Installing Win 7 on NVMe

[headie]

Hello all, I hope I am in the right section, and not repeating other threads. Sorry if so. I looked first but didn't find.
I am building on a Maximus IX Hero. Used I7 6700k chip because compatible with Win7. I installed (2) 1tb NVMe SSD's to run dual boot from.
My issue is Win 7 does not have native NVMe drivers. They are not recognized by setup. The select partition field is blank. I press shift F10
enter diskpart, list disk, nothing. Since Win 10 does recognize them I tried installing 10 on one of them, then from within 10 installing Win7.
It recognizes the disk, but error says I need NVMe drivers to complete installation. I tried installing 7 on HDD then cloning over to SSD in 10 platform.
used easy bcd to set up boot manager to set drive and add new OS. this seemed to work until time to boot. Got errors and went in to non-boot loop.
had to go into bios disable that boot manager. go back into 10 and remove new boot option. In searching these forums I found that others have
win7 on SSD's on these MB's. Please, somebody, tell me how to get this accomplished! I have been trying for over a week. been on support lines from
manufacturer and Microsoft. No luck... If anyone knows how to do this please help me! thank you

[Menthol]

Go to ASUS support page for your motherboard or any Z270, Z370, X299 motherboard and download the Win 7 Ez Installer App, this app will slipstream the required USB 3.0 drivers into your Win 7 and ask if you want to install Microsoft's nvme driver. It will also burn it to a USB drive for you.
Follow the included instructions and you'll be good to go

Have an ROG New Year

[headie]

Menthol wrote:
Go to ASUS support page for your motherboard or any Z270, Z370, X299 motherboard and download the Win 7 Ez Installer App, this app will slipstream the required USB 3.0 drivers into your Win 7 and ask if you want to install Microsoft's nvme driver. It will also burn it to a USB drive for you.
Follow the included instructions and you'll be good to go

Have an ROG New Year[/QUOTE

Thank you for your help. I ran the install package. I tried the USB method, the ISO, and repair existing USB image. In all 3 attempts about 2/3 the way through while "adding driver to the image" I get the following error message:

DismAddDriver failed 0x80070005 : An error occurred. The driver package could not be installed. For more information, check for log files in the \inf of the target image.

I tried redownloading the installer. same. I do not know what the error means or how to fix it. I had high hopes this would work. it was the first fix attempt in 8 days that actually directly addressed the issue. I'm sure it would have worked if the setup was able to complete. I appreciate any additional help if someone is familiar with this error.
Happy new year to all!

[Menthol]

Download a new OS maybe something wrong there, the method that has never failed me is using a CDrom drive with the Copy of Windows and using the Installer app burn to a USB drive. format the USB as Fat 32, the Installer will reformat it correctly

[headie]

Menthol wrote:
Download a new OS maybe something wrong there, the method that has never failed me is using a CDrom drive with the Copy of Windows and using the Installer app burn to a USB drive. format the USB as Fat 32, the Installer will reformat it correctly

I tried with a different image. the disk burned ok. to both USB and DVD. The USB drivers loaded ok as per the indicator on start up. Unfortunately there was no sign of NVMe drivers being loaded. I checked the box for "Include NVMe drivers" on installation. but when setup started there was no indication that anything had changed. still no drives listed in the choose partition box. I tried search for drivers but all I clicked on said "no signed drivers found". Is there something I am supposed to do to get the NVMe drivers to load during setup? am I missing something? Sorry for the hassle. Yet I truly appreciate your assistance. you have been most helpful! Thank you

[Menthol]

No hassle at all
After you unzip the Ez Installer follow this path to make sure the nvme driver is there

Another option is to download the HP Samsung nvme driver and put it on a USB stick and install it manually during Win 7 installation

Or this Intel nvme driver may work

If you can't find the HP nvme driver PM me your email address and I'll send it to you

[headie]

Thanks for all of the help! Here is what worked. I opened the hotfix from asus EZ installer directly in windows platform instead of installing to setup disk. ran it. allowed restart. now win could see it but still not setup. So I used Aomei partition to copy win 7 from existing HDD, click optimize for SSD, allow restart. open easy BCD add entry to boot menu. give it a name, point to SSD drive. go to edit boot menu. make priority. save changes. reboot. win 7 on SSD!!! open Aomei wipe old install to use as storage. Now I'm running dual boot Win 7 & 10 both on 1 tb m.2 NVMe's both boot fast, but 10 is lightning! next job is to raid multiple 1tb SATA SSD's together with striping but under Marvrel's Hyper Duo with a SSHD. used to mirror the striping Raid so if the striping raid becomes corrupt or destroyed all information can be restored from the mirrored SSHD. that way I get the speed and size of striping for faster gaming, with the safety of mirroring, without the cost of using all SSD's. I only found this feature in Marvel's Hyper Duo. I connect it all to a Syba SD-PEX40054 4 Port SATA III Raid Hyper Duo PCIe 2.0 x 2 Card (under $30). which keeps my MB's SATA slots open for other uses. So all toghether I will have 6tb of SSD! Finally building my dream machine 🙂 thanks again brother. couldn't have done it without you.