72XP: Allow permanent installation of unsigned drivers
Jan 2, 2010 Tech
So over the past couple of months ive been attempting to transition from xp to windows 7, but some parts of the interface just bug me, i guess im just used to doing it a certain way in XP. (upgrading from from Windows 98 wasnt a problem all those years ago because XP was a much needed improvement). Sometimes i feel like windows 7 is an upgrade for the sake of an upgrade.
Anyways, after several attempts at trying to get used to the new interface/explorer, i just couldnt. So i set about changing what I didnt like into what i could live with. I will probably continue to tweak and change some other things in 7 as i continue to use it. but for now i thought i’d document my changes into some sort of guide incase anyone else wants to try it 
So over the next couple of days/weeks i’ll be posting a series of “72XP” articles (get it? :p ) that’ll let you change 7 to look and work more like XP.
so first off, some under the hood changes, allowing permanent installation of unsigned drivers, by default windows 7 (and vista) disable the use of unsigned drivers (in XP the default was to prompt) which is a bit annoying when your trying to install software suck as Daemon Tools of VMWare Server/Workstation. now there a various methods for doing this, you can add boot flags in your boot.ini or do it via a boot menu, I preferred the second option. (search google for details on the first one :p ) to do it via the menu, follow these steps:
1. reboot machine
2. press F8 during bootup
3. using the arrow keys on the keyboard choose the option” disable driver signature enforcement”.
when you reboot you will be able to install unsigned drivers without a problem. You will also notice that you now how a little bit of text in the corner of your desktop that says something similar to “Test Mode”, so called because MS wants you to only run Windows 7 like this if you are testing unsigned drivers. To remove this download the file below.
Make sure you read the Readme files included in the zip file, the zip file contains a version both for x86 and x64. make sure you use the right version for your install or it may not work.
Thats all for now, i’ll be posting another one tomorrow, so stay tuned!
Also, happy new year :p
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