06-07-2018, 07:19 PM
a) I'm going to assume that the notebook that you have received is a very recent one and is using the newest technologies.
b) I'm also going to assume that the drive in that notebook is probably an M2 NVMe device or a similar very new storage technology.
c) New hardware these days usually comes with NVMe SSDs or other M2 SSD drivers that are based on very new technology generations.
Taking a, b and c into consideration and the fact that Windows 7 installer doesn't show any drives means that Windows 7 simply doesn't support the storage technology used in the notebook because it lacks the necessary drivers. So what you have to do is simple. Get the proper drivers for the storage device from the site of the notebook company. Put them on the same USB thumb drive where you have the Windows 7 installer, or on a different USB thumb drive or burn them onto a CD.
Start the Windows 7 installer and at the disk selection screen open the advanced options and then load drivers. Select the drive where you have the drivers on and there select the folder with the drivers. The installer will perform a scan and look for a matching driver for the storage device. Select the matching driver from the list and it will install the driver. After that you should be able to see the disk and use it for the installation.
This is a common issue when you install Windows and Windows Server on a KVM VPS with Virtio drives and network cards. You don't see any drives until you load up the Virtio drivers and install them during the Windows installer screens. I also experienced it at work when we got brand new HP Z240 SFF workstations that had a 256 GB NVMe SSD as their main drive. We used SCCM to install Windows 7 images onto it. It always only installed on the 1 TB storage HDD and never showed the SSD in the OS until I simply let Windows do a local scan for drives on our network share and it found the NVMe driver in the driver folder of the Z240 SFF folder. We forgot to include it into the driver package and the boot image. After doing that the installation went onto the SSD just fine.
A hint: Don't disable AHCI in the BIOS.
AHCI is pretty much a default standard these days to get the maximum performance out of the storage devices and furthermore it is a general requirement for SSDs to work properly.
IDE mode is almost ancient technology now and will cause issues with SSDs and other modern storage technology (mainly degraded performance and higher latency). RAID is probably not even necessary in your case as you may have only a single storage device and you may not even want to use a RAID.
Alternatively you can try and see if that works: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind...ea815ce551
Although I really think it is rather issue due to lack of drivers.
My two cents about issues with Windows 7 on new hardware below:
A general thing about Windows 7 and new hardware. Just don't try it. You need to be aware that Windows 7 is really old by todays standards and doesn't support a lot of hardware technologies and in addition to that hardware companies like Intel and etc together with Microsoft have come to agreements to NOT support Windows 7 and other OSs on new hardware. So even you manage to install it and you have issues with it... No one will give you support.
I experienced this with my 6th generation Intel CPU and the chipset on the mainboard. I can't install Windows 7 because the input devices simply won't work. I even spent hours slipstreaming USB 3.0 drivers (even though I have two USB 2.0) drivers into a Windows 7 ISO but after installing it the input devices didn't work. So I could do absolutely nothing on the system and had to install Windows 10 back.
I did research after that and it's simply very bad luck for me. 6th generation of Intel and some chipsets that come for it simply don't work with Windows 7. Windows 8.1 did work though.
Another reason not to use Windows 7 is the massive performance degradation when comparing it to Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 on new hardware.
b) I'm also going to assume that the drive in that notebook is probably an M2 NVMe device or a similar very new storage technology.
c) New hardware these days usually comes with NVMe SSDs or other M2 SSD drivers that are based on very new technology generations.
Taking a, b and c into consideration and the fact that Windows 7 installer doesn't show any drives means that Windows 7 simply doesn't support the storage technology used in the notebook because it lacks the necessary drivers. So what you have to do is simple. Get the proper drivers for the storage device from the site of the notebook company. Put them on the same USB thumb drive where you have the Windows 7 installer, or on a different USB thumb drive or burn them onto a CD.
Start the Windows 7 installer and at the disk selection screen open the advanced options and then load drivers. Select the drive where you have the drivers on and there select the folder with the drivers. The installer will perform a scan and look for a matching driver for the storage device. Select the matching driver from the list and it will install the driver. After that you should be able to see the disk and use it for the installation.
This is a common issue when you install Windows and Windows Server on a KVM VPS with Virtio drives and network cards. You don't see any drives until you load up the Virtio drivers and install them during the Windows installer screens. I also experienced it at work when we got brand new HP Z240 SFF workstations that had a 256 GB NVMe SSD as their main drive. We used SCCM to install Windows 7 images onto it. It always only installed on the 1 TB storage HDD and never showed the SSD in the OS until I simply let Windows do a local scan for drives on our network share and it found the NVMe driver in the driver folder of the Z240 SFF folder. We forgot to include it into the driver package and the boot image. After doing that the installation went onto the SSD just fine.
A hint: Don't disable AHCI in the BIOS.
AHCI is pretty much a default standard these days to get the maximum performance out of the storage devices and furthermore it is a general requirement for SSDs to work properly.
IDE mode is almost ancient technology now and will cause issues with SSDs and other modern storage technology (mainly degraded performance and higher latency). RAID is probably not even necessary in your case as you may have only a single storage device and you may not even want to use a RAID.
Alternatively you can try and see if that works: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind...ea815ce551
Although I really think it is rather issue due to lack of drivers.
My two cents about issues with Windows 7 on new hardware below:
A general thing about Windows 7 and new hardware. Just don't try it. You need to be aware that Windows 7 is really old by todays standards and doesn't support a lot of hardware technologies and in addition to that hardware companies like Intel and etc together with Microsoft have come to agreements to NOT support Windows 7 and other OSs on new hardware. So even you manage to install it and you have issues with it... No one will give you support.
I experienced this with my 6th generation Intel CPU and the chipset on the mainboard. I can't install Windows 7 because the input devices simply won't work. I even spent hours slipstreaming USB 3.0 drivers (even though I have two USB 2.0) drivers into a Windows 7 ISO but after installing it the input devices didn't work. So I could do absolutely nothing on the system and had to install Windows 10 back.
I did research after that and it's simply very bad luck for me. 6th generation of Intel and some chipsets that come for it simply don't work with Windows 7. Windows 8.1 did work though.
Another reason not to use Windows 7 is the massive performance degradation when comparing it to Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 on new hardware.