See here how to install Win7 x64 on Acer Spin 5:
1) General guide: https://pastebin.com/d4hN4ih0
2) Guide only for i7-8550u 8th gen Kaby Lake CPU: https://pastebin.com/H0cWhQHH
The guide consists in multiple solutions for each step that I gathered around the internet, I only adapted them to the needs.
This guide includes links to all necessary files (including Win7 x64 drivers, hopefully they work with all Acer SP515 models, I could only test on mine which is a SP515 with i7-8550u CPU).
The main idea is simple: Acer Spin 5 has an UEFI Class 3 BIOS, which means no CSM. Windows 7’s Standard VGA driver needs CSM to operate, so on a UEFI Class 3 BIOS it has to be disabled, otherwise it won’t properly boot. But when you do this, you get no video during the installation, because during that the Standard VGA driver is used. Fortunately, there is a way to get video by integrating the integrated Intel graphic card driver so that the installation would automatically load it and get video output, but that happens only after the driver is loaded, so the first part of the installation will remain under black screen. The problem is that there is no official driver for UHD series on Windows 7, so the one for HD series has to be modified to be made compatible with UHD, fortunately that is possible. By modifying the inf file, you always lose the official signature and unfortunately Windows doesn’t load unsigned drivers during setup. Therefore in order to get the driver loaded and get video output, the driver must be signed. Officially signing is very expensive and by unofficially signing you have to manually include the certificate into the Windows installation before it even starts to install. Luckily, that is certainly possible by integrating it via it’s mounter registry. Some say that using test mode and disabling driver signing might also work, but there is too much uncertainty and something might go wrong and in the end test mode would appear everywhere. More than that, Windows 7’s BCD boot files are incompatible with UEFI Class 3 BIOS, so they have to be replaced with those from Windows 10, luckily they match with each other. Finally, activating Win7 under UEFI is unusual, but made possible.
Update: I tested a newer version of the Intel Video Driver (21.20.16.4860, older was 21.20.16.4839) and it works better, with the old one I got occasionally black screen which was actually BSOD (because of missing vga you can’t see blue screens). The bastards from intel have just removed the driver from their website (original URL was: https://downloadmirror.intel.com/27360/a…45.23.4860.zip), but luckily there is always a backup (thanks to softpedia: https://us.softpedia-secure-download.com…45.23.4860.zip). Just use the same method of editing the inf, then the 2 dll files and then signing. If you have windows already installed, you can update the driver manually in device manager with this one, if you get black screen you can force shut down and power on again, it will work. If you want to remove the old driver from the system to free up a few hundred MB, use the information from the first answer from here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions…-r…dows-7/27768776
This method can be adapted to any uefi class 3 computer using the right video driver. For some platforms using mostly uhd 630 (i5-8300h 8th gen Coffee Lake with UHD 630 23 execution units) this driver form canonkong has been proved to be working: Win 7 x64 Coffee Like UHD 630 Video driver (2) You simply use the same method above, remember that you might not need to modify the inf.
EDIT by Fernando: Thread title shortened
Update2: There is a new modified driver released for Coffee Lake/Whiskey Lake platforms released, you can use this is if the other fails: Win 7 x64 Coffee Like UHD 630 Video driver (3)
It seems that the 2 drivers that worked for my computer are designed and modded for the Kaby Lake platform, while the last 2 are for Coffee Lake/Whiskey Lake.
There is a new modified driver released for Coffee Lake/Whiskey Lake platforms released.
Is it possible to inject Nvidia Graphics Drivers into the Win7 installation image instead of Intel Graphics Drivers and still succeed with a pure UEFI installation?
Thanks,
AZ
Yes, if you have only the NVIDIA video card, so no intel as primary video card. In my case the intel uhd is the main video, the NVIDIA is only for acceleration when needed.
But what about booting into Win7 safe mode? Apparently, booting into safe mode does not work, if W7 is installed in pure UEFI/no CSM mode with vga.sys disabled:
Windows 7 x64 on UEFI without Legacy Support/CSM (read the description text of the video)
Installing Windows 7 on the pure UEFI systems without CSM
Post #3
Why is that so?
On my W7, booting into safe mode HAS TO WORK - it’s an absolute imperative!
AZ
https://forums.mydigitallife.net/threads…-devices.82137/
New way to get to install and run 7 on class 3 devices
I know all this, but it’s not a problem for me. Like I said in the comment of the youtube video, if my Win7 fails or runs unproperly, I have a Ghost image with the backup of the C drive which I restore using bootable USB. I know I get sometimes BSODs from my video card (black screen suddenly), but that is because of the modified unofficial driver, so there is no solution for that.
It seems similar to this: https://forums.mydigitallife.net/threads…sm.80876/page-2 . A VGA/INT10H emulator so you can install win7 and boot normally, then install video driver. I didn’t bother to try it, I have my installation up and running for more than one year, with most recent updates from that moment integrated, I don’t use windows update (because it simply doubles of triples the installation size and everything runs slower afterwards) and as I said as something goes wrong I got the backup of a clean installation with everything I need already configured. I will surely try these methods when I will need to reinstall from scratch with the newest updates integrated. Good to know there are 2 of them already.
I know all this, […]
So, can you CONFIRM that W7 safe mode STILL WON’T WORK even when an Intel or AMD/Nvidia driver is correctly integrated into a W7 installation image?
If that’s so, what are Win8 and later Windows OS’es doing different during safe boot than Win7, so they work but Win7 does not??
By the way: is the install.wim of Win10 exactly the same as the one of Win7 (I guess not…), and if not, what are the important differences between the two OS’es? Do I also need to use the boot.wim of W10 in order to achieve a a pure UEFI install of W7 or would install.wim alone suffice?
