@Paulos7 - I am stepping through the Winaero tutorial and notice that it integrates the Hotfixes only. Will I not need the NVME drivers also?
Thanks,
Jef
@Fernando - thank you! The other tutorial I had used also requested the MS NVME drivers. Odd. Anyway, I successfully stepped through the Winaero tutorial. There were some commands I needed to edit due to my MSU’s being named differently, but that was good as it prodded me to understand what I was doing.
I now have the committed, unmounted Win 7 install files which I assume I can pack into an ISO with a tool like MagicISO.
Jeff
@Fernando , @Paulos7 - This tutorial only modified install.wim. Will I not need to hotfix boot.wim as well?
Yes, if you want to get the OS installed onto the NVMe SSD.
Thanks. I will soon see how well I can "adlib" and adapt the tutorial on doing the install.wim into doing the boot.wim as well.
edit: a light just came on when I get-wimnfo on boot.wim. It is showing Windows Seup AND Windows PE. If I want to use the thumbdrive to repair my installation, I should add the hotfixes into Win PE also?
@pepar
I believe that only the install.wim file is modified. I just compared both .wim files before and after the integration and only the size of the install.wim file had changed (+43.5MB). Every Win7 NVMe install I have done has used these .wim files produced from the integration process, and I have had no issues with the install process.
Thanks. Can you comment on my question about modifying the Win PE image? I recall several times I want to repair my Win 7 install on my Intel 750 PCIe SSD and the error message was that the tool was not the one that was used to create the installation … which I am now guessing means “I can’t see your boot drive.”
edit: I have already finished modding the boot.wim. Puzzling, the other tutorials I read modded both WIM files, install and boot.
edit 2: I am going to be brave (stupid?) and mod Win PE …
edit 3: completed and on my thumbdrive. will know soon!
Jeff
Thanks. My install thumbdrive did not work even though I followed every step and had success on all of them. I am now writing the install ISO - without the hotfixes - to a DVD. And I will put NVME drivers on a second DVD. When I installed Win 7 several years ago on my computer with Intel 750 PCIe SSD, I did it that way. I didn’t know anything about giving win 7 “native” NVME support, and the process worked.
Jeff
Ahh boy, I loaded the NVME drivers onto a SATA drive and attached it to the target PC. I booted the windows installation USB and pointed the install to the drive. NONE of the drivers allowed Windows 7 to see the SSD. I guess it really does depend on Windows 7 having “native” support. Puzzling as I am using a Win 7 PC now that has a PCIe SSD as the C: drive and I never hotfixed the Win 7 install disc. For now at least, I am done wasting my time on this; I purchased a Win 10 key and am waiting for the email. Hopefully, all of me software will work and I don’t have to replace it.
Thanks to everyone who tried to help.
Jeff
@pepar
It is my understanding that the Microsoft hotfixes make the NVMe drive fully functional within Windows 7 (by patching the install.wim file), but has nothing to do with booting into Windows 7. When you boot into the Windows 7 installer from a USB3.0 flash drive, you will get a popup (A required CD/DVD device driver is missing…) that lets you know it can’t find media it can read from. At this point you have to direct it to the USB3.0 drivers (on a USB2.0 flash drive or CD/DVD) so it can continue to read the install files from the Windows 7 USB3.0 flash drive. Intel USB3.0 requires two drivers (I don’t know about AMD), and it won’t see the second driver until the first one has been loaded and the “rescan” button has been pressed. At this point the installer can read the install files on your USB3.0 flash drive, but probably won’t be able to see the new NVMe drive. So now you have to direct it to the Samsung NVMe driver, and then it will see the NVMe drive and allow you to install to it.
The problem here is USB3.0, which Windows 7 was not designed to use, because it didn’t exist at the time. That’s why I said I put the USB3.0 and Samsung NVMe drivers onto a separate USB2.0 flash drive. I think you have to patch the boot.wim file to add USB3.0 support to the installer. I just found a YouTube video that looks like it will work (haven’t tried it yet), so you may want to check it out.
The install would only see X:\ drive, the virtual drive created to do the install. It didn’t see the optical drive or USB drive (from which the Win7 install ran). It would see a SATA drive. As much as I am going to have another vodka because of the thought of it, I am posting this from the Win 10 install.
I will check out the video you linked in case I need to “degrade.”
@pepar
I just finished attempting to use Gigabyte’s Windows USB Tool that is supposed to automatically integrate the USB3.0 drivers, NVMe hotfixes, and Samsung NVMe drivers. But every version I tried would not access the USB3.0 drivers, and would blue screen when I attempted to install the USB3.0 drivers from a separate USB2.0 flash drive. In the end, I used just an unmodified OEM version of Windows 7 x64, installed the USB3.0 drivers when it asked for them, installed the Samsung v3.0 NVMe driver to make the secure erased 960 EVO visible, installed Windows 7, and installed the hotfixes and Samsung NVMe driver once I got to the desktop. So, I’m not seeing any good reason to integrate the hotfixes at this point. It would be nice to integrate the USV3.0 drivers and Samsung NVMe driver into the boot.wim file manually so I won’t have to do it during setup. Maybe when I have more time.
