Installing Windows on Unsupported Motherboards

[Refrochia]

Hi All

Has anyone ever installed a later Windows OS than what is supported by the motherboard? If so how did it go and was performance impacted by not having MB vendor drivers installed?

I have an Asus P6X58D-E with Intel i7 980X and I'm currently running Windows 7 which is obviously pretty old now. I'm starting to run into issues with software that I use not being able to update as those vendors no longer support Win 7 (Ableton, Elektron Overbridge, Steam to name a few).

I'm asking more in hope than anything as I expect it isnt possible or if the installation succeeds it will result in performance issues with Scope.

I would love to get a new PC but I have 3 x A16us connected to 2 x Scope Pro PCI boards and as we all know MBs with PCI are increasingly rare.

Would appreciate hearing about anyones experience!

Thanks
R

[valis]

WIn10 should work, no reason it's not supported.

If you're going by what drivers are exposed on the motherboard maker's website, simply search for those same drivers from the original vendor. In most cases even the smaller chipsets on a board (audio codecs, extra ports etc) will have drivers either in MS's stack or from the parts vendor. What I do is simply snapshot my Device Manager tree so I can reference it post install. Bonus points if you can install to a new drive and keep the old Win7 partition/drive around for booting into it and referencing drivers and software if need be (this also helps for that software you forgot to unlicense, etc).

[yayajohn]

MSI Z97 Inteli7-4790S. Win10 Pro 64.
3 Scope PCI. All working nicely.
I think I posted the Masterverb test results right after I got it all hooked up.
This is not my main recording computer so ymmv.
From my experience once you get your Scope cards running smoothily, they will continue to run with steady results.
The glitch is always on how much you load your system up with recording tracks, vst's etc.
If you find yourself like some (ahem....) who feel the need to clutter their OS and workspace with things they don't really need, then I would recommend you save up for an Xite so you can join the club of people constantly upgrading their computers.
Good luck!

[Refrochia]

Thanks both for your reply!

Valis- thats a good point re going direct to the device manufacturer for drivers and yes I'm going to try and stick another HDD in so at least I've got my current install to revert to in worst case scenario.

Yayajohn - I would love nothing more than to get an Xcite but they dont have enough connectivity for my needs. I have all my kit plugged into 3 A16u's which are connected to 2 x scope pro pci: 1st A16 to the Zlink on one card, 2nd A16 to the Zlink on the other card and the 3rd A16 connected via ADAT across both cards. Would only be able to connect 2 x A16s to the XCite. Was always hopeful that the XTDM expanion would overcome this but Im not sure if anyone knows what this can be used for or even if it ever will!

[Refrochia]

Just to give an update on this, I bit the bullet and installed Win 10 on an additional drive and only had 4 unknown devices in device manager once installation was complete. 2 related to the 2 Scope PCI cards I have installed and the other were for ACPI and some Marvel storage device. I manually updated them via device manager, pointing the drive installation wizard to the folder where I have all the win7 MB drivers and they both installed without issues!

Very happy that everything is looking good so far although I haven't actually put the PC through its paces yet so time will tell!

[fidox]

For example :
I didn't have good experiences installing Win11 on unsupported hardware.
Spikes and unstable clock between Scope-Cubase.
Was installing then Win10 back, all good.

[Bud Weiser]

Confirmed !

I´m back to Win10 Pro x64 on 2 laptops now,- both are for audio/MIDI.
One laptop w/ RME Babyface, the other SCOPE/XITE.
I make a all new Scope setup which isn´t finished not just yet.
But I´m pretty sure it will be better because going back to Win10 by performing a fresh install on a new SSD, then doin´ all the tweaks, also improved the RME laptop running the native stuff.

[valis]

Again, check the drivers and the background processes. I have two 6th gen Intel motherboards running Scope (PCI and Xite) fine, but I did my usual DPC Latency spike checks and manage my driver stack by hand. Win11 works fine on both, but one is still on Win10 until I have time to fully migrate everything else installed.

