Per this thread: USB 3.0/3.1 Drivers (original and modded) (111), as well as personal experimentation, it is indeed difficult to get “in box” pre-included Windows 10 drivers (or any drivers really) working on Windows 7. However, just ignoring this limitation for a minute, I do have some questions:
1. What are the full listings of both the NVMe driver names/files as well as the xHCI driver names/files? Aka, what .sys(es) and possibly .inf(s) are needed to have full functionality of generic NVMe and xHCI support under Windows 10 - and what are their names? (I know Windows 7 has a NVMe update/hotfix, but apparently the driver is old and does not write to the cache like it is supposed to on NVMe drives.)
2. Windows 7 also has (to my knowledge) in box drivers as well that do not have an associated .cat file. Might it be possible to “slipstream” the Windows 10 NVMe and xHCI drivers into Windows 7 in a similar fashion?
3. Could it be possible to create and sign your own .cat file for the drivers, and then just import the certificate into Windows 7 to make these drivers “work?”
The names of the MS Win10 in-box NVMe driver files are
1. stornvme.sys (that is the real driver) and
2. stornvme.inf (that is the information file, which manages the installation of the driver).
The names of the MS Win10 in-box USB3.0 driver files are
1. USBXHCI.SYS (that is the real driver),
2. usbxhci.inf (that is the information file, which manages the installation and
3. UsbXhciCompanion.dll (that is a co-installer file).
Contrary to all third party drivers the MS in-box drivers do not contain a *.cat file (no digital signature required for in-box drivers) and the *.cat file entry is missing within the related *.inf file.
No, this doesn’t work, because the Windows OS Setup only accepts their own on-box drivers and not theones, which were extracted from another OS and are not digitally signed.
Yes, this is possible, but such mod+signed drivers cannot be used from scratch (inserted into the ISO image or loaded at the beginning of the OS installation).
Thanks for your response, I’ll do some research with this.
One question I have though is isn’t the .cat file required to have “digitally signed” drivers? How does Windows 7 have “digitally signed” in box drivers if they don’t include the .cat file? Wouldn’t both Windows 7 and Windows 10 drivers be missing their own respective .cat files for in-box drivers and neither are necessarily “digitally signed” when they are originally installed?
Thanks!
@Omicron :
The OS knows its own files (inclusive the drivers). Only “external” drivers need the digital signature, which is stored within the *.cat files.
Hmm, interesting. I wonder what/how controls that - guessing maybe a system side giant .cat for all files?