When your install sees only the X: drive, that’s when you plug in a USB2.0 flash drive that has the USB3.0 drivers on it. I can’t speak for other manufacturers NVMe SSD’s, but the Win7 install won’t see a clean Samsung NVMe SSD (other than a 950) until you install the Samsung driver also.
@Paulos7 @pepar
The NVMe Controller (and the related SSD) will not be detected by the Win7 Setup, if no NVMe driver resp. MS NVMe Hotfix had been integrated into the BOOT.WIM. This is valid for all storage drivers, which are already needed during the TEXTMODE (= first) part of the OS installation. These early needed “textmode drivers” have to be integrated into both OS images (boot.wim and install.wim). This is not required for PnP drivers, which will be installed after the first reboot of the OS installation.
And what about NVMe SSDs resp. their Controllers, which are not supported by the Samsung NVMe driver? You cannot offer an MS Hotfix at this stage of the OS installation.
@Fernando
Hello Dieter
As I mentioned in the last post, I secure erased a 960 EVO (and verified the secure erase), used an un-altered OEM Win7x64 SP1 ISO (from my Microsoft DVD, with no hotfixes or modifications of any kind), and installed Intel USB3.0 drivers during the Windows 7 install process when the popup message said “A required CD\DVD device driver is missing…”. At that point I got to the “Where do you want to install Windows” screen, which showed no available drives or partitions. I installed the Samsung v3.0 NVMe “pure” driver, and the full unallocated space of the 960 EVO was now in the window and selectable. Windows 7 installed to it without any issues. It booted to the desktop, and I installed the two hotfixes (even though they didn’t appear to be necessary at this point), and then the Samsung NVM Express Driver 2.3. This is not the first time I have installed Windows 7 without the hotfixes being integrated. Not to mention that only the install.wim file was actually modified when I integrated the hotfixes. It seems to me, that the install.wim file contains the OS installation files, and the boot.wim file contains the files necessary to start and run the installer. Therefore, the USB3.0 and Samsung NVMe drivers would need to be integrated into the boot.wim file, and the hotfixes (if they were necessary) would be integrated into the install.wim file. Which is why the boot.wim file is only 160MB, and the install.wim file is 2.75GB.
I’m not sure what else I can do to show that the hotfixes were not at all necessary during the installation of Windows 7. If you can see any flaw in what I did to achieve this, let me know. I checked the size of the .wim files in the ISO and confirmed that they were not modded (2.75GB without hotfixes, 2.79 with hotfixes).
@Fernando
It seems to me, that when the Samsung “pure” NVMe driver is installed during the Windows 7 installation (because the installer cannot see the SSD), that the Samsung “pure” NVMe driver is integrated into Windows 7 at that point. That seems to be the thought in this thread. Otherwise, the OS would not have booted to the desktop. I’m inclined to think that the hotfixes are for an existing Windows 7 OS, to support an added NVMe SSD. But, installing the Samsung driver in Windows 7 would be doing the same thing, without using the Microsoft NVMe driver (hotfix). So, if you have a Samsung NVMe SSD, do you need the Microsoft hotfixes? I think you can use the manufacturers drivers (as with any other hardware) and not use Microsoft’s hotfix, which is essentially just a driver update.
@Paulos7
What you have written, is absolutely correct, but only valid for some (not all) Samsung NVMe SSDs resp. their NVMe Controllers.
If the MS NVMe Hotfix has been integrated only into the Install.wim of the Win7 ISO file (and not into the Boot.wim as well), the Win7 Setup will not be able to detect the NVMe SSD (unless the user loads manually during the OS installation an available matching NVMe driver, which is offered by the SSD manufacturer, but in this case the integration of the MS NVMe Hotfix into the install.wim was wasted time).
A totally other situation is it for users, who have a "normal" Samsung SSD (available for consumers and not only for OEMs) within their system. They can either integrate the related Samsung NVMe driver into the boot.wim and install.wim or load the driver, when the Setup is searching for the target system drive.
Since this discussion about how to get Win7 installed onto an NVMe SSD has nothing to do with the topic of this thread, I will put it into an extra thread within the "Storage Drivers" Sub-Forum.
EDIT: This is what Microsoft has written about the integration of the NVMe Hotfix into a Win7 ISO file (for details look >here<):
@boanerges1 @erpallo @JoghurtDipper @Lost_N_BIOS @netdemon
Since the topic "How to get Windows 7 installed onto an NVMe SSD?" seems to be quite popular, I have merged some previously started threads about the same question into this new thread and am going to put a short guide into the new start post.
I hope, that this is ok for you all.
@netdemon :
Welcome to the Win-RAID Forum and my apologizes for the extremely delayed reaction to your request.
Within the new start post of this thread you will hopefully find the requested support.
If you should have any additional question, please post them into this thread.
Regards
Dieter (alias Fernando)
@pepar @Paulos7
As you can see here, I have created a new thread about how to get Win7 installed onto an NVMe SSD and started it with something like a guide. Furthermore I have moved our recent discussion abou the same topic into it.
This way it may be easier for the Forum visitors to find all related information at 1 place.