Windows 7 x64 on modern hardware (with and without UEFI)

[Moline]

Hi! I just acquired a Lenovo Ideapad 3 with 11th Gen Intel Tiger Lake processor and Intel Iris Xe graphics and I was wondering if it was possible to install Windows 7 to it. Unfortunately, I do not have Legacy Mode so it has to be done in UEFI mode. The ISO I use has all the updates up to 2020 EOL integrated along with drivers such as Nvme, USB3, etc. It also replaces the Win7 PE with the Win8.1 PE (Windows 8.1 was tried first and installs fine). I whip up the USB as GPT in Rufus and put in the UEFI7 1.3.0 files, I install it, boot back into the media, use Shift+F10 to open up command prompt->Diskpart to assign a letter to the System partition and then a command prompt->Notepad->Open->All Files to the Windows 10 part to copy the UEFI7 file to the microsoft/boot folder on the System drive. After exiting, it tries to finish the Windows Logo, but it restarts.

When I use "Disable Automatic Restart After System Failure", it simply gets stuck on the incomplete Windows Logo. When I whipped up a Windows 8.0 (6.2) GPT USB, It actually showed me the BSOD, which was NON_ACPI_COMPLIANT_BIOS, meaning this is also most definitely the case for Windows 7. Is there a modded ACPI driver for Windows 7 to get it to run on hardware such as Tiger Lake?

Also, has anyone modded graphics drivers that work on Intel Tiger Lake and Windows 7/8.1? And is there any way to get the HID-Compliant touchpad/touchscreen working under 7? Both of these devices do not work under the Windows 7 8 PE nor under 8.1's PE or even an installed copy of 8.1 (the earliest these devices work is with Windows 10 Build 10240, or the free upgrade build given to us in July 2015).

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated! I was inspired to start this after seeing the work being put into getting Windows XP to work on modern hardware. Since Windows 7 was the second most popular operating system after XP, I hope this can go somewhere. I would love to use Windows 7 on a 2022 laptop complete with working ACPI, Aero Glass, touchpad, touchscreen, and any other driver I may need (those will be discussed further down the road after we get the four important ones working).

[Moline]

If you guys go into the Windows Vista on modern hardware thread, you'll find a Windows 7 ACPI mod. It also works with Windows 8.0, but unfortunately, it didn't detect my M.2 SSD (and I thought 8.0 had a generic driver built in for that). I tried this mod with Windows 7 along with using UEFI7, but it still froze on the Windows logo. This may suggest it's a UEFI7 problem now, but I do not know as it does not display the BSOD.

[NewUser]

Just wanted to share my experience and I am currently doing research that lead me here.

2018 Asus motherboard PRIME H310M-A that originally had W10.
Due to not booting past the BIOS screen I had to Nuke and wanted to install W7.

After no mouse and or keyboard with USB ... I had to go to the Goodwill and buy a PS2 mouse and Keyboard. That solved that issue.

Then problem with a missing CD, DVD driver would not finish the my USB install.

So I had to burn the W7 install to a DVD (dual layer over 4 gb).

This works!

Now the only issue is finding missing W7 drivers. It used to be pretty easy in the 90's and early 2000's.

Why is it so hard to find W7 drivers!? Even the motherboard manufacturer will not post them anymore (even tho they have them all).

Everything is the crappy W10!!!

Just know that you can install W7 on a newer system (i5, 8th Gen, Coffee lake CPU 6 cores, 32 GB ram ETC..)

Please share your tips and W7 driver database (like a personal one somewhere).

LTD.... Living the Dream.

[mooms]

On 8/23/2022 at 10:29 AM, NewUser said:

Why is it so hard to find W7 drivers!? Even the motherboard manufacturer will not post them anymore

Because the newer chipset & co are not made for Windows 7.

 

On 8/23/2022 at 10:29 AM, NewUser said:

Please share your tips and W7 driver database

 http://snappy-driver-installer.org/

 

Be careful, some drivers will install fine but will not works as intended.