HP Stream Won't Show Internal Hard Drive When Attempting to Install Windows 7

[monk9617]

So, I'm trying to put Windows 7 on my system, because Windows 10 eats up all my storage space (I'll free up GB at a time and all the storage is gone by the end of the day without me downloading a thing) so I got a Windows 7 Home Basic 64 Bit installation flash drive, and it boots just fine. Everything goes well until I click "Install now" After it says "Setup is starting..." A popup with the name of "Load Driver comes up, saying, "A required CD/DVD drive 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." When I click, "Browse" it only shows Boot, or drive X. When I open Command Prompt, use diskpart, and list disk, it just says, "There are no fixed disks to show." The flash drive is plugged into my USB 2.0 port, Legacy Boot is on, and safe boot is off. Windows 10 is currently installed on the internal SSD. On the HP support site, the only storage driver is for the MicroSD card reader. I'm out of ideas. Assistance would really help. Thanks in advance.

[CherylG]

@monk9617

It is probably looking for the Intel storage controller driver which would have to come from Intel. @Paul_Tikkanen probably can help with that.

You know that you can do the same thing with Windows 10 on usb with none of these problems? MS offers the free Media Creation Tool to make it. Your Win 10 license key is embedded in BIOS and it will install with no problems. This clean install of Win 10 usually results in 15gb free space. The Tool and instructions are here:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi, @monk9617

I don't believe the USB2 port works until after you install W7 and then install the Intel chipset installation utility.

Try this utility to put the USB3 drivers into your W7 installation flash drive.  Then boot from the USB3 port.

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25476/NUCs-Windows-7-USB-3-0-Creator-Utility

There is a readme link on the webpage for how to use the utility.

Download the file for the Windows operating system you plan to run the utility on.