Forcing Win7 on Skylake

marlinman

Member
Dec 10, 2006
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(Preamble: ignore at will!)

Win10Home was preloaded on the ASUS UX305CA Zenbook I bought earlier in the year. My older devices still ran Win7, and I was unimpressed with MS' approach to rolling out the new OS and its default telemetric behaviour, but thought I'd give 10 a chance at least. I told the OS I paid for every byte received from my ISP, which seemed to deal with the forced updates business. All was reasonably bearable until I tried installing the first Dragon Age game on the thing (via networked ODD). At the end of the lengthy install - perhaps when the setup prog attempted installing the VC++ redists (or maybe DirectX) - the machine rebooted without consent, taking with it some hours of work in the form of unsaved docs. (When I say the machine rebooted, I mean the OS first shut down gracefully as if I'd instructed it to.) I don't know what the stages of grief are, but at the time I distinctly remember experiencing disbelief/panic, followed by intense rage. I resolved to rid the machine ASAP of what IIRC I considered at the time a cancer of an OS.

Oh, my sweet summer child...

I spent the next day attempting to marry Win7 and the Zenbook without success. "Fine," I flustered, "I'll put OS X on the thing when that OS receives its Skylake update." Well, turns out that plan involves (at the very least) replacing the ASUS' Wi-Fi hardware, which seemed like a step too far. I'm not Linux-averse, but that route didn't seem feasible; the machine was bought primarily for Visual Studio use (tho' I'd be prepared to learn a new IDE if the Hackbook route paid off), and probably didn't have the grunt to run a Windows VM under Linux to support VS.

So... I'm back to banging my head against the Win7 wall once again.

(Preamble ends.)

The section "Chipset Power and Installing Windows 7" on the page at

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/5

claims that an optical disk drive is required to install Win7 on a Skylake system. Is this still the case? As an ultrabook, my Zenbook has no such drive, and an external USB ODD is not something I own. I dimly recall attempting the install after modifying the OS' setup files (using WAIK and/or DISM perhaps). Is this kind of approach worth pursuing once again? I only made one such attempt, which took so long that the aforementioned flustering was more appealing than a second effort. But if the approach should theoretically work, I will certainly have at least one more crack at it (maybe with the help of http://www.asrock.com/microsite/Win7Install/, since ASUS don't seem nearly as helpful.)
 

marlinman

Member
Dec 10, 2006
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Unfortunately, the mythical 'ASUS support DVD' mentioned on that page you linked is not something that came with my lappie, nor something that I've been able to find an image of online.

That ASUS page illustrates something that confuses me about this whole thing: I can - with unmodded win7 setup files - actually get a few steps thru the setup process. Then I'm greeted by a message along the lines of "A required device driver is missing..." (which I think relates to the claimed necessity of an ODD). From what I can tell, installing 7 on a Skylake desktop involves the additional headache of being unable to use USB input devices, but that's not an issue on a laptop I guess.

I'm left unsure whether the ASRock/ASUS approaches just deal to the desktop input device issue, or will actually get me past the "required device driver" business...
 

nerp

Diamond Member
Dec 31, 2005
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Having a spare PS/2 mouse can come in handy with this situation, at least the USB problem.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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Having a spare PS/2 mouse can come in handy with this situation, at least the USB problem.

Ehh? I haven't seen a PS/2 port on a laptop, since my i386-powered B&W suitcase model.

Maybe on a docking station?
 

marlinman

Member
Dec 10, 2006
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Ahh the 386... my first PC was a DX40...

Anyway, with all due respect I think the problem I face seems unlikely to involve input devices given (as mentioned above) that I have no trouble interacting with the win7 setup prog...
 

nerp

Diamond Member
Dec 31, 2005
9,865
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Ehh? I haven't seen a PS/2 port on a laptop, since my i386-powered B&W suitcase model.

Maybe on a docking station?

Oh doh! I thought this was a destkop.

Now that he mentions it, PS/2 ports are increasingly rare even on mainstream desktops. You do see it on gaming boards since people want PS/2 for gaming.
 

marlinman

Member
Dec 10, 2006
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Thanks Ketchup. I ran the win7 setup prog earlier and was able to reach the 'select partition' stage, which is further than I was able to get earlier in the year.

Of course, only then did I learn that no win7 drivers exist for my Zenbook - which pretty much renders all these efforts a complete waste of time. Looks like even Zenbooks with win8.1 preloaded were unable to handle win7. This has me feeling pretty sore I have to say.

