310 chipset question

[SIW2]

currently battling with W7 install

How far have you got with it?

 

[teckneeculler]

Kinda stalled. It seems to me that I need to change my W7 ISO in some way so that it'll fully boot into the H310M-E R.2 environment, so that, from there, I can run the driver disc and get the OS fully rounded.

But, at the moment, it's sitting there, unresponsive, as shown in my photos. Not going anywhere. BTW, I don't think I need to update my W7 ISO (other than with drivers for the H310) because I already did an NTLite rebuild a coupla months back, integrating any stuff I felt was worthwhile.
What my ISO really needs now is to have the H310 W7 stuff integrated so it'll boot properly.

 

[SIW2]

you can try this

Put your drivers in the DRIVERS\bootx64 and DRIVERS\Installx64 folders.

Put the MS nvme updates in UPDATES\bootx64 and UPDATES\Installx64 folders.

run 7updater.cmd as administrator. answer N when it asks if you want to download Simplix.

It will then only integrate what you put in those folders

No need to include the giant audio and graphics card drivers - you can install those afterwards.


edit: Is there a special bios update needed for win7 on that mobo?

Just looked and there bios v 1002 available.

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1151/PRIME_H310M-E_R2.0/PRIME-H310M-E-R2-ASUS-1002.zip

 

[johnhoh]

The screen in your photos that is your sticking point is not due to anything unique about the 310 chipset. The IGP and USB drivers are the sticking points when installing to an 3xx chipset, but your error is happening before those would try to load, otherwise you would be getting to the desktop. So I would re-examine the win7 install iso itself (maybe try a different one) and also re-examine your boot drive, i.e., is your boot drive gpt or mbr, have you tried reformatting it, have you followed the tips on the below page, etc. One other idea - if you have a win7 installation from some other motherboard and you like it, just use macrium to clone its boot drive onto the boot drive you are using for your 310 system, then shut down and move it over to your 310 board immediately (without booting it on the old donor board) and try booting it on the 310.

UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with

 

[teckneeculler]

SIW2: Thanks, I'll try your suggestions.

Johnhoh: Thanks for your thoughts. I get where you're coming from, but the problem seems to be connected to the boards. This 'stalled-install' situation with the H310 board (as pictured above) is exactly what happened with the H370 board that I first tried. I could understand that - Asus make no claim that the H370 board works with W7. But I'd not expected to run into the same problem with a board that's claimed to be compatible with W7.

Re the hard drives concerned, both boards were equipped with new 250Gb Samsung 970 NVME M.2, and both installs were done via 32Gb USB 3.1 flash drives, loaded into 3.1 sockets. Both were done through Rufus 3.6 and with GPT\UEFI selected.

But it's worth noting that, once I gave up trying to load W7 on the H370, and loaded the Acer flash drive with W10 Enterprise, the install was fast and flawless.

So I'm keeping the H370 with W10 and plan to use the system to experiment with VM's. But that's another story. I don't want W10 as my main system - I just don't like it - so my main focus is the H310.

Regarding the installs generally, I'm not new to it. I've built maybe 200-300 systems for customers over the years, W98, XP and W7. However, I don't concentrate as well as I once did, so anything out of the ordinary - like what I'm doing now - is confusing.

I take your point about cloning my Z170 current main system to another drive and dropping it into the H310, but I'd rather not risk cluttering the new install with incompatible files. I'd like the new system to get off on the right foot, if you get my meaning .

BTW, I'm very grateful to both you and SIW2 for your help with this.

 

[johnhoh]

the problem seems to be connected to the boards.

Yes that much does seem true - my point is that I do not think it has to do with the 3xx chipset.

once I gave up trying to load W7 on the H370 and loaded the Acer flash drive with W10 Enterprise, the install was fast and flawless

That makes me wonder if the bios defaults for the board are secureboot=on (needs to be off for win7) and CSM=off (needs to be on for win7). If there is no CSM option in your bios, sometimes its called OS Version=other

 

[teckneeculler]

Johnhoh: Hey, I think you're right about the BIOS settings - I seem to recall I had to modify those when I installed W7 on the Z170 board, two years ago. Just got back from the doc, I'll check out the BIOS settings after I've inhaled a coupla scotches .

