Windows 7 on the Intel Alder Lake/Z690 platform

[sunryze]

5 hours ago, vxiiduu said:

I got an idea for how you might be able to fix the scheduler issues with p-cores e-cores somewhat.

If you can get the default CPU Affinity for explorer.exe to be on only the P-cores, this will have the effect of having all user-launched programs on the P-cores, and some of the "system" or "background" processes will be able to use the E-cores (or user can set specific programs to use E-cores through task manager). Not quite sure exactly how you could get this done, but perhaps making a task scheduler to kill and immediately re-start explorer with P-core-only affinity would work although it might look bad as the taskbar appears and disappears.

I could probably code some batch script for that. I don't have any Win7 systems or Alder Lake systems, but one day I will and I will probably need the batch script for Win10 as I plan to stick with 10 for a while. I'll have to look it up. Do you happen to know what cores are P and E cores? And what programs in particular should be running on what types of cores?

I think there should be tier going on here. The Win11 scheduler automatically chooses which area of the CPU to put what apps depending on their resource usage. Microsoft actually has a document about setting affinity via the command line. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/santhoshonline/how-to-launch-a-process-with-cpu-affinity-set

[Guest vxiiduu]

11 hours ago, Tonny52 said:

I could probably code some batch script for that. I don't have any Win7 systems or Alder Lake systems, but one day I will and I will probably need the batch script for Win10 as I plan to stick with 10 for a while. I'll have to look it up. Do you happen to know what cores are P and E cores? And what programs in particular should be running on what types of cores?

I think there should be tier going on here. The Win11 scheduler automatically chooses which area of the CPU to put what apps depending on their resource usage. Microsoft actually has a document about setting affinity via the command line. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/santhoshonline/how-to-launch-a-process-with-cpu-affinity-set

The P cores are most likely the first cores - for example, if you have 8P + 8E, then the P cores will be the first 16 cores (8P cores + their hyperthreads), and the E cores will be the last 8 cores. Generally speaking, during normal desktop use, the programs which have opened GUI windows should be scheduled on P cores for the best responsiveness of user programs, whereas background tasks and services should be put on the E cores. During gaming, the game should be put on P cores and everything else should be on E cores. That's how I would do it if I were coding the scheduler.

[Eddie Phizika]

Is anyone aware on how things may be in future e-core only (ARM Cortex A53-A55 dual-cluster-like) chips? I would be really interested on those in long term future as a ryzen replacement, high power computers do not turn on on my house due to electrical issues,.

Edited December 29, 2021 by Eddie Phizika

[Alessa]

On 12/6/2021 at 8:43 PM, Carlos S. M. said:

Motherobard vendors still provide Intel Chipset drivers for Z690 and the Alder Lake platform and they seem to work with 7, even though i got many unsigned driver warnings

I managed to install windows 7 x64 directly on my Asus z690 on ssd and on NVME M.2 simply with a Russian/eng iso from "AG" that has USB 3.0 and NVME drivers.

Then managed to install the old chipset V10 from Asus website like you did,

Then installed "SHA256_Signed_modified_intel_IO_USB3.1_driver_32_64bit" and some USB works now !

i still have some more drivers to install but most Asus drivers downloaded from the Asus website do not start and says:

"Does not support this operating system: WNT_6.1P_64_MCE"

 

Can you maybe share some of your driver files for asus motherboards?

 

 

 

Edited January 6, 2022 by Alessa

[coding-studio]

If I'm not wrong basically you meed to use this https:// forums. mydigitallife. net/threads/mdl-win-7-tool-for-simplix-updatepack-aio-iso-with-install-wim-esd-creation.79421/ and then something here: https:/ /www. win- raid. com/t25f23-Which-are-the-quot-best-quot-Intel-AHCI-RAID-drivers.html

(or the AMD equivalent) for this to work? Is there anything else I need to download/do to make this work?

Also using the same Mobo.

Thanks

[Guest vxiiduu]

7 hours ago, coding-studio said:

If I'm not wrong basically you meed to use this https:// forums. mydigitallife. net/threads/mdl-win-7-tool-for-simplix-updatepack-aio-iso-with-install-wim-esd-creation.79421/ and then something here: https:/ /www. win- raid. com/t25f23-Which-are-the-quot-best-quot-Intel-AHCI-RAID-drivers.html

(or the AMD equivalent) for this to work? Is there anything else I need to download/do to make this work?

