How do i install Windows 7 on the Lattepanda

SIW2 said:

you will need to install the video driver into the win7 image before trying to boot it up.

Did you install it into win7 install.wim ?

Yes we have tried to put the video driver into the install.wim with DISM.exe before we flashed the image onto the drive but that also did not get us any further. It gets stuck in the same boot loop as last time.

I think you were on the right track looking into Legacy boot capability.

I had a W8 / UEFI machine a few years ago; could install Linux + W7 RTM only in Legacy mode (with 1 or 2 other BIOS settings changed ??? ), and then afterward it would bring up the GRUB, for Linux or W7, but NOT W8.

W8 - the ORIGINAL OS, was bootable only by F12 @ startup, W8 boot manager (and it remained in Legacy Mode, for next boot-up).


edit - you said 'no Legacy option'; is Legacy option 'grayed out' / disabled? If so, there might be another BIOS Setting needing to be reset, to Enable the option. ?

Japster said:

Hello fellow Windows 7 fanatics,

Recently a friend and I bought a Lattepanda 4G/64GB for our Arduino weather station project.
We needed this single board computer to host a SQL server to store the data collected from the sensors. And we would like to see if we can use SQL server data analysis services to see if we can find any patterns. We also need this single board computer to run miscellaneous programs that can only run on Windows 7 (Windows 7 is a better OS anyways ).
It would be a perfect device if we could get Windows 7 to run on it. Hardware-wise it should be able to run Windows 7.
We really need to make this device to work with Windows 7 or it would be completely useless for us.
We have tried a lot things to get the OS installed on this device but we just can't get it to work.

There doesn't really seem to be an option in the BIOS to turn on Legacy or CSM. We have turned off fast boot and secure boot but that didn't help either.
When trying to make a bootable USB device with Rufus with GPT support for UEFI it loads up until displays it starting Windows and then it locks up.

Here is a list of the other things we have tried in different combinations:

Rufus with several different options to make it UEFI compatible:
Hangs at starting Windows
Modifying an ISO making it UEFI compatible:
Same issue
Installing Windows 7 through the pre-installed Windows 10 and finding the possible driver asscociated with it (Intel SD Host Controller):
Won't pick up the driver (maybe the wrong driver?)
YUMI multiboot MBR and GPT:
Won't start from the USB device
Several ISO files including Windows server 2008:
Same issue
UBCD:
Won't start from the USB device
PLOP bootloader:
Won't start from the USB device
Windows install safemode:
Hangs at disk.sys
Windows install ignoring bad driver signatures:
Same issue
Windows install with logs:
Can't find where the logs are located

If anyone has a solution to this problem we would be really grateful,
Japstert

how did everything go? I am trying myself to install windows 7 because i need it to work with some applications.

This is like the issue with installing windows 7 on the gpd win. It has the new cherry trail atom cpu that has only windows 10 support. But besides that, it also uses emmc flash memory instead of proper pcie or sata ssd memory. So it only works with windows 10 as it needs the weird host controller driver that i was never able to get working. Intel sd host controller?

and i tried both those drivers for emmc in the previous post, neither would let me install windows 7 still.

Any updates on this issue? Were you able to install Windows 7 on LattePanda? If not, did you identify the issues blocking you?

We have some legacy hardware that we wanted to run off of a cheap PC. We may have mistakenly purchased the LattePanda assuming it could run older versions of Windows. If that's the case the LattePanda is useless to us. We will either need to hack the serial protocol or resurrect an old Dell tower that we just dusted off out of storage.

It seemed that LattePanda would have been a nice small cheap machine for running legacy Windows stuff .... but maybe not the case.

I actually killed both my lattepandas after i realized that i could run a newer win 7 iso that had alot more drivers i.e. emmc drivers for the boot environment so it could see the emmc storage the lattepanda has which old win 7 isos could not. I did try it with my gpd win which essentially is the same thing as a latte panda but slightly newer version of the intel atom chip but same family. Windows 7 did install but would not boot, it would red screen, albeit it was so quick and distorted i could not make it out. Apprently the red screen is a graphics issue meaning windows 7 did not like the new cherry trail intel atom graphics likely and could not use them. Have not done much further testing since then as i have little idea how i can fix the issue.

Sesto Elemento said:

I actually killed both my lattepandas after i realized that i could run a newer win 7 iso that had alot more drivers i.e. emmc drivers for the boot environment so it could see the emmc storage the lattepanda has which old win 7 isos could not. I did try it with my gpd win which essentially is the same thing as a latte panda but slightly newer version of the intel atom chip but same family. Windows 7 did install but would not boot, it would red screen, albeit it was so quick and distorted i could not make it out. Apprently the red screen is a graphics issue meaning windows 7 did not like the new cherry trail intel atom graphics likely and could not use them. Have not done much further testing since then as i have little idea how i can fix the issue.

should have stated by newer win7 iso it had all the new updates etc integrated into it. and much more driver support, same as current win10 iso.

how did everything go? I am trying myself to install windows 7 because i need it to work with some applications.