, KBL) machines.

[VirtualLarry]

At least, re-build the ISO images, with the Intel USB3.0 drivers, and the Microsoft NVMe drivers. That would make it easier for end-users (business customers!!!), to install Win7 onto newer Skylake and Kaby Lake-based machines. (Ok, corporate customers are going to use imaging, and can build a custom image much easier, so maybe there's not so much need for business customers. But for me personally, I could use such an image.)

 

[quikah]

Why would they? MS has moved on to 10, they don't want to sell 7 anymore. Build it yourself, not that hard.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Unsupported OS. Move on with your life.

 

[vailr]

AFAIK, Intel has not/will not supply series 200 chipset drivers for Kabylake + Win7 (or for Win 8/8.1).
An updated installation .iso for Win7 + Skylake would be a possibility for Microsoft to produce, but not Win7 + Kabylake.
I assume someone has been able to make such a PC functional, but what about the status of all the Kabylake related motherboard drivers in that machine?
Has anyone tried installing WinXP in a Kabylake machine? XP can be installed on a Haswell machine, but there's similar unsupported chipset problems with that scenario, as well.

 

[mxnerd]

MS never updates new drivers into ISO.

Just slipstream drivers.

https://www.google.com/webhp?source...spv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=windows+7+slipstream+drivers

or via INTEL utility for USB 3.0

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25476/Windows-7-USB-3-0-Creator-Utility

or

Adding USB 3.0 and NVMe Drivers to Windows 7 Install Media

http://www.beezmo.com/geezblog/?p=1060

I didn't try it.

 

[JackMDS]

I think that people still do not get it.

Microsoft makes sure that basic Chipset and Video would be available with the release of the OS but they do not write Drivers on behalf of Vendors.

Vendors submit them and then submit to MS for "vetting", and inclusion on MS servers..

As a result some Drivers do not exist at all with MS (those of vendors that deliberately do not submit Drivers).

And or, in many cases more recent Drivers are available first on the Vendor's site before they later appear on MS servers.

Intel is an example for mixed attitude.

Basic Chipset of established hardware are always availble with a New release of an OS.

More sophisticated Drivers are available later and never make it to MS.

Many time I download recent drivers from Intel site and find to my surprise that my current Updated systems discover and install some new "things" from the Intel download.

Though in the last few years the "Something New" are often aspects that load at StartUp, take Memory and CPU power and connect few times a day to Intel through the Internet. and rarely provide anything useful.

Similarly (as an example) recent nVidia, AMD, Video Drivers load over 50MB of "Junk" into RAM (use Process Explorer and see on your Windows system) and connecting often to the vendors servers over the Inherent.

Unfortunately it became impossible to find pure Drivers and we are forced to use "Junk" that might save few minutes of work but then do not work to our advantage.

So... I prefer to handle my own Driver system rather than "Cry".

 

[Ketchup]

Crying shame, that MS doesn't update the Windows 7 ISO images

At this point? Nah. Let it go. Don't be hanging onto it like folks did with XP. Don't let people scare you away from 10 because OneDrive is backing up the data you put in there (or whatever nonsense they make up). 10 is a fine OS, and has new builds released all the time, which is what you are wanting.[/quote]

 

[Murloc]

you said it yourself that corporate don't need this. The consumer market moves on and not supporting older OSes is normal.

W10 is actually better than W7 from my experience. If you don't want to pay, use linux or build your own image.

 

[VirtualLarry]

So... I prefer to handle my own Driver system rather than "Cry".

This isn't about updated drivers, this is about drivers being part of the OS install image, so that, you know, you can actually successfully install the OS onto the newer hardware.

And I do already have Windows 10 on most of my rigs, but I wanted to ultimately have a Win7 / Win10 / Linux multi-boot.

 

[ninaholic37]

Good reason to buy older used machines and save money. Shine on in style with vintage Sandy Bridge. I think newer Intel chips phone home and can lock you out anyway.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hmm, well, I think that I'll change my configuration. Instead of putting Win7 on the M.2 PCI-E SSD (and using the AHCI version of the SM951), I'm thinking that I should just install Win7 64-bit on the SATA 2.5" SSD, and then install Linux on the other half of it (120GB for each), and then unplug the SATA, and plug in a PCI-E M.2 NVMe drive, and install Win10 64-bit, and then when that's done, plug in the Win7 SATA 2.5" SSD again, and use the BIOS to switch between the two.

That makes a lot more sense.

 

[MongGrel]

Update the OS from a over a decade ago.

 

[mxnerd]

If you want to multi boot, put Win7/Linux SSD in a removable 2.5" HDD tray is much easier. Just pop it out when you want to boot from NVMe. Shouldn't have to go into BIOS and change boot sequence every time.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817998052

 

[JackMDS]

If you want to multi boot, put Win7/Linux SSD in a removable 2.5" HDD tray is much easier. Just pop it out when you want to boot from NVMe. Shouldn't have to go into BIOS and change boot sequence every time.