EDIT: Durn! Un-success . I reloaded W7 onto an Apacer USB 3.1 flash card\memstick via Rufus and set it up as an MBR installation instead of GPT.
Rebooted, deleted all earlier partitions on the Samsung NVME drive, and installed with usual options.
CSM was already set to on, with secure boot set to 'Other'.
Result: Opening screen is the same as with the earlier install, see pic.
In other words, nothing has changed...

 

[johnhoh]

I'm not sure what to try next. There is a user here called dg1261 who is very good with boot issues, you might send him a pm.
But just to point out, if you were to do a fresh install of win7 using your z170 board, making sure to load usb3 drivers and the samsung nvme driver on it, then move that drive over to the 310 board, I bet it would work. You mentioned not wanting the extra stuff that gets on it when you do this, but that extra stuff is just a few small drivers that can always be removed later using Uwe's device cleanup tool.

Tools for Windows

 

[SIW2]

i7 8700 ASUS PRIME H310M-D R2.0 Windows 7 X 64 install

check the bios settings in the video.

 

[teckneeculler]

SIW2: Thanks. But the only difference between that guy's settings and mine were that he had to enable USB control for keyboard and mouse. I've never had any issues with those - I can manipulate the Windows installation menus without a problem.

I don't know how far you watched the video, but at around 14mins, it shows the familiar W7 circular-light display that precedes W7 starting up. Well, on my W7 H310 installation, the circular lights begin but immediately fade to black and the screen returns to the display shown in my two screen-shots above. Whereas with the W10 install I did on the H370, with nothing else different except that W10 is on the Apacer memstick and not W7, the installation was fast and flawless. No issues whatsoever.

BTW, I must apologize for, as yet, not getting around to trying your earlier suggestions about injecting the various files into my boot install. I will definitely try that shortly.

Meanwhile, I've just had a long, fruitless 'chat' with an Asus 'HelpDesk' person, who finally admitted after 15 wasted minutes that he lacked the expertise to answer my query about installing W7 to a 310 board. He did promise to pass it along to a more technical person but I'm not expecting much to happen.

Johnhoh: I'll try your suggestion about loading a new W7 install onto a spare drive, and dropping it onto the 310. I'll try it with a SATA HDD for now, which'll remove any possible NVME problems, and I'll report back.

Thanks again, guys, much appreciated .

 

[teckneeculler]

Woohoo! Success! W7 is now running on the H310 board (c\w 8th Gen. Coffee Lake i5 9400 2.9Ghz).

Guys, I am so grateful for your help with this. I was beginning to think it wasn't possible .

Here's how it happened, a combination of SWI2's and Johnhoh's advice. First I pulled the leads from the four drives attached to my main Asus Z170 board, patched in a spare 250GB SATA drive and installed W7 onto it. Then I ran the Z170 driver disc.

Detached the drive from the Z170 and connected it to the H310. It booted up straight away but the USB keyboard and mouse were now dead, so I rebooted to the BIOS and did the USB mouse\keyboard emulation that was described in SWI2's video link.

That's it, pretty much. Wow...

W7 is only running in base-mode, of course - lacking aound 6-7 drivers - but at least it's actually working.
Now I need to move the new W7 install from the SATA drive to the Samsung NVME, then start configuring the H310 W7 drivers.

Actually, the VGA is working, if only in simple-pic mode. I think the Coffee Lake 9400 has GPU support...Well, something must be doing it as I've got a picture. I'll move over my NVidia GTX 960 at some stage, together with the other SATA and SSD drives.

I know I said it before but I'll say it again - thankyou, thankyou SIW2and Johnhoh! Wouldn't have made it without you

 

[Paul Black]

Hi teckneeculler,

Woohoo! Success! W7 is now running on the H310 board (c\w Coffee Lake i5 9400 2.9Ghz).

Thanks for sharing the solution. It will help other people visiting this thread that have the same problem/issue/question.

 

[johnhoh]

Good to see the progress

Actually, the VGA is working, if only in simple-pic mode. I think the Coffee Lake 9400 has GPU support...Well, something must be doing it as I've got a picture.

What you are seeing is windows standard SVGA mode, which loads when the intel gpu driver is not working. But biostar has a modified intel gpu driver that should work for you, see posts #17-#20 in this thread for details.
need driver for intel uhd620

You will need to google zeffy wufuc to find the one-time patch that allows your machine to use windows update. You could also use WUMT, WuMgr, or DISM++

If you have any other issues with drivers just post the right-hand pane that shows when you do start>run>msinfo32>components>problem devices.

