Hello, without going into much detail I have a lot of programs that are dependent on windows 7 and I have ZERO desire to switch, and I’ve been using 2 machines as a result. Is it possible to install windows 7 with my newer motherboard? if so I could retire my second pc, I’m fairly descent with hardware not some much with software but if someone could help me find my needed drivers, and link me to a tutorial of how to add them to my iso, i would greatly apricate it!
System Specs
CPU - I9 10850k
GPU - GTX 1060 6gb & Quadro Fx 1800
Motherboard - Z590 AORUS ELITE AX (rev. 1.0)
RAM - 32gb DDR4 2400 4x8
STORAGE - 1TB Samsung 970 EVO m.2 & 250GB generic ssd sata
PSU CASE - 750w gold
First get Windows 7 SP1 untouched ISO. Then get the SHA256 patch for Windows 7 (this enabled the updates to work, MS changed the Update signatures and need this mandatory) then get the NVMe driver for Samsung drivers here. Also the NVMe Patch itself from MS here. And most importantly get these Driver pack from here, save them on your machine. Note that thread also has information on Intel 225V LAN driver, your board has Realtek LAN so you should be good on that with easily available drivers.
Download NTLite / MSMG / Simplix toolkit and integrate drivers into the ISO, note - Simplix toolkit also makes the ISO use a Windows 10 install.wim so that you don’t have the USB issues read about it. Or you can simply bypass that option and go with NTLite and integrate the drivers. Plus get the xHCI USB3.0 pack from here and you must integrate that as well.
Now download WinNTSetup from here and learn about it, this will allow your ISO which is Win7 pure one with only drivers + xHCI pack added to boot into directly, for this you need to have a Win10 installation since WinNT setup is a PE system which runs direct from the OS and then boots into the Installed Windows. The reason we are doing with WinNT is because you don’t need any PCIe to USB add-on card to boot the Windows 7 ISO and use Keyboard and Mouse plus no need of PS/2 ports either since the WinNTSetup PE loads everything needed (this is same as Simplix toolkit as well, both different approaches).
I hope that works, sorry I do not have first hand experience. Just sharing what I learned. Also watch this video by Luumi on Z490 DARK hopefully that works in explaining more.
Let us know if you got it working, All the best.
TY so much this was extremely helpful at the time, Your an awesome person!