Windows 7 Installing Windows 7 on Dell Inspiron 17-7778 Laptop

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BoKnows04

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Feb 17, 2018
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Guys,
I'm trying to install Windows 7 on a Dell Inspiron 17-7778 that currently has Windows 10 installed.
This laptop does not have a CD-ROM drive and it only has (2) USB ports.

I'm having trouble getting Windows 7 intalled, here are the things I have done to boot to CD or USB
1. Disabled "Secure Boot"
2. Enable "Legacy Option ROMS"
3. Under Boot Sequence, I have selected the option "Legacy"



Now I select to boot from DVD (NOTE: I have also tried booting to a USB stick, but get same error message) but I get this message before even getting the option to select a harddisk to install Windows to.
Load Driver dialog box that says "A required CD/DVDdrive device driver is missing. If you have a driver floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB flash drive, please insert it now. Note: If the Windows installation media is in the CD/DVD drive, you can safely remove it for this step"

After I get to this point I have tried
1. Unplugging the USB CD/DVD drive from the laptop and plugging it into the other USB port
2. When I tried booting from the USB stick, I tried the same thing, unplugging it and plugging it into the other USB port
3. I have tried downloading a serial SATA driver but cannot get it to pick up the USB stick to select the driver when I select Browse option

I don't know if its looking for a CD/DVD or a Harddrive driver at this dialog box and It will not proceed any further with the installation.

This Dell Inspiron 17-7778 should be compatabile with Windows 7, but I having trouble just getting to the point to format the hardive and Install Win7

I appreciate the help and assistance

thanks alot!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
This laptop only supports Windows 10. There are no driver for it for Windows 7 nor does Windows 7 run on a 7th generation intel CPU.
 
Dumb question here, just want to know for future installs....how did you determine that the laptop was not compatible with Windows 7?

Thanks again for the help
 
This error message also appears if you try to install from a USB 3.0 memory stick. It happened to me yesterday.
Is your memory stick USB 2.0 or USB 3.0?
 
The laptop actually didn’t have a CD/ROM
drive that I was installing win7 on so I was using a external cd/rom drive to install win7 when I was getting the error. I also tried using a usb Drive & got the same error message.

I ended up installing Win10 without any issues. I just preferred win7, that’s what I wanted to install

Thanks
 
Hi You can find all windows ISO files here. Use them to create installation media for the OS you want to run on your PC. I like W10 and it's getting better every day IMHO. Before installing w10, I created a image of W7 that I can use, if I ever want to go back to W7. That's my suggestion to all Windows users.
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