These days with the size of SSDs it is many time a better solution to Put the OSs' on separate SSDs. Each one normally install and individually capable to Boot.

Then put on Win10 EZBDC to make a Multiple Boot menu. EZBCD (freeware version) does not care if you point to a partition or to another Drive . It take less then 10 min. to install and configure it for multiple Boot.

https://neosmart.net/wiki/easybcd/dual-boot/

https://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/

It is much Safer, Flexible, and better performance to deal with few OS installation on independent SSDs.

When changes need to be made, or something goes wrong, it is to deal with Multiple drives than the Horror of Mufti Partition on one drive.

 

[mxnerd]

These days with the size of SSDs it is many time a better solution to Put the OSs' on separate SSDs. Each one normally install and individually capable to Boot.

Then put on Win10 EZBDC to make a Multiple Boot menu. EZBCD (freeware version) does not care if you point to a partition or to another Drive . It take less then 10 min. to install and configure it for multiple Boot.

https://neosmart.net/wiki/easybcd/dual-boot/

https://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/

It is much Safer, Flexible, and better performance to deal with few OS installation on independent SSDs.

When changes need to be made, or something goes wrong, it is to deal with Multiple drives than the Horror of Mufti Partition on one drive.

Like what you said, I hate putting multiple OS on the same drive. I now always put them on different drives, or just use VMs. Been burned many times in the past by partition managers & boot managers.

Actually I own one of this 2.5" 4 drives enclosures or similar models.

https://www.neweggbusiness.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIV01U3208688

Used EasyBCD before, but I removed it.

 

[Andro Boy]

Unsupported OS. Move on with your life.

It's supported till January 2020.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

At least, re-build the ISO images, with the Intel USB3.0 drivers, and the Microsoft NVMe drivers. That would make it easier for end-users (business customers!!!), to install Win7 onto newer Skylake and Kaby Lake-based machines. (Ok, corporate customers are going to use imaging, and can build a custom image much easier, so maybe there's not so much need for business customers. But for me personally, I could use such an image.)

I wanted to react to your comment right away, then did a quick scan of the other posts before continuing to type here.

The problem goes a little further than that, although I might have expected something like this as I continue a year late to build a 2012 R2 Essentials server to replace WHS-2011.

I discovered that I couldn't do a bare-metal restore from a successful Client-backup to WHS-2011, and people were complaining all over the place with this. The USB-stick generated by WHS doesn't work; people are trying to use the original WHS restore disk to do it -- which I tried -- and so far "no cigar." Apparently, this has something to do with the Z170 chipset with either version of Windows (7 or 10), and it was confirmed by the complainants I discovered on other forums.

Meanwhile, there are certain red and yellow bangs in otherwise perfectly-good Win 10 installations that almost make other-forum posters apoplectic with rage and frustration. The OS context for those begins mostly with Win 8/8.1 and continues through 10. I can see how to get rid of most Event-log red-bangs, but it's going to seem like a pain-in-the-ass.

Nobody but old PC-AT veterans has the patience and temperament to deal with this, so we first had OEM machines bundled with Windows and "built-in" tech-support -- which we geek-veterans hate. I mean -- we hate it. Really. bigly-big-league -- as much as we currently hate a certain Prick on the TV. (Oh. P&N -- I know -- call this a "memory leak" for the day.)

Now all the mobile-mainstreamers sneer down their noses at us, all Millennial-Chicken-Little about the NSA because they never watched Andy Griffith re-runs on TV to understand the "Mayberry party-line."

It WOULD be NICE if MS would provide reticent old-OS users with something like that, and it may be that SOME other vendor (like Intel with chipsets) could provide drivers for Win Updates. But when was it ever the case that you didn't have to slipstream your drivers on your own?

 

[VirtualLarry]

These days with the size of SSDs it is many time a better solution to Put the OSs' on separate SSDs. Each one normally install and individually capable to Boot.

I agree, Jack, but for my DeskMini units, they have three drive spots. Two 2.5" SATA drive bays, one of which you have to remove the entire motherboard to mount a drive, so I'm not using that bay, and one that is easily accessable from the side. Plus, a PCI-E M.2 SSD socket on the top of the mobo.

So that effectively give me two drive slots. I don't mind a boot menu for my "legacy" OSes.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

These days with the size of SSDs it is many time a better solution to Put the OSs' on separate SSDs. Each one normally install and individually capable to Boot.

Then put on Win10 EZBDC to make a Multiple Boot menu. EZBCD (freeware version) does not care if you point to a partition or to another Drive . It take less then 10 min. to install and configure it for multiple Boot.

https://neosmart.net/wiki/easybcd/dual-boot/

https://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/

It is much Safer, Flexible, and better performance to deal with few OS installation on independent SSDs.

