X99

spyknee wrote: this taichii??????? whats with the usb boot sticks. ssd utility perfect w10 was able to make partition np, w7 will not boot, yes I made the settings, used same ms tool to make both boot sticks, tried several iso copies .,..... what am i missing. I had w7 installed mBR and now it will not do that. is there a proper method for usb sticks???? they do not appear to be PnP. is the manual method with diskpart dog listed the only true option?

I told you installing Win 7 in UEFI booting mode is not easy. Most people give up trying.

Using Rufus, or the manual steps, to create the Windows USB installation flash drive is only one small step in the process of creating the USB installation USB flash drive.

The manual method in wardog's link, which is also shown in the link I provided earlier that shows the Rufus method, is exactly the same. Either one works, but IMO Rufus is confusing.

Frankly, a USB flash drive fresh out of its box is formatted perfectly for this purpose. Don't forget, all those formatting steps applies to the USB flash drive only. The only reason that is shown in the guide is because people format USB flash drives themselves in different ways, and the manual formatting insures the flash drive is in the correct format. It really is not hard to do.

Using the Rufus method, you don't need to drag and drop the ISO file to the USB flash drive, which is easier for some users.

The manual USB drive creation, using the drag and drop method, is really a Select All of the ISO folders, then left click, and select Mount. Then you left click again, and select Send to..., which should have the USB flash drive in the Send to list. I cannot tell by your posts if you did things in that way.

Another thing, if the USB flash drive is larger than 32GB, they tend to not work correctly. What size is your USB flash drive?

Regardless, both of those methods does not fix the Win 7 ISO installation file layout. You mention the drag and drop of the ISO file (after mounting it?), which is one of the steps in creating the USB installation media.

IF all you did was drag and drop the unmodified Windows 7 installation files to the USB flash drive, then it won't work.

Maybe you have things set up on the Win 7 flash drive now, I'll assume that. Next:

When you start the Win 7 installation, go into the UEFI/BIOS, and go to the Boot screen, and check the Boot order. You should ONLY see the USB flash drive listed there. Now check that you have an entry for the USB flash drive that is, "UEFI: <flash drive name>", the important part being the "UEFI:" part. You MUST select that one for the installation. Select it, Save and Exit, and the installer should start.

With Win 7, you MUST install the OCZ NVMe driver during the Win 7 installation.

You must select a Custom installation in the Win 7 installer. You will NOT see the RD400 recognized yet. In the Custom installation screen, select the Load Driver option.

You'll need to have the OCZ NVMe driver on yet another USB flash drive. Don't worry about formatting it unless you changed it from its standard formatting. That driver is here, but we are not done yet:

https://ocz.com/us/download/

Select your Region, then Client SSD, then RD400/RD400A.

On that page, scroll way down until you find the Drivers download. Be sure it is Drivers, NOT firmware. When you click the download button, it will be the ocznvme-1.2.126.843_whck.zip file.

Once you have that file, unzip (Extract) it and open the resulting folder. The ONLY thing you want to copy to the other USB flash drive is the x64 folder. The rest of it is the Windows installation programs, which will NOT WORK for you, they only work once Windows is installed. But that only works for versions of Windows that have a built in NVMe driver, like Win 10 or 8.1.

On the Load Driver screen, find the USB flash drive with the X64 driver file. Select it and let it load. DO NOT remove the USB flash drive with the X64 NVMe driver on it until the entire Win 7 installation is complete. No need to remove it at all.

When the driver loading is complete, go back to the Custom installation screen. Now you should see the RD400 listed. If not, something is wrong.

If you have the RD400 listed, if it has any partitions on it, delete them until it is ALL empty space.

Now find the New button on that screen and click it. A window will appear saying it will create partitions, just click Ok. When it is done, you'll see four partitions on the RD400. That is how it should be.

Finally now, click Next for the installation to actually begin. If it fails during that point, the Win 7 installation USB was probably not right.

There is nothing wrong with the Taichi board. I've installed Windows 8.1 and 10 on NVMe SSDs on ASRock Z77, Z97, X99, Z170, and H110 boards, as the OS drive. As I've said all along, Win 7 is much more of a pain to get installed on an NVMe SSD, particularly if you are doing it for the first time, as you are.

Hope this helps, let us know how it goes, or if you have more questions.

tanx for link.

well started again.

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.

figured out most things, now.