Thanks for any responses in advance,
AZ
Win10 uses another standard vga mode, which is directly compatible with uefi. That cannot be ported to win7,it’s just different from scratch built.
Win7 safe mode, bsod, boot depends on this vga which is non uefi compatible. Uefiseven emulates the int10 csm necessarry for this to work on pure uefi.
I also updated my current existing installation with uefiseven to test it: recopied vga driver, reenabled vga in registry and bcd and installed uefiseven. It works perfectly, I only have to figure out why do i still have to press enter 2 times before seeing the boot logo, even if I also copied the skiperrors file…
Since @manatails couldn’t figure out what the issue was so that I had to press 2 times enter, I tried my luck with vgashim by driver1998 and it works with no issues.
Sorry for the bump here, but do you mind if I port the tutorials over at Paste Bin to my own website over at http://windowsenthusiasts1.epizy.com/ ? This way, we have the guide in case they ever 404 at Paste Bin. You will of course be credited as well. @bloodhand
Sorry for my delay, I was away for a while. I saw your tutorial already and I am actually very happy you did it even if I didn’t answer your message. This way more people can get it done!
I saw your other tutorial too with uefiseven. Unfortunately, as I stated before, uefiseven required me to press a key twice to continue booting and the developer couldn’t figure it out. So I used vgashim (on which uefiseven is based on) and this worked without needing to press anything. Maybe this information would be useful for other users too.
I also reinstalled Windows 7 on my UEFI laptop from scratch in the meantime. Because I had many different attempts because there was every time something wrong within the installation so I had to start over, there were a lot of entries created in the UEFI boot options menu. So then I did remove all the entries in the UEFI boot menu using “bcdedit /enum firmware” and “bcdedit /delete identifier” commands after I finished the installation. I have to say that the previous Windows bootmgr entry there was there since I had the original Windows 10 the machine came with, I never fiddled with that before, because I never got multiple entries before. So when I created the EFI partition again within the Windows 7 installation after applying install.wim using DISM, the entry in the UEFI boot got created again. But whenever I powered up my machine after a shut down, there was first a black screen, then a pause, then the Acer logo and then Windows 7 booting, so annoying 10-15 seconds delay on every boot. I thought this had to do with the manner that EFI of Windows 7 gets initialized, similar to Legacy BIOS mode which showed an information screen first (which contained information or a legacy logo on Legacy BIOS, but because UEFI it was black) and then started booting. So I installed a copy of Windows 10 using DISM and created the EFI partition from the installation. Then shutdown, power on, let Windows 10 boot, it started directly with the Acer logo and loading of Windows 10. Then I shut it down, restored my Windows 7 Ghost backup image on the C drive where I installed Windows 10, recreated the EFI partition from the Windows 7 on the C drive, put back vgashim en WindSLIC for activation and shut down. When I powered up I directly got a half second of Acer logo, no black screen anymore, and directly got to Starting Windows, so no more annoying delay. So I was right about it. I guess the Windows 10 entry which is created in the UEFI boot menu acts different, beucase Windows 10 on EFI is supposed to boot directly within the logo screen. So this way I guess I fooled the UEFI boot to think it’s a Windows 10, thus no more delay.
So I’m back with some updates:
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The original driver of ELAN Touchpad I ever used until now had a glitch that in some programs it won’t allow a continuous scrolling. It stopped at every scroll step, so I had to do multiple taps to get it done. It wasn’t so annoying until I had to switch from Firefox ESR latest version for Windows 7 to r3dfox which is a crafted latest version also compatible with Windows 7. I also got that issue with scrolling within this browser and that was very annoying. I had to test a lot of different touchpad drivers until I found one without the glitch. But I couldn’t see all options anymore in the configurator (such as multiple finger press or momentum option). After a lot of reading I could get all these options activated by hacking the registry of the configurator. And then I could activate them again from the configurator.
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ELAN Fingerprint was not usable even if I had working drivers. Being a WBF version it gets configured by the Windows Biometrics in Control Panel, so you don’t/can’t use additional software with it. I found out that the Windows Biometric Service was missing on my machine, because I used a slimmed down version of Windows 7. I could fix that easily with a registry file import with the correct settings, thankfully the needed files were not deleted during the slimmingdown process. So after patching and restarting, I could see the fingerprint in Windows Biometrics. But I couldn’t configure it, because the ELAN Fingerprint application was missing. So I had to search again an test a lot of drivers until I found a working one and also with the fingerprint application. Then I was able to register fingerprints and login succesfully to Windows using it.
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The general Realtek HD Audio driver doesn’t detect when headphones are plugged in. The Windows 10 x64 official driver for the machine does that correctly, but I cannot get the equalizer back anymore, maybe because Windows 10 also has an own one. So I have to modify the general driver in order to fix the headphones detection, have to figure out where this is stored in the inf file of the official driver. Then I can still enjoy using the equalizer.
I ditched the equalizer fix for Realtek HD Audio. I instead use SRS Audio Sandbox which gives me better sound quality than the equalizer of the soundcard. So I can simply use the Windows 10 driver which fixes the headphone plugged issue.
In the meantime I found another newer working driver for the Intel UHD 620, that is 21.20.16.5164. It seems to also work better with NVIDIA GTX 1050 switching technology, so that Windows is now stable when it switches from the integrated to the dedicated GPU.
The only thing I won’t ever be able to fix is the USB-C which is a UCM UCSI device that is only starting Windows 10 supported. It will never be possible to migrate this device class on Windows 7, because there will be also needed to modify the kernel.