Win 7 on a 300 Series motherboard

A place to discuss anything.
Post Reply
User avatar
ShaunWhite
Posts: 9731
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am

After being forced into an unwanted upgrade by a faulty replacement motherboard that's fried my processor (or it was starting to fail and then coincidentally did) I'm trying not to be forced into a VERY unwanted upgrade to Win10 too.

While I'm waiting for parts I've been reading up on Win7 running on a 300 Series/ Intel 8th Gen / Coffee lake systems. Lack of support for certain features and no updates I can live with. But there seems to be an issue as Win7 std install doesn't have usb3.0 drivers, and now that most BIOSs have scrapped legacy ps/2 support for USB, that means you lose your kbd and mouse half way through the install....alledgedly. (although why you can't just plug your kbd into a usb2.0 port I'm not sure.)

Rumour has it you can patch the Win7 install with usb3.0 drivers....but like most info you get from forums, that's taken on trust.

So, has anyone here done a clean Win7 install on a 300 Series/ Intel 8th Gen / Coffee lake system ? How did it go?

My plan B is to install win 10 and then create a new partition, and run my win7 install from within win10 and have dual boot. I've heard that's doable but I don't know how as when it reboots to do the install, the loaded usb drivers will obv unload. Buying win10 just to do that is a pain too but you can get windows liciences for about 14 quid so it's not a deal breaker.
User avatar
BetScalper
Posts: 1139
Joined: Sun Jul 02, 2017 10:47 pm

ShaunWhite wrote:
Tue Jan 15, 2019 6:17 am
After being forced into an unwanted upgrade by a faulty replacement motherboard that's fried my processor (or it was starting to fail and then coincidentally did) I'm trying not to be forced into a VERY unwanted upgrade to Win10 too.

While I'm waiting for parts I've been reading up on Win7 running on a 300 Series/ Intel 8th Gen / Coffee lake systems. Lack of support for certain features and no updates I can live with. But there seems to be an issue as Win7 std install doesn't have usb3.0 drivers, and now that most BIOSs have scrapped legacy ps/2 support for USB, that means you lose your kbd and mouse half way through the install....alledgedly. (although why you can't just plug your kbd into a usb2.0 port I'm not sure.)

Rumour has it you can patch the Win7 install with usb3.0 drivers....but like most info you get from forums, that's taken on trust.

So, has anyone here done a clean Win7 install on a 300 Series/ Intel 8th Gen / Coffee lake system ? How did it go?

My plan B is to install win 10 and then create a new partition, and run my win7 install from within win10 and have dual boot. I've heard that's doable but I don't know how as when it reboots to do the install, the loaded usb drivers will obv unload. Buying win10 just to do that is a pain too but you can get windows liciences for about 14 quid so it's not a deal breaker.
What I did was install Windows 10 Professional. Then installed VMware fusion (small footprint) and created a Windows 7 64 bit virtual disk. VMware comes with the necessary tools/drivers and everything works fine. I have 16gb Ram in total and allocated 8gb Ram to Windows 7 when it starts. I haven't noticed any overhead and everything works at lightening speed. VMware cost me £79 one off fee. The machine came with Windows 10 Pro and I already had Windows 7 64 bit lying about.
sa7med
Posts: 800
Joined: Thu May 18, 2017 8:01 am

I actually think win10 is really decent. Last thing I used before macOSx was win7 and I was happy with it and purposely did not upgrade to the following shit versions of windows. BetAngel and excel forced me into windows again and I was pleasantly surprised by win10pro.
User avatar
ShaunWhite
Posts: 9731
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am

Thx both. I'd wondered about the overhead using a VM so that's interesting. I'd also wondered about just biting the bullet and trying to get into w10 so hearing it's not totally dreadful is useful too. We've got a laptop here on win8 and I think that's put my off.
I do hate being forced into upgrades especially when in many respects it feels like a downgrade from a 'pro' product to one that's geared towards being 'user friendly'.

Having just moved from VB to C# and feeling like a beginner again, the last thing I wanted was to change my os too and not know my way round that either. Obviously it's something you eventually get used to but......hopefully there enough info out there by now to figure out how to disable all the spyware and where to find settings that now appear to be scattered randomly in a mixture of control panel and bodged add-ons. From a functional design point of view, w10 looks like a dog's breakfast.

I'll add to this thread if I find a way round it.
User avatar
Dallas
Posts: 22673
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2015 10:57 pm
Location: Working From Home

I hate having to change if I can help it, and tried to say with Win 7 for as long as possible, even managed to keep my older spare laptop on it but over time have been 'pushed' onto Win10 on my main PC and other computers/laptops.
TBF though I've never had any issues with Win10 and by slowly getting used to it it has grown on me, now each time I pull out the older laptop running Win7 it does feel a bit dated

If I had the choice now I'de use Win 10
User avatar
ShaunWhite
Posts: 9731
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am

Dallas wrote:
Tue Jan 15, 2019 2:26 pm
I hate having to change if I can help it, and tried to say with Win 7 for as long as possible, even managed to keep my older spare laptop on it but over time have been 'pushed' onto Win10 on my main PC and other computers/laptops.
TBF though I've never had any issues with Win10 and by slowly getting used to it it has grown on me, now each time I pull out the older laptop running Win7 it does feel a bit dated

If I had the choice now I'de use Win 10
mmmmmm :roll: It's very much looking like the right choice is to take a deep breath and commit. Sodit.

