Обсуждение Windows 7 (ответы на вопросы) Part 4

ther Thoughts: Finally installed windows 7 after quite a few tries, there are quite a few steps invovled in the installation, already left some tips at another site selling the J4205-ITX board, and I actually own J3455-ITX and here's the detailed steps for installing Windows 7 64bit.

1) Asus EZinstaller integration is able to integrate the usb driver automatically but the software failed numerous times, saying can't complete the integration at about 68% progress when I tried to integrate the drivers, it turned out that all my Z77, H67M laptops, H61 desktops are not compatible with the software, ended up using a 7 year old Dell Vostro 230 running G41 chipset to integrate the driver onto a Windows 7 Pro 64bit Disc into an ISO, which you can use Rufus to write into a usb flash drive and use it to do the Windows 7 installation. Only the tool of Asus EZinstaller will be able to drive the usb ports on appollolake, other software from ASrock, MSI, Gigabyte all wouldn't be able to drive the USB ports for unknown reason.

2) All intel drivers except two are found by using the Asus Z270 prime driver, the kabylake display is v21.20.16.4508 or v21.20.16.4526, first is also from Z270 prime support site, you also need INF update, USB 3.0 will be already ready to use by step 1 of integrating the driver into windows 7.

3) Realtek Audio and LAN drivers can be found at realtek website.

4) There would be two devices missing driver, the PCI simple communication device that couldn't find driver for, turned out it is the Intel Trusted Execution Engine, you can find the driver as Intel dynamic platform and thermal framework driver 8.1.10605.221, google and find the file for windows 7 64bit (station-driver site), unzip the driver and you need to navigate and install manually to the folder of esif_manager.inf, select the inf file in the folder, ignore the warning and continue the installation. The other unknown device is serial i/o for Intel chipset, this one you would need to find Intel® Embedded Drivers for Windows* 7 (32-bit and 64-bit) of Intel® Atom™ Processor E3800 Series, file name is 334397-002 Intel Atom E3800 Win7 IO Drivers MR4_Non Secure.zip, extract files and do the 64bit installation, then manually install the driver by navigating to C:\Programs Files (x86)\Intel\Intel Processor IO Drivers 64bit folder, then select folder iaiogpio and select the INF file, and click continue by ignore the warning, this way you can install the drivers for the last two devices of J3455 or J4205 ITX. Voila and enjoy Windows 7 on Apollolake!

5) One annoying thing is you need to keep csm setting as legacy only all the time, once you install the display driver, you need to change to UEFI and save, otherwise legacy setting will cause computer crash right away. For some strange reason, my J3455 is very funny that the TV has to be turned on first before the computer, otherwise the BIOS setting will change back to legacy only and caused the crash, thought I got a faulty board but it turned out that the HDMI 2.0 chip is causing the problem which doesn't happen at all with other DVI VGA connectors.

6) Windows 7 can be installed on MBR partition and GPT, make sure using UEFI-CSM when using Rufus to write the ISO and select USB (not UEFI boot) with F10 during boot and you will be able to install on MBR partition, I couldn't get display working at MBR partition installation so better stick with UEFI. Another requirement is to make sure legacy VGA BIOS is injected using CSM compatibility(you might need to have a MBR hard drive connected to SATA port to see this option showing up). For UEFI GPT paritition, most annoying part is that the VGA bios needs to be set as legacy for windows 7 installation and the instllation of the display driver for kabylake/apollo lake, but once you finished the installation of the beta video driver and clicked reboot, you need to go into bios setting and change the VGA bios under CSM to UEFI only mode otherwise windows 7 will just crash.

7) If you have a working windows 7 system and you have already boot to desktop, but found usb is not working, you can solve with a ps/2 mouse, the USB 3.0 chip on apollolake is actually identical to Z270 chipset, just the driver wouldn't register, I used the same Windows 7 from a H110 to test if it supports Windows 7, and turned out it can boot no problem though no usb at all (2.0 or 3.0), by using a 15 year old ps/2 mouse to install the driver manually be selecting the intel usb 3.0 driver for Z270, picking the intel usb 3.0 root hub, ignore the warning and continue, and next is to install the usb 3.0 extension host controller (can't remember exactly hub/host controller which will comes first in manual installation, so might be the other order to install), all usb port work after manually installation of driver, just remember to pull the hard drive and copy over the extracted usb 3.0 driver of Z270 so you can navigate to the folder and select the ini file to do a manual driver install.