I joined because Win 7 installer does not see drivers on Rufus stick

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Muffin Top

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. . . but I'm enthused about the promise of NTLite.

My story is that I tried to install Win 7 on hardware that was designed to support 7/10 (Dell Optiplex 7050). I've discovered that Win 7's installer is not good at utilizing drivers found via browsing.

So I want to become an NTLite user, to slipstream drivers into my ISO.

In the demo download, I've mounted an image that seems to be robust, according to internet commentary. It's worked for others who have slipstreamed drivers. This is identified by NTLite as a Win 7 Setup, which makes sense, because I haven't completed installation yet.

Then I pointed out 3 folders with drivers that I thought would be helpful. On the left tab, NTLite is indicating Drivers 4. Does this mean NTLite has identified 4 helpful drivers in the flotsam?

Assuming I don't need any other drivers or updates, am I ready to Finish Apply to create my ISO?

Since I'm new, I want to be sure I'm navigating the menus correctly. It looks like NTLite will be great for helping me to assemble all of my drivers and updates !
 
I've done something wrong.

I wanted to add 3 small driver folders (less than 2GB in total) to a 7GB ISO on a USB stick with 106GB free.

When ISO creation reached 51%, NTLite said aborted because there's not enough space on the USB stick.

That's why I joined to ask newbie questions. How many times have we experienced it not being as simple as we hoped.
 
Thanks for anticipating my needs, but I've figured out the Win 7 side of this.


What a lot of us have experienced is the Win 7 installer not being able to utilize a driver that's identified via browsing. However, the same driver may work if it's embedded in the bootable USB stick.


So I just wanted to learn how to use NTLite, to add drivers to a working ISO.


NTLite's advertising and internet commentary indicate this should be easy to do. However, I'm having difficulty with the user interface, not pushing the right buttons. As I indicated above, I was trying to create a <9GB file, but NTLite said what I was trying to create would not fit on a USB stick with 106GB free.


So it's a "simple" case of my not pushing the right buttons in NTLite. I wish I could understand how this user interface works.
 
When I say I want to add drivers to a working ISO, I see the internet commentary about slipstreaming newer drivers and updates into an older ISO.


The internet commentary and NTLite's advertising make it look like it should be easy to do this. I just can't figure out the right buttons to push in the user interface.
 
Normally the steps are:
1. Extract the W7-compatible drivers to a local folder.
2. Load the image.
3. From the Drivers screen, load the folder containing the drivers.
4. From the Apply screen, expand "Reapply tasks across editions" and check boot.wim (Windows Setup).
5. Apply changes.
6. Use Rufus or another tool to write NTLite's created ISO file to the USB drive. NTLite will only create an ISO file for you, it doesn't handle the step of converting it to an USB filesystem.

There's a ton of older W7-based threads which discuss the process. The process is the same, but some of NTLite's UI have evolved since then.
 
I already replied this in email, but here is the copy:

Buttons have nothing to do with free space.

Tool uses a temporary location defined in Menu - Settings - Temporary directory.
By default it is %TEMP%, which expands to something like C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Local\Temp
which all programs use.

Btw it is not adviseable to write directly on the USB stick anyway, as it is easily corruptible and very slow.

There is a known catch with Nvidia drivers, if that's one of those you tried, it copies extra entire driver with each INF file, so integrate only the main + audio, not all the other ones as it can eat up free space very fast.
It's how Windows integrates it for some reason.
 
Muffin Top said:
After creating the augmented ISO, which menu creates a bootable UEFI stick ?
Click to expand...
Muffin Top said:
I wanted to add 3 small driver folders (less than 2GB in total) to a 7GB ISO on a USB stick with 106GB free.

When ISO creation reached 51%, NTLite said aborted because there's not enough space on the USB stick.
Click to expand...
For creating a bootable USB you need a program like Rufus or Ventoy to accomplish.
NTL creates the ISO image on Apply tab you then can move to the USB.
Formatting the USB to either ExFat or NTFS to handle images larger than 4.7 GB
 
Thanks so much everyone !


I have a guess of what I was doing wrong. Since this is my first effort at slipstreaming, I overlooked the step of using 7-zip to extract my ISO. I saw this extraction step in the written guide by Titus.


I've never needed to do this before, but it looks straightforward !


In the past, I've had no problems using rufus to create my UEFI USB. Now I just need to add a few driver updates to my ISO.
 
garlin said:
Normally the steps are:
1. Extract the W7-compatible drivers to a local folder.
2. Load the image.
3. From the Drivers screen, load the folder containing the drivers.
4. From the Apply screen, expand "Reapply tasks across editions" and check boot.wim (Windows Setup).
5. Apply changes.
6. Use Rufus or another tool to write NTLite's created ISO file to the USB drive. NTLite will only create an ISO file for you, it doesn't handle the step of converting it to an USB filesystem.

There's a ton of older W7-based threads which discuss the process. The process is the same, but some of NTLite's UI have evolved since then.
Click to expand...


I'm not sure yet if I did all of these steps, I might have missed one of these as well. At least my next attempt will be meaningful. Thanks everyone !
 
francis11 said:
For creating a bootable USB you need a program like Rufus or Ventoy to accomplish.
Click to expand...
I just copied the contents of the Windows installation directory onto the USB drive, I never used any third-party soft
Just make sure the USB drive is "active" but this is the case for most USB drives

francis11 said:
Formatting the USB to either ExFat or NTFS to handle images larger than 4.7 GB
Click to expand...
Is FAT32 formatting no longer mandatory for EFI installation ?
 
Thanks so much !

Good to know that I still need to verify active partition (I had sort of been assuming I would have heard of this b4 now)
 
Last edited:
The reason for using Rufus instead of randomly copying files, is Rufus will install the right boot loader on the drive. This becomes more important for W11 users with the upcoming changes to UEFI boot security.
 
NTLite has this option for boot loader (boot manager) for those who want this, why use Rufus ?
 
I'm still trying to figure out the user interface. Yesterday, the image I loaded gave me a list on the right-hand side of the computer hardware. It seemed like a checklist of recognized hardware or drivers available.

Today, I tried the Titus approach of extracting files from the ISO, and now I'm not seeing yesterday's hardware checklist. I'm optimistic I'll understand it eventually.
 
On the Drivers page ?
It's the same list as in Device Manager (host), by default
Afterward, you can import a hardware list (from another PC where you exported the list) to create an image for that PC, for example.
 
Thanks, maybe my view is being restricted in the demo. I've seen enough to buy a license . . .
 
tistou77 said:
Just make sure the USB drive is "active" but this is the case for most USB drives
Click to expand...

It looks like this was not my issue? Diskpart (in Win 7) says the active command can only be used on fixed MBR disks. I've been setting up UEFI USBs, because these tools like Rufus make it easy.

I'm not sure if the USB I just created will solve my driver issue, but NTLite looks convenient enough to favor it.
 
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