Solved ASUS X299 SAGE

I thanks ye kindly, Steve. Managed to go with the Optane driver before I saw this. I should be okay for RAID configuration although I don't know if I'll be getting the classic coloured-text GUI, Pre-UEFI interface in BIOS that I grew to love so much but it's better than zippo. Not sure if I want to trust the ROG forum that much, but the link you shared prior to it looks to be okay. The 10G link is for the next gen board but there could be something there I might use.

Not being critical. Just being careful. I certainly appreciate the help. I remember MoKiChU a few years back knocking himself out trying to help me with my Broadwell issue. We never did solve that TBMT curse and it still sits in my device manager as a painful reminder that Intel and the rest of the giants ain't exactly my friends. I had no clue what a legend MoKiChU was at the time, but I still remember his patience and dedication.

This is a work in progress and as I stated earlier it probably won't see the inside of a case until this summer at the earliest. I certainly appreciate the help.

there is no problem being careful that's why i posted everything to let you have a look and decide.
you would have better knowledge of what is good or not so good for this build.
which i hasten to add has me intrigued.

just off topic i am upgrading my little home network from 10/100 Cat5, which is about 20 years old, to a newer 1GB network.
main Cat6 cables laid just awaiting the powered 2 port switch and Cat6 cables to the 2 computers.
all for the princely sum of £45GBP and several hours of cable laying as im not as young as i used to be.
the network kit has most certainly moved on and a lot cheaper compared to 20 odd years ago.

best of luck, Steve ..

Yeah, I was annoyed that ASUS Canada deleted those drivers from their site. I believe I already have most of what I require and hopefully I won't be needing any TBMT or, if I do, I'll have a driver that Win 11 considers acceptable. I'm a long ways off from OC'ing the new build but I plan on doing it in the future so TBMT isn't really needed for my purposes. Nonetheless there is just something that is so annoying about those bangs in device manager and I'm really OCD about it if I can't do anything to make them go away.

I find it interesting that Intel has IRST for gen 10 and 11 chips, yet it has all but vanished entirely for gen 7 CPUs and they act like there isn't even such a thing as an i9 CPU that is gen 7 on their web site. It's like they want to forget it even existed. I find that rather sad considering that this Sky Lake series is like the original i7 Bloomfield that set the stage for quad core processors for domestic end users. In other words, this i9 gen 7 CPU is a legend in its own right as it set the stage for all those i9 processors that followed. The least Intel could do is show a little respect for their own product. Bah! Kids these days. Nothing is sacred. ASUS advertises that this board can manage IRST and then takes away the drivers for it. How ignorant!

XxXxX said:

just off topic i am upgrading my little home network from 10/100 Cat5, which is about 20 years old, to a newer 1GB network.
main Cat6 cables laid just awaiting the powered 2 port switch and Cat6 cables to the 2 computers.
all for the princely sum of £45GBP and several hours of cable laying as im not as young as i used to be.
the network kit has most certainly moved on and a lot cheaper compared to 20 odd years ago.

Click to expand...

Make sure if you have switches that they can all handle 1GB as well. Some of those older switches can only do up to 100 mbps. If you plan on using POe make sure you test it first before you do anything permanent. I had a fun time with mine 5 years ago, thinking wiring my house up with Cat7 would be a breeze. It didn't take long before it became very clear to me that I wasn't in my 50's anymore lol So I know exactly what you mean. Take your time. You'll be glad you did.

its always the same with some drivers for certain kit. they remove them and you have to go on a treasure hunt to find them in some obscure place.
an example is my grand kids laptops Chuwi, nice laptops for the price, but no support. when one of them needed a re-install of Win 11, no drivers for it.
luckily i managed to take the drivers from the other laptop to install the drivers. i now keep two backup copies of the drivers, just i case.

yes the uGreen 2 port switch is 10/100/1000 but then again i never thought i would need to upgrade a 10/100 network. internet speeds have moved on a bit since 56k dial-up but it keeps me busy.

best of luck, Steve ..

