Motherboard swap

[#1]

Fair enough, but a Blu Ray writer is worth the investment (of course if you can afford it).

Just to keep stuff that is important to you, such as photos and documents. Also e-mail - not that I can talk. I use Exchange hosting for my e-mail so it reminds me I need to do that. Burn some PST files.

The discs don't last forever, I guess the other option is on-line backup. I have had a bad experience with one company.

So this company I am paying a montly fee for, all my files disappeared. When I complained they said "We are not a data archiving company". I am thinking "Well while I am paying you, yes you are".

Sorry back on topic a bit, try what has been suggested of course. As @MisterW said I agree, try changing the BIOS seettings and see if it works. Let us know how you get on.

[#2]

Lucky to have found a old keyboard with a ps2 connector so mouse pointer now works but still struggling with this.....

I have reinstalled windows 7 a number of times in the past with no problems to a HDD but I am convinced the job is a lot harder if trying to reinstall to a SSD.

[#3]

Your difficulty is more likely to be the result of trying to install an unsupported OS on hardware AMD will tell you is only supported (from Microsoft) by Windows 10.

AIUI the Windows 7 DVD / ISO does not have support for USB3 (using the Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI)) but does have support for USB2 (using the Enhanced Host Controller Interface (EHCI)); with the AM4 chipset AMD has removed support for EHCI in favour of xHCI for all USB ports.

There are / were tools from some mobo manufacturers that would allow you to add the necessary USB3 drivers to the Win7 ISO; with Win7 now EOL they're probably much harder to find (and you'd need to have done it on the 'old' - or another - system).

If you're still determined to go with Win7 the easiest option is probably form an internal (SATA) optical drive and PS/2 mouse & keyboard.  

[#4]

Must confess I have spent some considerable time on this but without success.

The plan now is to go for Windows 10......but not doing too well with that either....have made a bootable USB using rufus and iso of windows 10 ....no problem selecting the usb stick as first thing to boot from in the bios but it’s simply not picking it up.....

I have either messed up something trying to install Windows 7 or there is something I am not getting here.

Plenty of instructions on using rufus which are easy enough to follow.

Never expected problems like this when it comes to doing a fresh install.....Done many in the past using HDD and no problems at all.

[#5]

@gleneagles - Did you close the session on the ISO using this 'rufus'? If not then you'll need to do this. If you need to remake it and you are able to boot into Windows 7 you can simply select the ISO image from the file manager and from the context menu (right click) select "Burn disc image" you don't or shouldn't need to rely on third party tools to so this as Windows 7 supports this action as a default.

[#6]

@gleneagles I had a problem booting from USB with an A320 motherboard recently as it kept trying to "secure boot" - could that be your problem? I then disabled that option in the BIOS.

[#7]

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@gleneagles wrote: The plan now is to go for Windows 10......but not doing too well with that either....have made a bootable USB using rufus and iso of windows 10 ....no problem selecting the usb stick as first thing to boot from in the bios but it’s simply not picking it up.....

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FWIW, when I did the Win10 installation, all I did was copy it direct to a USB stick. I didn't use any 3rd party tools to create a bootable drive. The Win10 installation by itself is bootable as long as the BIOS can see what drive its on. From that stick I have 'upgraded' 2 PC's and a laptop simply by doing what it says on the page (Create Windows 10 installation media) I've linked to.

[#8 · Accepted solution]

Really odd, I tried Rufus, Windows creation tool and used a iso downloaded from Microsoft..windows 10.all worked up to the installation screen after inputting English & English keyboard.....then the dreaded message came up.....media driver missing...select location of media driver....all the drives were clearly visible and could be opened even found old windows installation some drivers in there but clearly not suitable as it was windows 7.

Next plan was to clone a copy of Windows 7 from a old computer and do it that way but chatting to a colleague he offered to lend me a genuine Windows 10 disk.....assumed the dreaded message would appear again but it did not, everything installed ok with no error messages.

Next step will be to reinstall programs and hope they work ok....

Cannot believe the amount of time I have spent on this......reinstalling windows 7 in the past was easy.....Almost wonder if they don’t want customers to have windows 10.

[#9]

😁 Yes, I had the same sort of hiccup when installing W10 (mentioned previously i.e. the WiFi adapter). Case of chicken or egg syndrome. I even went to Intel's website to download the driver, only for it to flag up that it wouldn't download ...due to the OS not being Win10!! Not even the option of saving it. Reading on various forums it seems if W10 is going to ask for a driver you need to be able to supply that driver.

I suppose the other way around the problem is to just have a bare minimum installation i.e. disconnect any unwanted drives, DVD drives etc and let it install. Certainly, once I'd identified what was causing the failure to install, disabling the adapter, resulted in W10 installing literally just like that. After it had installed, all I did then was re-enable the WiFI. And blow me it just installed the required driver!

As you say lots of needless frustration etc. But I am beginning to think the upgrade is worthwhile, even though another service pack has just been installed. I was getting rather tired of the continuous updating over the years but it seems to be settling down. To date no blue screens etc. Hope yet!

[#10]

@gleneagles  Instead of dual-booting,  have you considered trying to install Windows7 in a virtual machine running on the Linux that you already have working ?.  Presumably many of the Windows device driver problems you are having would disappear as the Windows installer would only see the generic virtual interfaces that the Linux VM would provide (instead of bare hardware requiring specific helper files to operate).

I wonder if @shutter can point you in the right direction ?

[#11]

@gleneagles  & @Anonymous   Scroll down to "Part Two" of this thread...( sticky at the top of this board )

https://community.plus.net/t5/Tech-Help-Software-Hardware-etc/No-more-quot-Windows-is-updating-quot/m-p/1725503#M88477

The best thing about getting Windows 7 on a Virtual box, is that... You do NOT NEED windows updates... (unless you are going online with Windows)... make sure you disable updates completely when you have installed windows.

Another BIG ADVANTAGE is... you do not have to shut down... re-boot to Windows .... do the work... shut down... reboot to Linux.. with all that faffing about... all you need to do to Access Windows, is click the ICON on the lower panel/task bar or short cut icon on the desktop... and windows opens like any other program from the shsort cut..

When finished working.. you just revert back to the Linux desktop, and leave windows running in the background or shut it down completely if you know you won`t be needing it again..

[#12]

Thanks for the response, unfortunately there is a snag or two....

Having got windows 10 up and running I would have to install Windows 7 which gigabyte provide no support for, no reason why windows 10would not run in virtual box but there is a list of programs on the Linux website which allow you to check what programs can be run without problems, second is a list of what will run but there might be problems and finally programs that cannot run.

I use some commercial software for photographs and changing formats of videos .....

I guess it’s something to look at in the future but far from happy with this windows 10 setup.....

[#13]

There is a bargain offer of W10 Professional from  Computer Active magazine for £39.99which I found in my wife's copy of The Week.  Bought it as ultimately I will move over from W7 and all seems legit with lifetime transferability too.

You can find it HERE

[#14]

You shouldn't need to buy Windows 10, you can still upgrade from 7 for free even though officially this is no longer promoted.

[#15]

@alexatkin  Or... you could install  "ZORIN15" instead...  https://zorinos.com/download/

and my thread....

https://community.plus.net/t5/Tech-Help-Software-Hardware-etc/ZORIN-is-the-new-WINDOWS/m-p/1741885#M...