I did put TPM 1.2 chips in both, and though Win11 officially requires 2.0 the fact that it is TPM 1.2 in hardware rather than software is enough to allow Win11 to install without any tricks.

[Bud Weiser]

I have hardware TMP 1.2 chips in each of the 2 laptops and Win 11 was stuck w/ version 21H2 and stopped receiving updates.

It´s better running Win10 22H2 w/everything updated, ai least until it also stops receiving updates.
There´s always some native stuff running in harmony on my Scope machines and as long software manufacturers support Win10 22H2, it seems to be the better combo.

When running SCOPE completely "standalone" on a dedicated machine,- Win 7 32Bit is what I prefer to use.

[garyb]

updates are only needed for internet security. if you aren't browsing the net, you can use win10 until your software no longer supports win10.

[valis]

Agree with Gary.

Also my 1.2 machines still update fine. You can do an in place upgrade on windows 11 now btw. Install from right within windows without even loading the ISO onto a thumb drive.

[Bud Weiser]

updates are only needed for internet security. if you aren't browsing the net, you can use win10 until your software no longer supports win10.

That´s good to know.

But, p.ex. Steinberg, NI (and other´s) system requirements are 'Win10 64Bit 22H2 and/or Win11 22H2 - latest service pack" meanwhile.

THAT´S the reason why I went back to Win10 Pro 64Bit.
Win11 21H simply received no updates anymore,- so 22H was unexpectedly out of reach from one day to the other.

Running just only Kontakt together w/ SCOPE on the same machine requires NI Native Access.
Running IKMM Sample Tank 4 (v2 EX) also needs kind of portal,- the IKMM PluginManager.

For a mobile device (laptop) running SCOPE/XITE I at least need a sampler/sample player delivering devices SCOPE doesn´t deliver,- at least since STS doesn´t work anymore.
I need EPs, pianos, brass, reeds ... Scarbee, Purgatory Creek, e-instruments, Sonic Couture etc..
With STS I was able using my AKAI library, but that´s history.

As the consequence, we´ll HAVE to use Win11 sooner or later and we urgently need a SCOPE ASIO driver, multiclient prefered,- and working w/ standalone applications like NI Kontakt, Sample Tank and such.
And it should work flawlessly w/ apps like Gig Performer, Cantabile, Kushwiew Elements etc. for live performance.



Bud

[Bud Weiser]

... my 1.2 machines still update fine.

How comes?
That wasn´t the case here.

You can do an in place upgrade on windows 11 now btw. Install from right within windows without even loading the ISO onto a thumb drive.

On my laptops w/ TPM 1.2 Windows update reported the machine not matching Win11 system requirements.
It´s 4th gen Intel i7 mobile quad w/ iGPU as also Nvidia graphics card.
The Lenovo Thinkpad W-model workstations come w/ both,- but they don´t match the specs.
Also, the drives are SATA SSDs,- not M.2 NVMe,- and there´s more ...

I gave up tinkering w/ Win11 on these machines although these work well for SCOPE and my virtual instruments w/ Win 7 and 10 64Bit.

So, I´ll only install Win11 on my office machine since it matches Win11 hardware requirements,- and I´ll wait until Win10 isn´t supported anymore.

I also would like to know WHICH security updates are important.
I never use Windows Edge and/or Defender as also not all the bloatware apps.

I´m pretty sure, AVAST, Mozilla (Firefox/ Thunderbird) and others will support Win 10 64Bit for a long time still and after Win10 will be officially discontinued by Microsoft.



Bud

[valis]

4th gen i7 is the issue. Gen 5/6 Xeons also have some virtualization hooks enabled that still exist in consumer CPUs but get lased off (disabled in silicon), unfortunately. AMD chose to allow consumer CPU's to have all the same features except core counts as the higher end CPU's that use 'chiplets' based off the same core design. A motherboard vendor can even enable ECC support on AMD's consumer platforms, at least on the higher chipsets (I think the budget ones exclude that support).