When changes need to be made, or something goes wrong, it is to deal with Multiple drives than the Horror of Mufti Partition on one drive.

I agree, Jack, but for my DeskMini units, they have three drive spots. Two 2.5" SATA drive bays, one of which you have to remove the entire motherboard to mount a drive, so I'm not using that bay, and one that is easily accessable from the side. Plus, a PCI-E M.2 SSD socket on the top of the mobo.

So that effectively give me two drive slots. I don't mind a boot menu for my "legacy" OSes.

On this, I've been thumping my chest for the last five or six hours.

This was the first time I ever tried to clone a dual-boot single-disk-device, and it took me a while to find the right software for free. then I had to image the drive and restore it to change the sizes. Discovered an alignment anomaly and corrected it. SFC /SCANNOW turns up nothing and perfect. CHKDSK on everything is sweet. I have now purged all the red-bangs from the Event Logs, and the double-instance of the same EvID 219 is benign and owing to that stupid Windows cloud service. Everything sleeps and wakes properly; Win 7 and Win 10 all tip-top, with separate program installations on different associated volumes and a common area where file modification under one or the other OS doesn't create a problem for the other OS, but the drive is still cached for a given session.

I'm going to do either a differential or incremental image of the drive, set a backup of important non-OS components to the server, and clean it up a bit.

See -- I think it's a personal optimization problem with constraints. You chose a motherboard. You choose a RAM kit. The motherboard only has so many SATA ports, but you'd otherwise like to keep the OSes separate. The NVMe configuration kills one pair of SATA ports, either way. A PCIE x1 drive controller likely goes through the chipset for my Z170, and I don't really need the extra ~ 0.75 to 1.00% difference between running the graphics as x16 or x8.

As long as I keep track of what volumes are backed up on the server in terms of driver letters and volumes, I can restore everything to any non-OS drive that goes bad. And I have the drive-image of the 1TB dual-boot disk. Both OSes share a data and media disk cached only to RAM for any given OS session, but I've now made them save and then prefetch caches on restart or return from hibernate. All the hardware and driver bugs are gone now; all the troublesome error and warning messages have been corrected. If there's anything left, I know what it is, I know why it is, and that it's benign or can be deferred in my attentions.

And all my eSATA ports on the case and I/O panel are ready for in-session hot-swap. All my 2.5" drive-bay and caddies are operational. This is going to be good . . .

Still, more trouble to set up than some would want, but -- it's done, it's simple enough, and it's good.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

It's supported till January 2020.

Extended, not mainstream.

https://www.cnet.com/uk/news/windows-7-support-ends-today/

It's not getting new features, just security updates.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Just a note for anyone reading this, that link is to a two-year-old article. So, apparently Windows 7 has been on "extended support" for two years now. Not a big deal.

 

[mikeymikec]

IMO, if MS were to start adding to Windows ISOs as a regular thing, I would prefer it if they (only?*) added network drivers for newer hardware, though it should only be necessary up to the point of a newer version of Windows being released.

ie. Windows 7 was released in late 2009. Any new network hardware that was made during Windows 7's era (all the way up to Win8 RTM's release) would be added to a downloadable ISO.

That at least makes it so that installing Windows on any hardware during that Windows version's era is easier since you don't have to start faffing around with putting network drivers on flash drives etc.

* - I suggested "only" because I think the more that gets added to an ISO, the more likely it is that one might end up with a scenario whereby Windows 7 SP1 from a vanilla SP1 disc installs fine, but the updated ISO does not due to the sheer amount of hardware available, and all it needs is for one hardware manufacturer to cock something up in such a way that it does not play well with the driver that shipped with the updated ISO (e.g. immediate BSOD when driver attempts to load).

 

[shortylickens]

After having issues with Windows 10 and also not liking the interface at all, I can definitely agree I'd rather have a fresh, fully up to date Win 7 over anything else. And if they could put it on a thumb drive that would be nice too. Modern Flash on USB 3 is a heck of a lot faster than any DVD reader I've encountered.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

After having issues with Windows 10 and also not liking the interface at all, I can definitely agree I'd rather have a fresh, fully up to date Win 7 over anything else. And if they could put it on a thumb drive that would be nice too. Modern Flash on USB 3 is a heck of a lot faster than any DVD reader I've encountered.

http://download.cnet.com/Windows-USB-DVD-Download-Tool/3000-18513_4-10972600.html

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Just a note for anyone reading this, that link is to a two-year-old article. So, apparently Windows 7 has been on "extended support" for two years now. Not a big deal.

If you're looking for respun ISOs, I'd say it's a big deal, since that's why the answer is "No."