Also using the same Mobo.

Thanks

Simplix includes generic USB3 and NVMe drivers. You shouldn't need to install any other USB3 drivers, because Simplix already includes the backported xhci drivers from Win8.

Get simplix from https://blog.simplix.info/update7 After downloading the EXE, just get a Win7 ISO, and drag the ISO on top of the EXE which will integrate the updates and create a new ISO.

AHCI and audio should just work from my understanding, using the generic driver included in Win7.

The Ethernet requires this driver from earlier in the thread.

And make sure you enable CSM/legacy boot/USB compatibility in the BIOS if any such options are present.

[coding-studio]

%idN9$Rn

Edited January 20, 2022 by coding-studio

[nuclear0508]

Hello guys,

I've managed to install Windows 7 SP1 on Asus mainboard with B660 chipset. CPU is i7-12700F.

It works fine but one issue with power consumptions. The CPU power reported by Aida64 software is constantly above 30W, even when there is no load on the system.

I install windows 8.1 & not having that issue.

I also check power consumption with external device and same result, 90W compare to 60W on Windows 8. CPU temperature is also higher.

Any idea on how to solve this problem. I really want to run Windows 7.

Thank you!

 

Edited March 11, 2022 by nuclear0508

[Guest vxiiduu]

58 minutes ago, nuclear0508 said:

Hello guys,

I've managed to install Windows 7 SP1 on Asus mainboard with B660 chipset. CPU is i7-12700F.

It works fine but one issue with power consumptions. The CPU power reported by Aida64 software is constantly above 30W, even when there is no load on the system.

I install windows 8.1 & not having that issue.

I also check power consumption with external device and same result, 90W compare to 60W on Windows 8. CPU temperature is also higher.

Any idea on how to solve this problem. I really want to run Windows 7.

Thank you!

 

Install ThrottleStop and see if you can fiddle with C-States/EIST or whatever they call it these days. Some sort of CPU power saving options. Those settings may be in the BIOS as well.
I remember that with my other CPU (which was a 3rd gen, ivy bridge, so maybe not that relevant) if I disabled all the power saving options the idle power would be like 50W.

Also, I notice that on Win7 the CPU voltage is much higher, which also points to a power saving option not being set when it should. If the BIOS settings don't help, give Throttlestop a try, it really works for tuning your CPU power consumption.

[nuclear0508]

On 3/11/2022 at 10:01 PM, vxiiduu said:

Install ThrottleStop and see if you can fiddle with C-States/EIST or whatever they call it these days. Some sort of CPU power saving options. Those settings may be in the BIOS as well.
I remember that with my other CPU (which was a 3rd gen, ivy bridge, so maybe not that relevant) if I disabled all the power saving options the idle power would be like 50W.

Also, I notice that on Win7 the CPU voltage is much higher, which also points to a power saving option not being set when it should. If the BIOS settings don't help, give Throttlestop a try, it really works for tuning your CPU power consumption.

ThrottleStop really makes a difference! The CPU power reduce to 10W that's acceptable for me.

I enabled C1E.

 

Thank you very much for the solution.

 

Edited March 12, 2022 by nuclear0508

[Jakob99]

How did you get Windows 7 working on Alder Lake? Did you have Legacy Mode or only UEFI Mode? I have 11th Gen Tiger Lake and would like to know how you got Windows 7 working if you only have UEFI Mode.

[WinFX]

How about driver AHCI/SATA?, Intel until version 18 provided it, but in version 19 it only gives the VMD. Someone shows me the hardware ID they have in IDE ATA/Atapi Controllers.

[forgamezcz]

thats funny haha good job man

[D.Draker]

On 12/6/2021 at 7:29 PM, Carlos S. M. said:

Hello, i've been recently messing with a Z690 motherboard and an Intel Alder

Hello, does the stanby (sleep) mode work for you ?

[Poseidon]

Could someone share the ISO? I have an Aorus B660M + i5 12400 motherboard. I've tried everything, updating the ISO with the USB 3.x drivers, using these software that update the ISO image, I've tried at least 10 different ISOs and nothing. It always starts the installation, loads the data and does the installation. On the first boot it hangs on the STARTING screen and that's it. I had the same problem on another computer, with an Asus H510M + i5 11400F motherboard, but I managed to solve it with a specific ISO. I really need to use Windows 7 on this machine. Someone please.