Win 7 installation did not find the required driver. What to do if you get a "Required media driver not found" error when installing Windows

Many PC users are accustomed to reinstalling the operating system themselves, be it Windows 7, 8 or 10. Of course, during the installation process from a flash drive or disk, all sorts of problems arise. Today we will talk about the problem "Device drivers not found".

Why does the error occur?

Since the release of Windows 7, technology has come a long way. Many modern computers and laptops contain equipment for which there are no drivers in the standard installation image builds. Most often, the user sees a message about a lack of driver for the hard drive and optical drive.

The most common cause of the problem is the presence of an interface USB 3.0. Since the image does not contain drivers for it, the system informs the user that the equipment cannot operate stably, and therefore continue with the installation.

Ways to solve the problem

So, here are some simple tips to resolve the error.

As a rule, the above tips help solve the “Device drivers not found” problem in the vast majority of cases. But what if they didn't help?

Change the software for recording the image

Practice shows that the problem sometimes occurs when writing a flash drive with a certain program. Try using another utility to create a bootable disk. We can recommend you the following products:

Please note that we recommend downloading software from the developer's websites in order to avoid all sorts of problems and file corruption. This recommendation also applies to the driver for 3.0. To download it, visit the website of the laptop or motherboard manufacturer.

Integrating drivers using special programs

If you have not previously created assemblies yourself, we recommend using the application vLite. This utility, among other things, allows you not only to integrate any drivers, but also to supplement the original Windows image with your own software. Of course, there are many analogues, so you can choose something else.

To create a bootable USB flash drive with the drivers we need, we will need an operating system image and a hardware driver. In the utility menu, you will need to specify the path to the image, and when selecting operations, the path to the unpacked driver. If we are talking about vLite, then after the appointment of events, the step-by-step assembly of the bootable flash drive begins: first the image is recorded, and then integration occurs. Upon completion of the procedure, we get the desired result. Here's a small one Video instruction, which is in a foreign language, but if you are PC friendly, you will understand.

There are more complex ways to integrate drivers, but these are more suitable for the advanced user, such as using distribution higher OS versions.

Programmers are known to be lazy people, like most people. When a program is developed, exceptional situations must be worked out, for example, a file is accidentally deleted/damaged, there is no access to the Internet, the mouse, keyboard, encoding are broken, new devices, connectors, Friday the 13th... whatever.

And for each case, programmers need to write a window or in some other way notify the user that something went unplanned, and also make sure that the error is correctly understood by the user (But we already have problems explaining to users programmers).

We all understand perfectly well that such an activity is very tedious and you can make a mistake; you can simply not take into account the probability of the coincidence of several events or the emergence of new devices.

This is the kind of mistake, if you can call it a mistake, that the developers of the Windows 7 installation process made.

What did they do and what did they forget?

They created an incorrect message for the user about what happened wrong. Instead of writing a message saying that there is no necessary driver for the device from which you are trying to install the Windows operating system. The one who wrote the driver error message thought that everyone would install Windows 7 only from an optical disc. But what about the ability to install from a USB flash drive? But what about those users who install from a card reader and other external devices? What's the result? And in the end this is what:

Error: optical drive driver not found when installing Windows 7 from a USB flash drive

But, starting with Windows 8.1, the developers corrected themselves and this error window was slightly redone.

The required driver for the optical drive was not found in Windows 8.1 and Windows 10

But again, what form should this driver be in? And where can I get it?

If during the installation of Windows 7, and most likely in later versions, you encounter such a message during installation, then here is what you need to analyze first:

What device is the installation from? Possible options CD\DVD, Flash, Usb-HDD (External HDD via USB)
If it is a USB device, what USB port is it plugged into? Possible options . or USB 3.0. (More details about USB 2.0\3.0 connectors below.)

What is the difference between USB 2.0/3.0?

To distinguish these two USB connectors, just look at the picture below. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that USB 3.0 is usually highlighted in blue, in contrast to the white USB 2.0.

Visual difference between USB 2.0 and USB 3.0

If your laptop or computer does not have USB 2.0 connectors (and if they do exist, it is better to insert the installation flash drive into them), and all of the available ones are USB 3.0 connectors, then you need to download the driver for the latter, since at the time of the release of the Windows 7 operating system, driver support in There was no installation image.

To download the required driver, you first need a motherboard. After that, go to the drivers section on the manufacturer’s official website, find your board there and download the USB 3.0 driver and you may need an ACHI driver. (hard drive controller).

Selecting the official website of the motherboard to download the necessary drivers

You can, of course, try downloading a more recent version of Windows 7 with the latest updates; perhaps they added support for USB 3.0 drivers to the installation image itself.

There is a driver, what should I do?

If you managed to find the drivers, then you need to unpack them, write them to any flash drive, insert them into USB and indicate them in the “Load driver” window using the browse button. But here, too, it may not be possible without adventure. You will most likely first be pleased with this message:

Error loading driver during windows installation

Then click “OK” and then click the “Repeat search” button.

