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

Thanks again everyone !

My solution was to convert the unseen disk from GPT to MBR. A known issue is that sometimes Win 7 installer doesn't want to work with a disk that doesn't have a boot record and won't install to it, even though I have a driver for it embedded in my bootable Win 7 installation USB.

Hopefully this is where the fun begins, of setting up my installation media in NTLite !
 
For the NVidia driver, one option is to use NVSlimmer to get rid of the parts of the driver you don't need (like USB-C, Shadow Play or Geforce Experience) BEFORE you slipstream said drivers into the image. I do that on a broken notebook I have which has no inbuilt Screen and HDMI output hooked to the GeForce (simply put, this means no GeForce Drivers = no display output). It works like a charm.
 
Also, you need to import a specific INF by filename. Otherwise NTLite will presume to import all the NVIDIA driver INF's in the folder at the same time, and bloat your image because each driver instance gets a private copy of the graphics libraries.

You don't want your driver folder to grow by several GB, by including the extra GPU's you're not using.
 
Or if you don't want to bother "sorting" the drivers (.inf) you can import the entire folder, then use the Exclude unused option in the Drivers Page
NTLite will remove unnecessary drivers from the list to be integrated
 
Thanks everyone! I'm at the point of thinking about NTLite again, because I found a set-up that works on my finicky Optiplex 7050s.

In particular, I had difficulty with the Dell/Intel Win 7 GPU driver and USB driver. Also, on my first attempt, I didn't feel like using UEFISeven, so I had to improvise a graphics solution that would work without CSM.


The approach I took was to install Win 7 via the Win 10 installation USB. Its bootloader, combined with Win 7 install.esd, and a cheap graphics card that uses a combined Win 7/8.1 driver.

Step (1) install.esd copied from Win 7 dvd into Win 10 installation USB. Installed in UEFI + CSM.

Step (2) installed cheap graphics card that appeared to have drivers with good support for both Win 7 & Win 8.1. Rationale is that Dell/Intel drivers for Optiplex 7050 advertised as Win 7 would not install. And Dell's mobo does not support simultaneous use of integrated and dedicated graphics. Mobo requires selection of the expansion card to be made via firmware.

After step (2), CSM is no longer needed for graphics. However, on this machine, turning off CSM also turns off the USB 2 drivers.

Step (3) updated via Simplix. Now I have UEFI + Secure Boot. I'm ready to browse the internet safely, by running System Restore after every internet session. Assuming Secure Boot should protect me from BIOS malware. And System Restore should protect me from everything else.

For now, I'm using a third-party USB driver that I found on MDL's USB 3 thread. It's been worked over by saint canonkang, and one of his buddies from the WinRaid forum.
 
Muffin Top said:
Thanks everyone! I'm at the point of thinking about NTLite again, because I found a set-up that works on my finicky Optiplex 7050s.
Click to expand...
Small question, but does the standard graphics driver gets a video output? If yes, why not install NVidia drivers post setup (especially if NV Slimmed, they would take a LOT less of space done that way). Just use the switches

[path to Geforce Folder]\Setup.exe /clean /noreboot /passive /noeula /nofinish

for NVidia drivers and they'll install silently.
 
Thanks so much! My particular machine (Optiplex 7050) has a very finicky mobo, which specifically does not allow simultaneous use of integrated graphics and dedicated graphics card. I didn't know about this limitation when I bought them, but I can live with it. After working around the driver issues, it's a nice enough machine.


Given my last write-up, I thought I should provide an update about the power of the cheap graphics card with a Win 8.1 driver.

I just discovered that the Win 10 bootloader is not necessarily needed to get Win 7 to UEFI + Secure Boot without using UEFISeven.

I had another of the same hardware (Opti 7050) where I previously installed Win 7, via dvd, in MBR. So I ran mbr2gpt, and then installed the cheap graphics card with the Win 8.1 drivers.

After some fits and restarts, the system was able to run properly in Win 7 without CSM. I had previously failed to discover this feasibility, because on my previous attempt the graphics card's fits and restarts caused me to prematurely assume it would not work without an advanced bootloader. Today, I had less caffeine, so I let the machine do its thing until it had enough time to get the graphics working without CSM.

In particular, on my first start-up without CSM under the new graphics card, the system seemed to be hung for a long time, with frozen graphics, although extensive disk activity was occurring. After a lengthy wait, the machine re-started itself, and since then it's been working just fine without CSM, and no graphics glitches.

After Win 7 was working with the graphics card, and without CSM, I added the post-2019 updates via Simplix, and now it secure-boots reliably.
 
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