Author: parsec
Subject: X99
Posted: 30 Sep 2016 at 9:07am
Windows 7 has a problem with UEFI booting installations. I mention that in my guide that you used. I also describe how to deal with it. I'll do that here for you. Win 8, 8.1, and 10 do not have this problem.
Also, Win 7 does NOT have a built in NVMe driver. You will need to load an NVMe driver before your NVMe SSD will even be recognized by the Win 7 installation program. That means selecting a Custom installation. You'll also need to have the OCZ NVMe driver ready to load. That is NOT just the unzipped OCZ NVMe driver package. You must have just the x64 folder and its contents, on another USB flash drive, which is where the Win 7 installer will look for the driver.
This is the download page for the OCZ RD400 NVMe driver. You'll need to select your drive, and then scroll down to the driver download area:
https://ocz.com/us/download/
UEFI booting is mainly the use of a different boot loader, the program that runs to load an OS, including Windows. There is the standard "Legacy" boot loader, and the EFI boot loader, used for UEFI booting. Both are just program files.
Turns out the Win 7 installation files have the EFI boot loader program/file, in a folder that is different than where the Win 7 installation program is coded to look for it. So it can't find it, and defaults to a Legacy installation which does not use the EFI boot loader, of course. Why MSoft never fixed this, I have no clue.
It is possible to fix the location of the EFI boot loader file in Win 7. It takes some work but can be done. This guide describes how that is done, which is part of the guide's UEFI booting instructions. You'll need to scroll down to those instructions for Win 7. Don't skip the rest of my post, I'm not done yet. This is it:
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/15458-uefi-bootable-usb-flash-drive-create-windows.html
The description starts in step 10 of Option 2 in the guide. You can't just ignore the rest of the guide, and techniques for UEFI booting. You must be very careful fixing the location of that file, if it is not perfect, it won't work. I've done it once or twice, but I've also had failures creating the fixed installation files. One of the reasons I said goodbye to Win 7. You'll be creating a USB flash drive installation media for Win 7. That is a must.
When your Win 7 USB flash drive, with the FIXED Win 7 installation files on it, when you run the Win 7 installation, you MUST select the entry in the boot order that is, "UEFI: <flash drive name>". Otherwise, it will not install as a UEFI booting installation. Plus the standard things for installing Windows are still needed, mainly not having any other drives connected to the PC besides the target OS drive.
You can now understand why most users of NVMe SSDs don't use Win 7. MSoft might not be updating Win 7 for that reason, they want us to use Win 10.
Subject: X99
Posted: 30 Sep 2016 at 9:07am
 spyknee wrote:I used method 1 from guide here and it appears that w7 installed in legacy mode. I do not have the efi partition setup. Using a NVMe drive, selected uefi in csm ..........new build so all stuff new but cd rom is not uefi. I installed W7/64 SP1 from uefi usb stick. M.2 drive connected, cd connected, usb connected. So what do I need to get system to install 100% UEFI? |
Windows 7 has a problem with UEFI booting installations. I mention that in my guide that you used. I also describe how to deal with it. I'll do that here for you. Win 8, 8.1, and 10 do not have this problem.
Also, Win 7 does NOT have a built in NVMe driver. You will need to load an NVMe driver before your NVMe SSD will even be recognized by the Win 7 installation program. That means selecting a Custom installation. You'll also need to have the OCZ NVMe driver ready to load. That is NOT just the unzipped OCZ NVMe driver package. You must have just the x64 folder and its contents, on another USB flash drive, which is where the Win 7 installer will look for the driver.
This is the download page for the OCZ RD400 NVMe driver. You'll need to select your drive, and then scroll down to the driver download area:
https://ocz.com/us/download/
UEFI booting is mainly the use of a different boot loader, the program that runs to load an OS, including Windows. There is the standard "Legacy" boot loader, and the EFI boot loader, used for UEFI booting. Both are just program files.
Turns out the Win 7 installation files have the EFI boot loader program/file, in a folder that is different than where the Win 7 installation program is coded to look for it. So it can't find it, and defaults to a Legacy installation which does not use the EFI boot loader, of course. Why MSoft never fixed this, I have no clue.
It is possible to fix the location of the EFI boot loader file in Win 7. It takes some work but can be done. This guide describes how that is done, which is part of the guide's UEFI booting instructions. You'll need to scroll down to those instructions for Win 7. Don't skip the rest of my post, I'm not done yet. This is it:
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/15458-uefi-bootable-usb-flash-drive-create-windows.html
The description starts in step 10 of Option 2 in the guide. You can't just ignore the rest of the guide, and techniques for UEFI booting. You must be very careful fixing the location of that file, if it is not perfect, it won't work. I've done it once or twice, but I've also had failures creating the fixed installation files. One of the reasons I said goodbye to Win 7. You'll be creating a USB flash drive installation media for Win 7. That is a must.
When your Win 7 USB flash drive, with the FIXED Win 7 installation files on it, when you run the Win 7 installation, you MUST select the entry in the boot order that is, "UEFI: <flash drive name>". Otherwise, it will not install as a UEFI booting installation. Plus the standard things for installing Windows are still needed, mainly not having any other drives connected to the PC besides the target OS drive.
You can now understand why most users of NVMe SSDs don't use Win 7. MSoft might not be updating Win 7 for that reason, they want us to use Win 10.