install windows 7 from disc on H170m with NVMe

p3matty wrote: Help needed in installing windows 7 from disc onto a H170m with a "my digital SSD" NVMe m.2 drive.  DVD drive is connected via SATA, and only storage device is the NVMe SSD.  When install gets to page where you should select where to install OS, no drives are listed - though the drive is listed in BIOS (newest BIOS, just updated yesterday).  I understand that I need to install some drivers at this point so the install will see the drive, but I don't know what driver to use or where to find it.  Is it an intel driver, a windows driver, or one from the drive manufacturer (and they don't have any on their webpage).  Also, as I'm using the USB -> PS/2 trick, I can't install that driver via a USB stick either.  Can I have it on another hard drive and install it from there?  Any help you can give me would be extremely appreciated.  I'd love to do this without having to create an iso file (I found that possible solution online, and honestly it's a bit beyond my capabilities).

You have two or three issues caused by one thing, using Windows 7 on an Intel 100 series chipset board, and an NVMe SSD. You know about the USB problem with the 100 series chipset, the chipset will only install a USB 3.0 driver for ALL the USB ports, including the USB 2.0 ports.

The next issue you have is the lack of an NVMe driver in Windows 7. The NVMe driver you must use is the generic Microsoft NVMe driver, since the manufacture of your SSD does not supply one with it. That NVMe driver is fine, Intel uses it for their 600p NVMe SSD, while they have a specific one for their 750 NVMe SSDs, and their related enterprise SSDs.

The third potential issue is a bug in the Windows 7 installation file location of the EFI bootloader file. You can get away with not fixing that with some NVMe SSDs like the Samsung 950 Pro, but not with your My Digital SSD NVMe SSD when attempting to use a Windows 7 installation disk.

But there is bad news if you cannot use a USB flash drive installation device with your NVMe SSD for installing Windows 7. There does not seem to be a way to get the NVMe driver incorporated into Windows 7 besides the method you consider difficult. Microsoft cannot provide another method besides creating the modified ISO USB for installing Windows 7. That's why you cannot find any information about doing it any other way. You may have noticed the guides from PC manufactures like Dell only use the modified Windows 7 ISO installation method, for this reason.

Plus most of the NVMe SSD manufactures have not found an easier way to do it, besides Samsung. Samsung has that built into their 950 and 960 SSDs, and it cannot be used with other NVMe SSDs.

Many of the guides for creating the Windows 7 ISO installation media for NVMe SSDs are very clear and concise step by step methods. I suggest you give them a try, since you really have no other choice:

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/caps-softpaq/cmit/whitepapers/Windows_7_OS_Install_NVME.pdf

Ok, I may be getting somewhere...

Read a few tutorials about making an iso file on usb.  So I made an iso file from my original windows 7 cd on the desktop of a working computer.  I then extracted it so that it's in folder format on the desktop so that I can make changes mentioned in the pinned thread above.  First was to move the one file "up" one directory.  That seemed to go fine.  I then threw some nvme drivers into the main folder of the extracted iso - hoping I got the right one for my drive.  I then tried to use the win7usb patch tool from asrock to make a bootable usb drive from the extracted and altered iso folder - but I get an error message.  Also the USB drive is now unreadable, and unable to be formatted with by windows (though rufus is able to format it).  Any assistance with where I'm going wrong would be greatly appreciated.