Installing Win 7 on Kaby Lake Aspire E5-774G-74CB in UEFI/GPT

[niemand]

Hi,

Ok, here's my model.

Aspire E17 E5-774G-74CB

https://www.acer.com/datasheets/2016/4876/E5-774G/NX.GEDEZ.006.html
https://www.acer.com/ac/en/GB/content/support-product/6784?b=1&pn=NX.GEDEZ.006
 

I spent several days without any luck - Win 7 doesn't install on it in EUFI/GPT mode.

The computer has Win 10 currently and I do want to preserve it, hence the EUFI/GPT choice. I tried various reincarnations of Win 7 but they all fail to progress past Starting Windows step. That's when the loading of files by the setup ends and the GUI part is about to begin. Just a few colored dots start to move on the screen and that's it. I tried NTLite with various Intel USB3 and other drivers but to no avail. One compilation that I found was even passing the loading files and starting in a GUI mode (which, probably, implies that boot.wim was kind of OK) but failing again after the reboot (which, probably, implies that install.wim is missing some drivers present in boot.wim). The thing is, I don't know in this particular case what drivers were in both wims as I haven't compiled them myself. When I was embedding the drivers alone, it was not even starting the boot.wim, let alone install.wim.

The drivers used were taken from the below resources.

Intel_USB3_50032_Win7_32_64
http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/misc/usb30/Intel_USB3_50032_Win7_32_64.zip

Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology Driver for Windows 7 32-bit & 64-bit,
http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/misc/sata/IRST_Win7_81_10_V15201020.zip

Aspire E5-774G
https://www.acer.com/ac/en/GB/content/support-product/6784?b=1&pn=NX.GEDEZ.006

Drivers for the Acer Aspire E5-774G Windows 7 x64 laptop
https://drp.su/en/laptops/acer/aspire-e5-774g?os=windows-7-x64

In BIOS, I have Secure Boot off and UEFI on. As I said, I want to keep the existing Win 10 so UEFI is a must, otherwise Win 10 doesn't even boot.

Any chances getting what I want?

For a comparison, I also got a new Kaby Lake HP (http://support.hp.com/ca-en/document/c05348678) and the installation of Win 7 was a breeze on it. The first bootable USB I had at hand (I had quite a few readily available while fighting the above Acer) worked a charm. It was Rufus-made, specifically for GPT, but in NTFS which wasn't actually supposed to work. It did work so just to make sure that wasn't some funky accident, I installed from the same stick Win 7 again on another partition. No issues whatsoever.

Sure, there were exclamation marks in the Driver manager but those were not critical and the system was very much usable. In fact, much more usable than in Win 10.

For me, Acer was the best and HP was the worst computer brand for the last 20 years. Now, I'm about to be forced to reverse my preferences.

Thanks