Had an old D-Link that kept cutting out on me and found out it only did up to 100 mbps. I eventually scrapped it but it was very dependable for the longest time. 1 G is good enough internet speed for this household and the only reason we get it this far north is the oil companies. We also get fiber to our doors now, but I'm on a great phone plan so I'm not switching over to fiber any time soon.

i now have full fibre to the house and removed the copper connections for the old phone lines.
that saved me £20 a month land line rental its now just fibre and a flat monthly payment for the fibre.

once i moved to fibre there was no way back to the old copper connections, so im updating the home network so it can use the full capacity of the fibre connection which is 1GB but that's upgradable to 10GB but 10GB is out of my price range.

first i had a 56K modem connection then ASDL 3MB which was upgraded to 65MB so the 10/100 network was more then enough. now its a 1GB connection to the house it kinda left the 10/100 in the dust, hence the home network upgrade.

best of luck, Steve ..

XxXxX said:

once i moved to fibre there was no way back to the old copper connections, so im updating the home network so it can use the full capacity of the fibre connection which is 1GB but that's upgradable to 10GB but 10GB is out of my price range.

Click to expand...

I'm a cable cutter who uses cable. I don't do television. I could get fibre optic easily, but my net speed is sufficient and the fibre company in my little town cannot give me the same unlimited calling plan that I have currently with my ISP. Like you, if I wanted to get 10GB, I could do it but I'd lose the great deal I have with my land line and it's hard enough just getting a separate land line on a separate router these days.

Well,,, I can't get Win 7 Ultimate to install on this system via a DVD drive for some reason. Both UEFI and Legacy don't want to give me the drivers for mouse or keyboard. Can't find my olde USB installation stick (I'm sure I have it somewhere) but there's more than one way to skin a lizard. I will find a way. Not all is for naught. I managed to generate a RAID volume just for kicks and I even managed to get the pretty coloured GUI text in BIOS so not a total waste.

Can't you just choose "Other OS" for the Secure Boot setting?

Ghot said:

Can't you just choose "Other OS" for the Secure Boot setting?

Click to expand...

I did. It made no difference.

Scannerman said:

I did. It made no difference.

Click to expand...

I dunno then. That's all I could think of.

Ghot said:

I dunno then. That's all I could think of.

Click to expand...

Yeah, IKR. There are however, many commonalities with the LGA 2066 platform and the 2011 platform. Even some of the CPUs are interchangeable. In fact, I can take a cloned OS from my X99 build and plug it into the X299 and it will boot. (I already tried this with Win 11.) So, perhaps I'll just have to Frankenstein it if I want Win 7 to run on the SAGE. ASUS does say that this board is compatible with Win 7 so it shouldn't be that hard to do. I'll just make the minimum installation on my X99 build and swap the drive. It should work.

just some out of the box thinking.
would it be possible to get the Win 10 boot manager in a boot/EFI partition and allow that to boot Win 7.

reason for my thinking.
i have the Win 10 boot manager in the boot/EFI partition booting Win 11 24H2.
first i installed Win 10 22H2 then using a Rufus USB of Win 11 24H2 to upgrade Win 10 from within Win 10.
as Win 11 24H2 creates a new Windows folder there was no need to format or remove the boot/EFI partition.

note.
i have Win 11 24H2 installed in Gnome boxes on a Debian system and it was away around TPM & SSE4.2 requirements
secure boot is enabled and both Debian and the Win 10 boot manager handle this requirement easily.

just thinking out loud. best of luck, Steve ..
the edits were me trying to explain this properly.

It is possible. My challenge is that I attempted to install with a DVD because I couldn't find the USB stick. OMGG I'm so disorganized! You, on the other hand, have the most organized and neatest browser I've ever seen in my life! I'm thinking you are a very organized and meticulous person. I might even attempt to emulate your awesome browser one day. Alas, not a priority atm.

Attempting to boot from the Win 11 OS (the genuine installation - not the clone) resulted in a message that Windows was unable to partition the drive I selected and it asked me to boot from the installation media so it put me back at square one. I tried everything: disabling CMS, making all settings Legacy, making select settings Legacy etc. all to no avail. I have a sneaky feeling if I ever find that USB stick . . .

Scannerman said:

It is possible. My challenge is that I attempted to install with a DVD because I couldn't find the USB stick. OMGG I'm so disorganized! You, on the other hand, have the most organized and neatest browser I've ever seen in my life! I'm thinking you are a very organized and meticulous person. I might even attempt to emulate your awesome browser one day. Alas, not a priority atm.