One day your machine randomly switches off a couple of times, next thing you know everything's changed.
First Trump, then Brexit, now me using W10, whoda believed it.
sa7med
Posts: 800
Joined: Thu May 18, 2017 8:01 am

ShaunWhite wrote:
Tue Jan 15, 2019 4:00 pm
Dallas wrote:
Tue Jan 15, 2019 2:26 pm
I hate having to change if I can help it, and tried to say with Win 7 for as long as possible, even managed to keep my older spare laptop on it but over time have been 'pushed' onto Win10 on my main PC and other computers/laptops.
TBF though I've never had any issues with Win10 and by slowly getting used to it it has grown on me, now each time I pull out the older laptop running Win7 it does feel a bit dated

If I had the choice now I'de use Win 10
mmmmmm :roll: It's very much looking like the right choice is to take a deep breath and commit. Sodit.

One day your machine randomly switches off a couple of times, next thing you know everything's changed.
First Trump, then Brexit, now me using W10, whoda believed it.
one thing to look out for is automatic updates. They are all on by default and not straight forward to turn off. In order to avoid random updates/restarts you're going to have to go through services.msc to turn them off. google it :)
User avatar
ShaunWhite
Posts: 9731
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am

Noted 👍
User avatar
ShaunWhite
Posts: 9731
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am

I'd advise people against using pcupgrade.co.uk for parts.
Nothing arrived in orig packaging and frankly looks like reconditioned stuff. That few quid cheaper isn't worth the agro.
My 'new' mobo worked for 8 hrs, powered down without warning, and then gave me the old '5 bleeps' when I restarted indicating my processor was dead. Great. I can't prove that caused it but my trusty old i7-3770 was flawless and I always kept it cold and unstressed.
tbh the new mobo and cpu were only a few quid dearer than sourcing new/old so that's how come i'm at this point.

Never a bad time to remind people about backups, data etc is easy but remembering what system stuff you had when you can't use your system backup is a pita. I use https://www.belarc.com/products_belarc_advisor to print off my setup now and then. Best free pc auditter I've seen as it lists your product keys etc....when it can. It's certainly a handy piece of paper when you're trying remember what useful little utils you'd downloaded. Fortunately my os ssd is fine so I've been able to make a copy of it before I have to flatten it and can get the files i should have saved elsewhere instead of being lazy and putting them on my desktop.
User avatar
BetScalper
Posts: 1139
Joined: Sun Jul 02, 2017 10:47 pm

You can configure Win10Pro to look and feel like Win7. :D
User avatar
ShaunWhite
Posts: 9731
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am

BetScalper wrote:
Tue Jan 15, 2019 5:43 pm
You can configure Win10Pro to look and feel like Win7. :D
and you can put lipstick on a pig. :D
I'm just a bit jaded about the whole, "if it isn't broken, break it" thing these days.

Interestingly W10Pro is cheaper than W10 on the key only sites, probably because they're decommissioned business licences and they are easier to acquire. I use softwaregeeks for licences, have done for ages, never any probs, 5 stars. Instant download of the iso, burn it to a usb/dvd with something like Rufus to make it bootable and you're away.

Note on old CD-RW reliability. I needed one the other day and found one kicking about with 20yo files on...still worked fine. But ended up being no use as it was only 640Mb, how times change.
User avatar
Dallas
Posts: 22673
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2015 10:57 pm
Location: Working From Home

I've never even had a CD-Rom in my PC for years let alone possess any CD's or CD-RW's ;)
User avatar
ShaunWhite
Posts: 9731
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am

ok i took the plunge with w10 and trying to embrace the change.

...but does anyone know why Excel (64bit 2016) is soooo slooooooow. It does the recalcs at light speed, then sits there 'Not responding' for about 10s. Similar when I load files, they appear quickly but then hang for about 10s before they're usable. Ditto when I save files. In fact everything I do seems to need a lot of thinking about.

I found an article that says switching Cortana off fixes it, but it didn't for me.
User avatar
ShaunWhite
Posts: 9731
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am

I'm not loving win10.....when you go into any settings, apart from the screens being so badly organised the Accept & Cancel buttons have gone! If you make a change, it's changed and if you can't remember what the setting was, tough.

Task manager seems to have gone way back to the old sparse Win Server 2012 style. Printer config is poor too. It also runs a 32 bit 'surrogate' version of COM (dllhost) instead of a 64 bit version which is bizzare.

It's all such a massive leap back from Win7 and clearly aimed at casual users rather than IT savvy people. The only good bits are where you eventually drill down to a form they couldn't be bothered to change like the Folder Options dialog (unchanged since XP!) and the Group Policy editor. Then there's issues with MS products running slow on an MS OS.

Gotta say that after about 10hrs use.....it's a pile of cr&p.
User avatar
MemphisFlash
Posts: 2126
Joined: Fri May 16, 2014 10:12 pm
Location: Leicester

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9kFXnomRWQ


some settings that should be changed included here
Post Reply

Return to “General discussion”