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Windows 7 on a Kaby Lake laptop


greenhillmaniac

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Remember all the doom and gloom announced by tech sites all over, that Kaby Lake processors would be incompatible with Windows 7 and 8.1?

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/windows-7-wont-work-intels-current-next-gen-cpus/
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3112663/software/microsoft-made-em-do-it-the-latest-kaby-lake-zen-chips-will-support-only-windows-10.html

Well... I managed to get my HP laptop with an Intel Core i7 7500U and Intel HD 620 GPU working, without a single warning symbol on Device Manager.

windows7_kabylake.JPG

It was a bit tricky though... I had to install the Kernel Mode Driver Framework and User Kernel Mode Driver Framework v1.1 updates, along with a pretty obscure hotfix released by Microsoft, to make Windows 7 support TPM 2.0.

http://download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/software/updt/2012/11/windows6.1-kb2685811-x64_191e09df632b70fd4f4b27d4cb9227f7c5a1c98c.msu
http://download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/software/updt/2012/11/windows6.1-kb2685813-x64_22a969bada171678b0936bb320e6a7778e8adc07.msu
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2920188/update-to-add-support-for-tpm-2.0-in-windows-7-and-windows-server-2008-r2

There was no USB support after the fresh install, so I had to put the essential USB 3.0 drivers on a CD-RW I had laying around.

Aside from that, Intel also really doesn't want you to install Windows 7 on their new platform... The GPU drivers were compatible with 7, but the HW IDs for the new iGPUs were exclusive to the Windows 10 part of the file. All I had to do was copy paste them to the 7/8.1 section, and it installed without any problem. Also, the Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework drivers were only available for 10... Had to search the HW IDs on google to find older compatible versions.

Now I should finish setting up the system, and see if I can get updates. Will report back :D

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Nice job it seems. Now, most likely fetching updates will fail on a clean Win7 SP1 installation (untouched iso). I suggest you to install the following updates in the given order:

1. KB3172605
x64
x86

2. KB3177467
x64
x86

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1 hour ago, Mr.X said:

Nice job it seems. Now, most likely fetching updates will fail on a clean Win7 SP1 installation (untouched iso). I suggest you to install the following updates in the given order:

1. KB3172605
x64
x86

2. KB3177467
x64
x86

Actually I am aware of the issue, and Microsoft fixed the issue on regular Windows Update recently, without those updates installed. The search only took me ~5min, and it found everything (thank god, because the July 2016 UR contains telemetry that I don't want on any of my systems).

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Well, make sure you do provide us with a good how-to, when you consider it good enough, so that we can learn from your hard work.
This sure is an important step into ensuring a long life for Win 7 Ultimate SP1 (the last decent NT-OS in the family). Keep on the great work! :thumbup

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23 minutes ago, Tripredacus said:

Did you also have to disable driver signature enforcement? Editing an Intel INF will break its digital signature.

Didn't have to. Windows 7 isn't as strict as Windows 8 when it comes to drivers. All I had to do was manually install the drivers from Device Manager, and when the Red warning window showed up asking me if I wanted to install unsigned drivers, I clicked "Install this driver software anyway"

unsigned-device-driver.png

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5 minutes ago, Mr.X said:

@greenhillmaniac

You told us you were going to feedback about updating via WU, I guess. What happened?

Well, nothing extraordinary... since Microsoft fixed the Update mechanism, so no schvost loop occurs, it found all the updates, and it installed fine (even the 2017 January Rollups and such).

I will have to say this: the Intel HDMI driver did not install correctily. Gave me an error 39, or something like that (I'm not on my laptop to check).

I guess the real test would be to see if I will continue to recieve updates until 2020... we'll see.

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7 minutes ago, greenhillmaniac said:

I guess the real test would be to see if I will continue to recieve updates until 2020... we'll see.

I see no problem on that. Problem would be to get an update which breaks the system somehow (because 7 is not supported for Kaby Lake), although I think quite improbable to happen.

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44 minutes ago, G4600 said:

greenhillmaniac, please try to install Intel HD & Iris Graphics Drivers Version 21.20.16.4526 WHQL and see if HDMI / DVI / Display Port / VGA works.

This particular version (officially?) supports Windows 7 x64 and doesn't require any mods.

Please install, test and share your experience.

Thanks in advance!

The INF file for the GPU driver does seem to support Windows 7 and even 8 and 8.1, so great find :thumbup

Now the HDMI driver seems to be the same as the one provided by the official drivers off of Intel's site, so I'm not sure it will remove the yellow bang I have on device manager... Will give it a shot though.

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Something similar has been tried and the details of the result can be found here:

https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Intel-Prozessoren-Kaby-Lake-unter-Windows-7-Geht-halbwegs-doch-3606409.html

Translated with google translate:

"There are other drawbacks: display errors occasional when scaling windows, Google Chrome can not use the VP9 decoder of the Core i3-7100. 4K videos from YouTube run anyway, but with more than 50 percent CPU load the browser leaves single frames. Also H.265- / HEVC-Videos run under Windows 7 only with additional software.

When playing HEVC / H.265 videos, PowerDVD 16 Ultra also uses the hardware decoder and therefore causes less than 10 percent CPU load on the Core i3-7100 at 4K resolution; However, HEVC videos with 10 bits per color channel for HDR do not run.

Because hardware decoders for VP9 and 10-bit HEVC are the main advantages of Kaby Lake compared to Skylake, there is little reason to use Kaby Lake under Windows 7."

Those are the results for 21.20.16.4508, I am interested to know if 21.20.16.4526 corrects those issues if someone tried.

Thanks

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Searching on the website of the manufacturer I want to buy a laptop from, I found that they suggest in their official support/driver website the following video driver for a win 10 / kaby lake machine:

Intel HD & Iris Graphics Drivers Version 21.20.16.4574 WHQL

Driver version: 12/23/2016,21.20.16.4574
Package version: December 29, 2016 & 21.20.16.4574
WHQL: oui
Official: non
OS: Windows 7/8/8.1/10/Server2016
Systems: 64bits (X64)
Platforms: 7th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) processor family (Codename Kaby Lake)...

Seems to be a good sign if I want to install win7 on this new machine.

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2 hours ago, Maxpuff said:

Searching on the website of the manufacturer I want to buy a laptop from, I found that they suggest in their official support/driver website the following video driver for a win 10 / kaby lake machine:

Intel HD & Iris Graphics Drivers Version 21.20.16.4574 WHQL

Driver version: 12/23/2016,21.20.16.4574
Package version: December 29, 2016 & 21.20.16.4574
WHQL: oui
Official: non
OS: Windows 7/8/8.1/10/Server2016
Systems: 64bits (X64)
Platforms: 7th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) processor family (Codename Kaby Lake)...

Seems to be a good sign if I want to install win7 on this new machine.

Don't be fooled. Check the INF file. They most probably have the Kaby Lake hardware ID only on the Windows 10 section.

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