Loading Windows 7 on Native Win 10 System Headache

[DVDR_Dog]

Whoo Hoo did I have a fun Friday last week. I sold a ThinkPad T460S to a longtime customer/friend. Windows 10 Pro is native to this system. It's a sweet i7 super compact/thin 13" laptop, 2 batteries. Easy right? Heck no. No ROM on this system. It's either going have to be loaded from a USB DVD or a USB stick with a Win 7 ISO. Well not so fast. After the initial Win 7 setup loads you get the message "A Required CD/DVD Drive Device Driver is Missing". OK off to the Lenovo forums.
After reading a pantload of posts I still didn't have a clue for a workaround. So then I came across this post. Well not this post but one similar.
Instructions are here:

[SOLVED] A Required CD/DVD Drive Device Driver is Missing – EasyTechs

Here is the most reliable way to resolve the issue of Required CD/DVD Drive Device Driver is Missing. The idea of this solution is to install the required USB 3.0 driver so as to enable Windows 7 gain access to the PC hard drive and proceed with the installation.

www.easytechstutorials.com

This answers a whole bunch of questions regarding SSD, USB problems in newer systems. It's all related to newer Intel chipsets lacking Windows 7 support for both. Who knew that and why did they choose to drop support? Anyway this is a very clean and easy way to add missing support. I'm thinking maybe Thumper might want to archive these Gigabyte fixes for those who need to have Windows 7 for program compatibility in the future should those links disappear.

 

[DVDR_Dog]

Remember when the author of MediCat showed up here and I went kinda goofy? Well he saved my butt once again. I didn't realize at the time that when I did the above to load Win 7 it still wouldn't support USB devices to a fresh install. I also couldn't find an adaptor for this particular flavor of NVMe to load the drivers offline (Gotta love that. Another spec gone awry). Anyway MediCat to the rescue. Loaded Win 10 pe and USB support returns. Loaded the drivers I needed to the root of C and away I go.

 

[jamvaru]

it's a conspiracy
sort of
really just common sense marketing, don't bother supporting something that isn't sold anymore
the number of cases like this one are so small as to be statistically insignificant, and financially insignificant