Attempting to boot from the Win 11 OS (the genuine installation - not the clone) resulted in a message that Windows was unable to partition the drive I selected and it asked me to boot from the installation media so it put me back at square one. I tried everything: disabling CMS, making all settings Legacy, making select settings Legacy etc. all to no avail. I have a sneaky feeling if I ever find that USB stick . . .

Click to expand...

you could transfer the Win 10 boot files over to the boot folder of Win 7 and then burn a Rufus USB of this ISO.
if that USB boots then the install should be relatively straightforward. this should then give you the ability mould the system to your use.

organisation, its my military training, everything has a place and everything in its place.
you can take the solider out of the army but you cant take the army out of the solider.

best of luck, Steve ..

XxXxX said:

you could transfer the Win 10 boot files over to the boot folder of Win 7 and then burn a Rufus USB of this ISO.
if that USB boots then the install should be relatively straightforward. this should then give you the ability mould the system to your use.

Click to expand...

Is is interesting how people operate with their own personal quirks about PC building. Doing this would be more the Frankenstein than I had suggested.

Once upon a time I had a buddy who was an IT. We were pals for over 30 years. He was also a physics wiz and I often had to get him to break things down for me to explain them to me as he was far beyond my capacity to comprehend when he would mention such things. I won't say where that man is now as it would not do him much honour. The world broke him. Stuff happens. He had a beautiful mind.

Anyway, he suggested a similar thing with Windoze 10 and I flat out told him that I would never run Windoze 10 on my work station out of principle. In fact, I waited for Win 11 to come out before I purchased my brand new laptop (which I gave to my daughter) just so I could upgrade it to Win 11. This is how much I despised Windoze 10. There is just something about recording a client's every key stroke on their hardware that strikes me as being unethical and if I have to go through all the hassle of removing that sort of thing in addition to all the unnecessary bloatware that I have absolutely no use for why should I pay Microsoft for this? Windows Keylogger edition has never been my favourite OS. Just because software of this invasive nature can be removed does not mean that I should pay for it. Neither does it mean that I should have to go through the trouble to remove it. Nor does it mean that Windoze can't just up and put it back in on the next "critical update". In fact, if people actually read and comprehended the EULA that comes with Windows 10 they likely would not bother to use it as it basically translates to this: Microsoft reserves the right to claim ownership of this PC upon installation of this software and is hereby granted absolute immunity from prosecution upon installation of said software.

Never before have I had to resort to so much butchery to give people half decent operating systems in the name of Windows 10. This is why I will not run that garbage on my PC. I was really hoping Win 11 would be something great but it seems that the trade off with AI could be even worse. Clearly, I am from another time when people's privacy was actually respected. Perhaps I belong in Russia with Edward Snowden. I just really don't like where it is all going. I am however very pleased with this forum's liberal approach to programs like X-Lite and that we can freely discuss other alternatives here. I hope this never changes. Having said that I will likely attempt my experimental Windows 7 transfer today without the help of using Windows 10.

Thank you for putting up with my rant.

no worries about the rant some times i want to shout at the world too.

you could try to use the Win 11 23H2 boot manager but the Win 10 22H2 boot manager is a closer fit to Win 7.
best of luck, Steve ..

I tried it and to no avail. Drives me crazy knowing I have access to the drivers but I can't even get a mouse going to install them. Made the grievous error of not properly isolating my perfectly working Windows 7 Ultimate and attempting to install on the X99 on a separate drive. Result: Corruption City! Just managed to fix that and now I'm back to a normal BCD multi-boot. Had to fight like a dawg to remove the "setup" from the directory and the boot manager. lol I may have to try this on a different platform. Meh. Tomorrow is another day. It was minus 32 outside this morning but things are warming up fast. I didn't have a lot of time to mess with computers today. I'll see what tomorrow brings.

So I decided to give this a go instead. I'm cloning my Win 7 Ultimate in RAID 0 (which works flawlessly) to my toaster (AHCI) on a single drive. Will it work? One never knows if one does not try.



I've already tried installing on three different platforms using various methods without success so I may as well try a clone.

looks interesting
if it boots then you should be home and dry

best of luck, Steve ..