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Windows 7 Enterprise on Skylake/NVMe (Precision 5510)
My corporate office has told me that we will be using Dell Precision 5510 laptops in the future and our office uses Windows 7 Enterprise because we need bitlocker on them. Dell has a fully functional Windows 7 Pro disc which I can download and install with no issues. The BIOS is configured for legacy and the drive is configured in AHCI mode when I do the installation.
If I attempt to install directly from our Windows 7 SP1 Enterprise disc from Microsoft as part of our enterprise agreement, I get the error "A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing. If you have a driver floppy disc, CD, DVD, or USB flash drive, please insert it now." This error happens because I have a Skylake based laptop with only USB3 (no USB2). When I attempt to inject the proper drivers into the install.wim and boot.wim files that are in the sources folder I no longer get this error, but the installer cannot see the hard drive unless I change the bios to UEFI and RAID.
Even though the windows installer can now see the hard drive, I cannot install to it. I get the error "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu."
I have attempted injecting the MS KB2990941 and KB3087873 into the disc since these are supposed to add NVME support to Windows 7. I change the BIOS back to legacy and AHCI, boot to the updated installation which includes the updates and injected drivers, and I get the "A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing..." error again. The difference now is that if I click on browse I can see the hard drive listed and any usb flash drives that are hooked up. I'm not sure what it thinks is hooked up that I'm missing a driver for.
I have even extracted the drivers from the functional dell disk (install.wim and boot.wim) and injected all of them into their respective parts of my Windows 7 Enterprise installer with no success.
I'm looking for help and direction as to what has worked for others or what other options I can try.
Thanks in advance for any help.
DELL-Justin C
4 Operator
4 Operator
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783 Posts
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September 23rd, 2016 14:00
Greetings Winklema,
Thanks for your question. Please note I'm not an expert on this topic. I was just speaking with my colleague here and found out there's some kind of firmware limit that won't allow to install from disk. The recommendation is to use MDT. Here are the instructions: www.dell.com/.../en
Hope that helps. If you have any further questions on this topic they'd probably be over my head :)
ejn63
9 Legend
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September 23rd, 2016 15:00
You cannot just inject the drivers - you must build a customized Windows 7 install image (starting with 7 SP1) and install it from a flash drive. Dell has the details below.
Also note that whatever your reason for keeping Windows 7 for the moment, this is the last generation of Intel CPUs that will run 7 -- the Kaby Lake CPUs have now arrived, and will not run anything earlier than Windows 10.
<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>
winklema
2 Posts
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September 26th, 2016 14:00
ejn63,
I have already attempted this process many times over with different sets of drivers from dell (old and new) as well as different hotfixes from Microsoft. That guide did not seem to resolve my issue.
Justin C,
I had not yet seen that guide and it appeared to work all the way up until the end when I tried to build the installation media, when I got the error "BcdEdit returned an error." In the process of looking up how to build the installation media myself I found a comment from someone else that you can just copy the Windows 7 install.wim file into a Windows 10 installation media. After slipstreaming 2 NVMe related hotfixes into my Windows 7 Enterprise SP1 install.wim file and then packing in all of the dell drivers I was finally able to get it installed.
Here are the steps I used:
1. Necessary downloads
a. A Windows 10 installation media iso file from your Microsoft account
b. Windows 7 Enterprise SP1 iso from your Microsoft account
c. Rufus from https://rufus.akeo.ie/
d. Download all of the drivers for your Precision 5510 from support.dell.com (chipset drivers, sound, video, etc) and put them in the folder c:\temp\DellDrivers.
e. DISM GUI from https://dismgui.codeplex.com/
f. NVMe hotfixes from Microsoft support.microsoft.com/.../2990941 and support.microsoft.com/.../3087873
g. 7zip or winrar to extract the Windows 7 installation ISO
2. Configure a flash drive to boot the windows 10 installation media
a. Connect a 16GB or larger flash drive to the PC and note the drive letter (EX: e:)
b. Open Rufus and select the flash drive you just plugged in
c. Leave all of the options default
d. Click on the CD Icon next to the dropdown that says “ISO Image”
e. Choose your Windows 10 Installation media iso
f. Click start.
3. Extract your Windows 7 installation to c:\temp\Win7Media
4. Make a directory in c:\temp called mount
5. Open DISM Gui
6. Click Choose Wim
7. Select c:\temp\Win7Media\sources\install.wim
8. Click Choose Folder
9. Select c:\temp\mount
10. Click on the “Package Management” tab at the top
11. Click “Choose Package Folder” and select the folder where you have the two MS hotfixes (Windows6.1-KB2990941-v3-x64.msu and Windows6.1-KB3087873-v2-x64.msu)
12. Click Add Packages
a. The output at the bottom should say “completed successfully”
13. Open Windows Explorer (Do not close DISM yet)
14. Browse to your c:\temp\mount folder
a. You should see what appears to be a windows installation (including Program files, program files (x86), Windows, etc)
15. Create a folder called temp
a. This folder will show up as c:\temp once you have installed windows on the laptop
16. Copy the folder DellDrivers from c:\temp to c:\temp\mount\temp
17. Go back into DISM Gui and click the “Mount Control” tab
18. Click “Dismount WIM” and choose to commit changes
19. Copy c:\temp\Win7Media\sources\install.wim into the sources folder on your flash drive (ex: e:\sources\. It should ask to overwrite the current install.wim. choose yes to overwrite the windows 10 installation file with your modified windows 7 installation.)
20. Plug the flash drive into your laptop and boot to the BIOS (F2).
21. Go to “boot sequence” and choose legacy (not UEFI)
22. Click on “System Configuration” and then “SATA Operation” and make sure it is set to AHCI
23. Reboot the computer and press F12 to select the flash drive to boot from
24. Go through the installation process like normal
25. Once you have installed the OS, browse to c:\temp and install the drivers one at a time
If you are missing any drivers after finishing the installation, you can get the driver pack for the 5510 from dell at en.community.dell.com/.../11665.precision-5510-windows-7-driver-pack
sanket.p
2 Posts
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January 29th, 2017 00:00
Hello winklema,
I tried your each and every step carefully, but still cant complete the 24. step due to an error stating Windows cannot find any Microsoft Software Licence Terms...check the installation media...
I looked online and found this solution here but it still did not work-
www.toughdev.com/.../
I am so frustrated now that I am out of options and online help. Currently I have a new Dell Precision 5510 with Windows 10 Pro installed on it. I want a Windows 7 Professional running in parallel (dual boot). It is so outrageous that the Dell support executive denied to help me out either!
Thank you,
sanket.p