USB Devices Fail During Windows 7 Installation on Windows 10 Controller

Issue Details

Solution

Newer CPU Chipsets use xHCI controller for both USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports for which Windows 7 does not have any native drivers. As a result, Windows 7 installer boots, but no devices plugged into USB ports are functional during the installation.

As a solution, we have to embed the USB drivers within the installation media. One of the many approaches for doing this could be by using the GIGABYTE imaging utility as explained here.

Additional Information

• Some NI controller devices use NVMe SSD drives for which the drivers are also not available in native Windows 7 installation. A similar procedure can be adopted for those as well. The above-referred GIGABYTE tool has the option to add the NVMe drivers along with the USB drivers.
• You might need to install other drivers (such as graphics, ethernet, etc.) manually.
• We recommend installing NI PXI Platform Services, NI-VISA, and NI-488.2 drivers to support controller peripherals.
• Because of the end of life, limited support is available on Windows 7 related issues.
• Users may need to purchase a license for using a different OS as compared to the one which was originally shipped with the device.