Specifying a USB 3.0 driver when installing windows

What to do if all of the above does not help?

If the above does not help, then you can:

Try using a different device for installation, try burning to another disk (It is recommended to use DVD-R, CD-R and it is better not to use rewritable RW disks to install Windows), write installation files from the image at minimum speed.
When installing from a flash drive, try inserting it into all USB connectors. It's very likely that one of them will work.
Check the integrity of the installation image, download again, take another image.
Use verified operating system images. It is recommended to use official images downloaded from official sources.
Format the flash drive according to the Windows installation recommendations.
Use another program to write the image to the drive (For example, Novicorp WinToFlash or )
For those who install an operating system via a DVD or CD drive, in some cases cleaning the disk drive laser helps.
You can try Ahci/IDE modes
If you have a laptop manufactured in 2016 or later and you are trying to install Windows 7 on it, then most likely you will not be able to do this in any of the ways described above, simply because it is optimized to work only with Windows 10 and most likely the version.

When installing Windows 10, 8 and Windows 7 on a computer or laptop, the user may encounter errors “The required media driver was not found. It could be a DVD drive, USB drive, or hard drive driver" (during installation of Windows 10 and 8), "The required driver for the optical drive was not found. If you have a floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB flash drive with these drivers, insert this media" (when installing Windows 7).

The text of the error message is not particularly clear, especially for a novice user, because it is not clear what kind of media we are talking about and one can assume (incorrectly) that the problem is in the SSD or the new hard drive on which the installation is taking place, but this is usually not the case and the point is different.

Basic steps to fix the “Required media driver not found” error, which will be described in detail in the instructions below:

If you are installing Windows 7 and doing it from a flash drive, connect the USB drive to the USB 2.0 connector.
If the distribution disk is recorded on DVD-RW, or has not been used for a long time, try re-burning a boot disk with Windows (or better, perhaps, try installing from a flash drive, especially if you have doubts about the full functionality of the drive for reading disks).
Try burning the installation flash drive using another program. For example, relatively often (for unclear reasons) the error “The required driver for the optical drive was not found” is seen by users who have burned a USB drive in UltraISO.
Use another USB drive, delete partitions on the current flash drive if it contains several partitions.
Download the Windows ISO again and create an installation drive (the problem may be a damaged image).

The root cause of the error The required media driver was not found when installing Windows 7

The error “The required media driver was not found” during the installation of Windows 7 is most often caused (especially recently, as users update computers and laptops) by the fact that the bootable flash drive for installation is connected to the USB 3.0 connector, and the official OS installation program does not have built-in support for USB 3.0 drivers.

A simple and quick solution to the problem is to connect a flash drive to a USB 2.0 port. Their difference from 3.0 connectors is that they are not blue. As a rule, after this the installation occurs without errors.

"The required optical drive driver was not found" error when installing from DVD

The main cause of the error “The required driver for optical disks was not found” when installing Windows from a disk is a damaged disk or a DVD drive that does not read disks well.

At the same time, you may not see any damage, but on another computer installation from the same disk occurs without problems.

In any case, the first thing you should try in this situation is to either burn a new Windows boot disk or use a bootable USB flash drive to install the OS. The original images for installation are available on the official Microsoft website (instructions on how to download them were given above).

Using other software to burn a bootable USB drive

Sometimes it happens that a message about a missing media driver appears when installing Windows 10, 8 and Windows 7 from a flash drive recorded by a specific program and does not appear when using another one.

Try:

Problems with bootable USB flash drive

If the points indicated in the previous section did not help, the problem may be in the flash drive itself: if possible, try using another one.

And at the same time, check whether your bootable flash drive contains several partitions - this can also lead to such errors during installation. If it does, delete these sections.

Additional Information

In some cases, the error can be caused by both a damaged ISO image (try downloading again or from a different source) and more serious problems (for example, malfunctioning RAM can lead to data corruption when copying), although this rarely happens. However, if possible, it is worth trying to download the ISO and create a drive to install Windows on another computer.

The official Microsoft website also contains its own instructions for fixing the problem:

Hello! And again, I didn’t write anything on the blog for two days, I was busy. I bought myself a laptop, set up everything, transferred information from my old computer. Perhaps later, I’ll review the laptop, but today I’ll write about one problem that arose when installing Windows 7. An error that begins with the words “The required media driver was not found. This could be a driver for a DVD drive, USB drive, or hard drive." I think there is no need to continue further.

This was not a clean image of Windows 7, it was a build in which only the bootloader was changed. According to the author, the operating system image has not been changed. Well, if we talk about the error itself, everything is clear there, there are no drivers for the drive, USB, or hard drive, therefore, further installation of the operating system is not possible. This was the first time I encountered such an error and, like everyone else, I decided to download the drivers from the laptop disk.