Seems it's possible to remote desktop to win7 from Linux so I'm thinking I'll put some Linux flavour on the Zenbook and use my desktop's Visual Studio install remotely.

Sigh.
 

Ketchup

Elite Member
Sep 1, 2002
14,559
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So, I see two options here:

You can look for the detailed hardware specifications for your Zenbook and install drivers from the chip manufacturers' sites. Yeah, this can take a while. A program like Speccy would be a great help here: https://www.piriform.com/speccy There are apps that claim to auto-find drivers for you. You can also try an app that finds drivers for you. I have used this one and it works reasonably well. There were a couple things it got the wrong driver for, but it got some right as well. http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/slimdrivers.html

Second option would be to go back to 10 and install Windows 7 onto a virtual machine to run your game. Considering the game's age (if it's as old as I think it is), the virtual hardware may be sufficient.
 

sm625

Diamond Member
May 6, 2011
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Dont most installers explicitly tell you to close all running apps before continuing?
 

piasabird

Lifer
Feb 6, 2002
17,168
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If you are slip streaming off of a USB stick don't use the front USB ports. At initial boot-up they may not be active.

I purchased the full retail version of windows 10 on a USB stick for $129.

Newer motherboards and windows 10 use a different USB driver. There is a fix for this if you look for it. I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to have done this on purpose just to make things difficult. I think it really has something to do with new hardware changes to USB3.

I looked on my new Gigabyte GA-H110N motherboard and there was an option to activate Legacy USB. It was active on my motherboard's BIOS. However, it did not work from the Front USB drives. When I plugged it into the back USB3 ports it worked like a charm.
 
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sweenish

Diamond Member
May 21, 2013
3,656
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Dont most installers explicitly tell you to close all running apps before continuing?

My question was in here as well. Windows 10 has NEVER shut down while it was busy (in my experience). While idle, yes. It's also interrupted me once. I've never lost documents or had a long transcode interrupted, and I updated just about as soon as I could.

I save my crap. I don't work for hours, and leave it unsaved but open because that's idiotic.

And, had I thought it was actually a problem, I have Pro and its ability to defer.
 
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marlinman

Member
Dec 10, 2006
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With Ketchup's guidance above I've got win7 installed and (according to device manager at least) only TPM and MEI drivers still to sort. (I used Speccy but no driver auto-find software.) All in all a very pleasing result! The trackpad, alas, is non-functional (tho' you wouldn't know it from DevMgr) but I'm an external mouser so can hopefully live with this...

Wi-Fi was the first thing to sort; the adapter is an Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265, but the 'driver' I downloaded from Intel's site only seems to relate to Bluetooth, so I resorted to a driver that Lenovo offers.

All but the 'processor participant' of the DPTF-related 'exclamation marks' in DevMgr disappeared after I installed the Intel INF update util. On the other hand, HP offers a driver that deals to all of them.

Is this use on vendor A's device of drivers from vendors B and C kosher?

Also, I gather that as the buyer of a new win10 laptop I have the ability to acquire a legit copy of win7 using the key associated with win10. Is this true? If so, where might this key be? Doesn't seem to be any printed version of it. Saw somewhere that it may be visible in BIOS setup prog but couldn't see it there either.
Second option would be to go back to 10 and install Windows 7 onto a virtual machine to run your game. Considering the game's age (if it's as old as I think it is), the virtual hardware may be sufficient.

Game actually ran fine despite the apparently borked install. My issue was the OS' unexpected restart during the install, not any incompatibility.
Dont most installers explicitly tell you to close all running apps before continuing?

Most installers recommend it. But surely no OS worth its salt should respond to the behaviour of a running process by rebooting the system without user consent.
 

Raduque

Lifer
Aug 22, 2004
13,140
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Most installers recommend it. But surely no OS worth its salt should respond to the behaviour of a running process by rebooting the system without user consent.

Windows 10 has never in almost a year of using it, ever rebooted while I was working. In fact, my system has not been rebooted in six days, and that reboot was to fix a broken nVidia driver (overclocked too far and the driver crashed).
 

TeknoBug

Platinum Member
Oct 2, 2013
2,084
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Dont most installers explicitly tell you to close all running apps before continuing?

Close thread before replying. Continue/Cancel?

:)

Windows 10 has never in almost a year of using it, ever rebooted while I was working. In fact, my system has not been rebooted in six days, and that reboot was to fix a broken nVidia driver (overclocked too far and the driver crashed).
Has on me a few times.