Installing W7 System Image On HP 15-DW3125OD Laptop W/O Optical Drive

[TurtleShroom]

Good evening.

Today is my birthday. I got a new laptop for my birthday. It is a HP 15-DW3125OD Laptop that comes with "Windows Ten". My previous laptop was a "Windows Seven".

I have performed a migration of a Windows Seven System Image (from the "Windows Back Up and Restore") onto new hard drives and entirely different computers for the past twelve years, and the process is normally effortless.

Until today.

You see, my fancy new laptop does not have an Optical Drive, and "Windows Seven", by default, creates the "Windows PE" and Recovery Tools, you need a CD.

I found an USB solution at this site and received the media.

Here's the problem, though. The butt clowns that designed this laptop seem to have made the laptop unable to boot from any order except the hard drive. There seems to be no way to force the Legacy BIOS Mode to load, like it does in every SANE UEFI laptop and desktop ever invented. Without the Legacy BIOS Mode, I don't know how to boot from the USB.

Using the default OS is non-negotiable.

What am I doing wrong?

Thank you for any assistance you may render. My birthday has been terrible this year.


Thank you.
-TURTLESHROOM

 

[flavallee]

Your HP 15-dw3125od laptop (31V17UA) comes with a 11th generation Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor.
I do not believe you will be able to install and run Windows 7 in it.

 

[SIW2]

It can be done, but it isnt easy with oem machines.

With that kind of laptop, not really feasible to try and instruct you from afar.

Less difficult for those putting together their own machines.

You could try running win7 in a virtual machine.

 

[TurtleShroom]

What am I supposed to do with tha TIBX link and the files you gave me? Are there any instructions? Where do I put them?

Do these go on my desktop or my new laptop? Do they go on an USB stick? I have my System Image, I only need a way to boot into it. Do these drivers and such go on my old laptop, or my new one?

I have no idea what you want me to do. Would you mind walking me through it step by step?

 

[SIW2]

Happy Birthday

It is a particularly difficult machine to install win7. I dont think I can walk you through it from afar, I would have enough trouble trying to do it myself.

That is an acronis tibx image. The poster has obviously solved the issues of that dell machine, including lack of csm and lack of support for intel graphics on 9th gen cpu.

There are people who have put together desktop machines running 10th or 11th gen intel cpus. Desktop motherboards, if chosen carefully, are much better and more flexible than those that come with oem laptops. In addition, they use a separate graphics card. Even then is not easy.

If you know somebody nearby who is experienced at this kind of thing and is up for the challenge, and can get their hands on the machine - then the tibx image might get them some of the way.

To my knowledge, there are no working win7 drivers for 10th and 11th gen cpu graphics. I dont know how to get around that, I suppose technically an external card could be attached, but it kind of defeats the purpose of a laptop.

 

[ian50]

TurtleShroom

To boot a Win7 installation off a UEFI bios without CSM, perhaps you could try FlashBoot Pro to generate the installation iso.

FB Pro is not freeware, it costs about USD $30. As I understand it, to overcome the [no VGA + no CSM] characteristics of Gen 11 PC's, it generates a small boot partition on the installing USB drive. I have used it for this and it does work. I had to try it 3-4 times with differing setup configurations but eventually ...

BTW, this will not work with NVidia graphics. Apparently these chips are hard-coded for the VGA Int10 that Win 7 uses and this hard coding cannot be sidestepped with software.

If non-freeware installation help doesn't suit you, then there is a possible solution (and very tricky) in a freeware setup called UefiSeven on MDL. This is not guaranteed to work with all possible combos of mb and cpu.

Once installed, you are likely to have difficulty with a GPU Iris graphics driver and likely a touchpad driver. There are other threads on this forum on those issues you could explore. Probably bluetooth/wifi drivers for the chip already in the machine will be useable.

Good luck. I would be interested in your progress.

 

[TurtleShroom]

I don't know how to use an Acronis Image. I think I may just end up with an emulator... if I can get it connected to the Internet.

 

[TurtleShroom]

I downloaded and installed the "Flash Boot Professional". I made a booting image of W7, but it fails to go beyond "STARTING WINDOWS". I suspect this is because my laptop's makers are too cheap to make BIOS support.

I feel that this link is the next leg on my journey.

If I find a solution, I will post it here.

 

[Bree]

...There seems to be no way to force the Legacy BIOS Mode to load, like it does in every SANE UEFI laptop and desktop ever invented...

No, only every UEFI bios up until 2020 - then the world changed.....

In recent years, Intel has implemented its Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) mechanism with legacy BIOS support as an additional option, however the company intends to remove legacy BIOS support from its UEFI by 2020 in an effort to improve security.

Intel to Remove Legacy BIOS Support from UEFI by 2020

 

[SIW2]

I downloaded and installed the "Flash Boot Professional". I made a booting image of W7, but it fails to go beyond "STARTING WINDOWS". I suspect this is because my laptop's makers are too cheap to make BIOS support.

I feel that this link is the next leg on my journey.

If I find a solution, I will post it here.

It might be possible to get past the no csm problem, but you would just have a black screen. Unless you can find drivers for the 11th gen cpu gaphics.

I am not aware of any. There are some that work for 9th gen ( which is what the dell poster used) but they are not much use for 11th gen.