 

[teckneeculler]

Thanks, Paul Black. It's great to have something useful to share

Johnhoh: Cheers for that, I'll try that Intel GPU driver.

BTW, re Windows Updates, I've meant to say this before when I've seen discussions on the subject: Windows updates aren't necessary. I'll qualify that: They aren't as necessary as many people think.
On what do I base this (heretical) statement? Simple: Building lots of systems and always turning off Windows Updates (and the Security Center) during the process. Consequently, because I usually rebuild my own systems every 2-3 years, my OS's would never be updated during that period. For my customer builds, I'm picking that some of them (probably most, actually), are still running W7 (or XP) systems that haven't been updated in 15-20 years. So I take MS's 'Windows Updates' admonitions with more than a grain of salt.

It's my belief, as a 30-year casual observer of the MS and Windows culture, that many MS 'essential-must have' fixes have been called up by ultra-conservative and geeky beta-testers and don't necessarily reflect the needs of the average user. You only have to read the description of each Windows Update to see what I mean.

Anyway, I don't want this to become a long, boring or controversial dissertation. I'm just saying that, in my experience, one can live without Windows Updates. Provided, I must add, that you begin with a system at first install, that is current. It would be foolish to install today, an untouched W7 ISO from 2012. Unless, of course, you follow the excellent advice from SWI2 in his posts about Simplix Updates, which would provide an excellent add-on to any base ISO, especially as the collections exclude, AFAIK, the most infamous of updates, i.e., telemetry et al.

Re my transferring W7 from the old SATA drive to the new Samsung 970 NVME, it's occurred to me, as the Samsung drive is still in place on the 310 (but selected to be non-booting in the BIOS), I could just load something like Macrium Reflect onto the W7 drive and clone itself to the NVME. But I'm wondering if the NVME would then boot. The BIOS sees it okay, but as we know, the BIOS sees things that Windows doesn't. Anyone have thoughts on that?

 

[SIW2]

Re my transferring W7 from the old SATA drive to the new Samsung 970 NVME

You would need to have the windows 7 MS nvme updates installed. Possibly the samsung oem nvme driver as well.

They are attached on the first couple of posts here

Update your Win 7 installation media.

 

[teckneeculler]

SIW2, thanks. When you say, 'You would need to have the windows 7 MS nvme updates installed', do you mean run them in the (temporary) W7 installation that I've used to get the H310 booting? Or add them to the ISO I used to create that install?

 

[SIW2]

do you mean run them in the (temporary) W7 installation that I've used to get the H310 booting?

Yes. before you clone it to the nvme disk.

 

[teckneeculler]

Got it! Cheers.
PS: Don't you ever sleep ?
EDIT: Not a criticism, more like admiration for your dedication...

 

[Paul Black]

Hi teckneeculler,

I'm just saying that, in my experience, one can live without Windows Updates. Provided, I must add, that you begin with a system at first install, that is current. It would be foolish to install today, an untouched W7 ISO from 2012. Unless, of course, you follow the excellent advice from SIW2 in his posts about Simplix Updates, which would provide an excellent add-on to any base ISO, especially as the collections exclude, AFAIK, the most infamous of updates, i.e., telemetry et al.

I couldn't agree more.
Thanks to SIW2, many people have been able to continue [re-installing to existing HDD or SSD] using Win 7.

 

[teckneeculler]

Question about PK, KEK, DB and DBX keys.

Coming back to my W7 install onto the Asus H310 board, Johnhoh said that I should enable CSM and disable Secure boot. CSM was easily enabled but I was never sure that I'd disabled Secure Boot. The H310 BIOS\UEFI says it's 'Enabled' but the word is greyed out. So I left it as it was and, as I've said, managed to get W7 up and running.

However, I've just come across the webpage below* where the user states that it's necessary to adjust the state of the PK, KEK, DB and DBX keys and describes how he did it.

Is this guy correct? Or should these keys be left alone?
* How to Disable or Enable Secure Boot for ASUS Motherboard

NOTE for inexperienced users: The four KEYS referred to above are NOT BIOS access keys, like Del, F2, F10 etc.