So it's not JUST a TPM issue. Also note I'm not taking you to task or saying you're wrong in your experiences, but it's worth keeping the record accurate here for others.

I knew Xeons have much longer support than consumer platforms so went for the v6 E5's when (finally) moving up from my XP era Scope box. That box was so hot (dual Prestonia Xeon) it was cooking my cards, they were dying after about a decade of that heat.

As for the Win11 'year' builds, the updates are now large packages like Apple used to do to their 2005-15 era OSes (when you could still directly download those packages). There are channels for 'critical' updates still, but you need to know where to find them. And that wouldn't matter for the Steinberg etc compatibility, it simply means that they will issue out of band patches for critical vulnerabilities for longer than the large rollup updates that go out every half year.

I would have kept XP running forever if I didn't want to do newer things with my machine too. In fact, I'm ready to help with the ASIO driver & Scope 8 push here very shortly, because it's getting to the point where the 2015/6 era Bidule doesn't properly host current 64bit VST's anymore. Gotta love technology obsolescence cycles.

[Bud Weiser]

Also note I'm not taking you to task or saying you're wrong in your experiences, but it's worth keeping the record accurate here for others.

QFT

I would have kept XP running forever if I didn't want to do newer things with my machine too.

Me too.
For me, XP is the best MS OS still, followed by Win7.
At least we need Win7 for a minimum of quality SSD handling.
To my experience, XP is unable trimming SSDs,- right ?

I tried a OWC SATA II SSD in an Acer laptop I use for NOAH EX and therefore running Win XP.
To my surprise, there was no way cloning the OS from HDD to the SSD because one of these drives had to be connected externally via USB for the task.

Well, there´s something always ...

Bud

[valis]

XP SP3 enabled a good deal of SSD support including changing the block alignment to also support SSD's so that NAND wasn't wasted, but yes it was incumbent upon manufacturers to TRIM their SSDs via their own driver/software or for us to run a utility. I never saw that as a huge issue because Scope is a sidecar to my main machine and my recording and playback was on the primary DAW. Meaning I could do it occasionally or schedule it to run automatically.

Some SSDs for XP also simply had it in their firmware as part of wear leveling on the hardware level.

XP did not do well with making system images, the HAL was built to the hardware it was installed on and a reformat and restore of a previous image required a lot more than in the Win10/11 era. Ie, it was a much more technical and arcane process. The hardware agonistic HAL and resulting abstracting of most driver layers away from kernel mode in modern OSes have made things much easier, and (aside from Scope) BSODs almost a thing of the past.

[Bud Weiser]

Which Utility do you use for SSD trim when running XP ?
And I´ve found more issues,- also under Win 7 and 10.
P.ex.,- once the SSD is in a external enclosure using USB3 controller, the drive is recognized as HDD.
So,- p.ex. using Piriform Defragler, normaly recognizing what´s a HDD and what not,- the SSD "optimization" (vs. defrag) is useless.
Sama happens w/ the free OO-Defrag.

[valis]

I don't recall what I used now, though I do recall using Samsung's utility for their drives, and a generic one for others (at the time). That box is archived and uses u320 SCSI drives so it's not so easy to get to those legacy files now.

What the drive is detected as externally is dependent upon the controller's chipset, most won't expose the drive itself and simply use AHCI/SATA. ESATA should directly expose it, always. This is the same for NVMe drives, the bridge chipset that adapts it to USB usually shows up as the only device seen.

[garyb]

defrag ssds?

[Bud Weiser]

defrag ssds?

no, for sure NOT !

The issue is, WHEN the SSD (p.x. Crucial MX500, SATA600) is external, Win10 Pro recognizes as HDD.
As the result, Windows trim/ drive optimization doesn´t work anymore.

It´s crap w/ laptop and when you have your sample libraries etc. on ext. drive.

I guess, it´s because it´s a 3.5" SATA drive and not M.2 (or higher) NVMe.

According to the 3rd party "defrag" utilities:
These normally differenciate between SSD and HDD,- and when recognizing SSD, they "optimize".

But error detection ruins the plan.