At first I thought it was because I had an SDD drive, but I launched other programs on this drive, and they all found my drive. In short, it was also not possible to find drivers from the disk that came with the laptop. Even if the installer found them, they didn’t suit him. I started going through the options that could be causing this error. Moreover, Windows 7 was installed from another disk, but I needed to install this particular assembly. And then I thought that the problem might be the slightly scratched disk on which I recorded Windows 7.

I didn’t have a new, clean disk, but a friend was supposed to come to me, whom I asked to buy a disk on the way. He brought the disk, I burned the image and ran the installation again and everything went away like a charm, no errors, just like that.

That means all the problem was a bad DVD-RW disc, but when writing an image to which no warnings appeared, and when reading files, there were no errors other than “The required media driver was not found.”

This means that if you get the error “The required media driver was not found” during the installation of Windows 7, or more specifically, after selecting a language, then you need to check the disk from which you are trying to install the OS, and if possible, then burn a new DVD R disk. I advise you to take DVD-R, not RW. And record at low speed, but the second time I recorded the image using the standard Windows 7 tool. You can read more about creating bootable disks in the article.

If re-recording the operating system image did not help solve the problem, then I have a few more tips:

If you install Windows 7 from a flash drive, then connect it to USB 2.0, because a clean image of Windows 7 does not have drivers for USB 3.0. Or try to provide a driver for USB 3.0.
Try inserting a disk with drivers for your system into the drive and clicking on the “Browse” button, specify the path to the disk; perhaps Windows 7 really cannot find the driver it needs to install. The disk with the operating system image at the time of installing the drivers can be removed from the drive.

Well, that's all, I hope you managed to solve this error. Best wishes.

When trying to install Windows 10 or 8 on a computer/laptop, you may receive an error: The required media driver was not found. This could be a DVD drive, USB drive, or hard drive driver; The required driver for the optical drive was not found. If you have a floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB flash drive with a driver, insert that media. Since Microsoft does not like to complicate its life by trying to explain in more detail the cause of the failure, a novice user may assume that the installer is swearing at the hard drive or SSD where the operating system is directly installed. In most of these cases, it's not them at all. If you've encountered any of the above-mentioned errors, this guide will help you sort them out.

Below is a list of methods to help you figure out how to fix error The required media driver was not found.

The reason this error appears during the installation of Windows 8/8.1 from a flash drive is that the OS installer does not support USB 3.0 drivers.
A failure in the process of preparing to install Windows 10 or 8 with the subsequent appearance of an error may occur due to a damaged DVD disc, a long interval between periods of its use, or due to a failure of the drive. In this case, you should try installing Windows from a flash drive.
In some cases, the error The required driver for the optical drive was not found appears when installing the system from a bootable USB drive created by third-party software. To fix the bug, just write the OS installation files to removable media using another program from the instructions.
If you suspect that the USB drive is faulty, you should replace it with another one. If it is fully working, but an error still appears during installation, then you can try.
Another reason for failure during preparation for OS installation is a damaged Windows ISO image. In this situation, you need to re-download the file and create a bootable drive. More details about this are written in a separate manual.

Root cause of error: Required media driver not found when installing Windows 8

Since the Windows 8 and 8.1 installer does not support USB 3.0 drivers, when installing the OS from a flash drive connected to the port of this version or simply supporting this specification, the error The required media driver was not found appears. You can eliminate it in one of the following ways:

Connect the drive to a USB 2.0 port (no blue marking).
Burn the OS image to a flash drive that supports the USB 2.0 specification.
If you don't have USB 2.0-supporting media on hand, download USB 3.0 drivers from the motherboard or laptop manufacturer's website. They may be included in the drivers for the chipset. Next, place them unpacked on the media. That is, as a folder with files in inf, sys and other formats, and not as an installation file with the exe extension. During the system installation process, click on the button Review and specify the directory containing the drivers.
Integrate USB 3.0 drivers into the Windows 8/8.1 image.

Required optical drive driver not found when installing from DVD

Most often, the culprit for the error: The required driver for optical disks was not found when preparing to install Windows from a disk is damaged media and, less often, a DVD drive that does not read it well. And it is not at all necessary that the flaws be visually visible. One way or another, you should try to create a new Windows boot disk, or use a flash drive or a separate hard drive partition to install the system. You can find out using special instructions.

Using other software to burn a bootable USB drive

In some cases, a message about the absence of a media driver may appear during the installation of Windows 10 and 8 from a USB drive due to files incorrectly written to it using a third-party program. If an unsuccessful attempt was made to create a multiboot flash drive, it is worth recording one version of the system on a removable device, instead of several. If you have already done this, but the error does not disappear, you should consider using another program for . For example, Rufus.

Problems with bootable USB flash drive

If the advice from the previous method does not have a positive effect, you can try to change the flash drive to another one or check the existing one for the presence of several partitions. If they are contained on it, they must be removed using the instructions.

Additional Information

Sometimes the problem may be a damaged ISO image. In such a situation, it is worth downloading it again and creating a bootable USB flash drive to install Windows. .