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3974
August 30th, 2017 15:00
Install Windows 7 on Dell T3500
Hello,
I have a T3500 and I want to put an install of Windows 7 on it. Unfortunately, it has XP even though there is a Windows 7 COA on top of the box. I figure it should be easy, right?
I booted off the CD and hit "Install", when after a few moments I got "“A required CD\DVD drive device driver is missing” error when installing Microsoft Windows 7". Where do I get these device drivers?
I have tried many things: I went to the drivers section at www.dell.com/.../drivers, extracted the .inf files, put them in a folder on a USB drive, and told Windows to browse there. It found a driver but it hung forever. I went to Intel's site and grabbed some drivers; since the PC has a Bloomfield processor I grabbed 14.0.0.0.1143 at https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25091/Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-Intel-RST-?product=55005 . No joy- it tells me that it can't find a compatible drivers (maybe because it provides functionality for Intel Series 9, 8, and 7 Chipsets...? And the T3500 has an ICH10 family... which would be series 10 Chipset...? )
I have gone to the BIOS and changed the RAID controller to be AHCI/auto-raid, and tried to install but that didn't help either.
What magical incantation am I missing? Thanks.
speedstep
9 Legend
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47K Posts
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August 31st, 2017 07:00
INTEL RST is VERY OLD on the T3500 You cant use 11.7 let alone 14.xxx Newer and newer versions DROP support for ICH7 ICH8 ICH9 ICH10 this is NOT 10 series.
Intel Intel Rapid Storage Technology, v.9.6.0.1014
may be the oldest version you can use.
Larger than 2TB Drives requires a host bus adapter and or INTEL RST 10.1.0.1008 or higher.
The problem is that newer and newer versions of RST DO NOT SUPPORT OLDER AND OLDER versions of INTEL ICH aka ICH 4 5 6 7 8 9 10. The higher you go the lower versions drop support.
Version 9.6 may be max for your motherboard.
I am sure that by the time you get to INTEL RST version 11.7 that your ICH aka Sata controller is NOT supported.
Trying to install when the system is in ATA mode instead of AHCI OR if the version of ICH is not supported will error with not supported hardware.
The INTEL RST 9.6 F6 Drivers can be put on a USB Flash drive and when AHCI is enabled for Sata operation it will load the drivers and see the disk. If you do not load RST 9.6 or higher it will not "see the drive" and will not install. Advanced format 4k drives started arriving in 2011. At this point ALL NEW Drives are advanced format. If you have an ancient 120 gig , 80 gig drive it won't need the drivers. Most 160 Gig, 320 gig , 500 gig etc are 4k Advanced format Drives. You have to extract the contents of the .zip file to a floppy or USB flash drive. You cannot Point to a .zip file.
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/15251
Installs the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (RAID) driver version 9.6.0.1014 for Intel® Desktop Boards.
Other Versions
Download the driver (STOR_allOS_9.6.0.1014_PV.exe) and one of the following F6 Driver Diskettes (depending on your operating system):
STOR_all32_f6flpy_9.6.0.1014_PV.zip - F6 driver diskette for Windows* 7 (32-bit editions), Windows* Vista* (32-bit editions), Windows XP* Home, Windows XP Professional or Windows XP Media Center Edition.
STOR_all64_f6flpy_9.6.0.1014_PV.zip - F6 driver diskette for Windows 7 (64-bit editions), Windows Vista (64-bit editions) or Windows XP Professional 64-bit Edition.
The Required CD/DVD driver issue though is a BURNED DVD that was burned too fast 16x speed when it should have been 1X or 2X or 4X or 8X max burn speed.
GreyGnome
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August 31st, 2017 09:00
Thanks. I appreciate the detail, but ultimately the last paragraph was the trick... Windows 7 should be able to build this PC. So I grabbed yet another Windows 7 install disk that I had and it worked... I've tossed my old non-working disk and I will rebuild it slooowwwwly. We'll see how that goes. Thanks again!