Install Windows 7 with a Win10 PE

I have a computer that came with Windows 8, I currently have it upgraded to Windows 10. I want to install Windows 7.

It's a Acer desktop and in their infinite wisdom decided to blacklist the Win 7 installer in the BIOS

Now I could downgrade the BIOS to an earlier version and get the win 7 installer to work but I am very Leary of doing this.

I was wondering if it is possible to use the Windows 10 installer to install Win 7. From what I have read once Win 7 is installed it will work fine.

Define "blacklist"? Installing Windows 7 may be as easy as just turning off secure boot in the BIOS.

NavyLCDR said:

That's probably it, in which case, wouldn't Secure Boot need to be turned off anyway to get Windows 7 to boot after it was installed? I don't think Windows 7 supports Secure Boot in any way shape or form, before or after installed.

Yes, secure boot has to be turned off to install Windows 7. Windows 7 doesn't have the secure boot code required by the PC's firmware (BIOS) if its enabled. It's flagged as untrusted. Turn secure boot off and those checks are not dome. and the install will continue. You have to do the same thing to install Linux etc. Only Windows 8.0, 8.1, and Windows 10 support secure boot.

alphanumeric said:

Yes, secure boot has to be turned off to install Windows 7. Windows 7 doesn't have the secure boot code required by the PC's firmware (BIOS) if its enabled. It's flagged as untrusted. Turn secure boot off and those checks are not dome. and the install will continue. You have to do the same thing to install Linux etc. Only Windows 8.0, 8.1, and Windows 10 support secure boot.

No it's not that I tried all that, I actually found a thread on the Acer forums years ago that said the only way to install win7 was to downgrade the BIOS .

The only installers that will work are Win 8 and above anything below 8 is blacklisted.

Microsoft created some pretty good deals for manufactures when Win 8 was first released and I think after a while of complaints from users and business they changed their minds.

First I've heard of something like this. I'm not an expert in that area, but I don't think you can install Windows 7 from Windows 10's pre installation environment. If you can I don't know how its done.

You can install Windows 7 from Windows 10 PE manually.

Set up partition to contain Windows 7.
Boot Windows 10 PE.
Insert Windows 7 install media.
Once you get control of the keyboard, press Shift + F10 to get a command prompt.
Take note of your Windows 7 install media drive letter, and the drive letter of your volume that it will be installed to.
(All following drive letters and indexes are only examples.)

D: (install media)
E: (win 7 os partition)

Use dism to determine which wim index is the one you want installed.
A windows 7 ultimate iso for example has 4 indexes.

1: Windows 7 Basic
2: Windows 7 Home
3: Windows 7 Professional
4: Windows 7 Ultimate

Code:

dism /get-imageinfo /imagefile:D:\sources\install.wim

Let's say we want to install Ultimate Edition.

The command would be:

Code:

dism /apply-image /index:4 /imagefile:D:\sources\install.wim /applydir:E:\

After some time the command will finish and return.

Now you need to edit the bcd to add a boot entry for the new os.

Mount your boot partition

Code:

mountvol B: /s

Add boot entry to bcd

Code:

bcdedit /store B:\efi\Microsoft\boot\bcd /create /d "Windows 7" /application osloader>output.txt
for /F "tokens=2 delims={}" %g in (output.txt) do (set _newguid=%g)
bcdedit /store B:\efi\Microsoft\boot\bcd /set {%_newguid%} device partition=E:
bcdedit /store B:\efi\Microsoft\boot\bcd /set {%_newguid%} osdevice partition=E:
bcdedit /store B:\efi\Microsoft\boot\bcd /set {%_newguid%} path \Windows\system32\winload.efi
bcdedit /store B:\efi\Microsoft\boot\bcd /set {%_newguid%} systemroot \Windows

That's the super fun way in manually installing windows when no external tools are available.

Otherwise use something like WinNT Setup which runs fine in a PE environment.

Works every time, lol. As soon as you say something can't be done somebody will post how to do it.