Inspiron 15 5565 Windows 7 USB 3.0 Support

Yes I'm quite happy with multiple USB 2.0 ports, as I don't do much in the way of high speed data transfers.

So far I've tried AMD, Renesas, Realtek and Intel, but not VIA. I'll give that a go! Thanks

FYI, a USB hub won’t solve this issue unless you’re ok just having USB 2.0. You need USB 3.0 drivers to exist in the OS for ANY USB 3.0 devices to operate at 3.0 speeds, regardless of how they’re connected. Interestingly I’ve had far fewer problems with updates on Win10, maybe because updates are now cumulative rather than getting a dozen every month.

All that said, I would try Intel, Renesas, and VIA drivers. They’re the only USB 3.0 HCI chipset makers I know of.

Thank you for your message.

This system has not been tested for Windows 7.

There are only Windows 10 compatible drivers available for this model & there is no native driver support for USB 3.0.

We do not recommend using Windows 7 on this model, there could be much more error that could crop up in future.

Thanks for the info. Regardless of testing etc, I find it quite poor that a large manufacturer like Dell cannot provide support for an older (and still supported by MS) operating system. Windows 10 seems to be getting forced down peoples throats, and its a shocking OS.

I see no reason why any issues should arise in the future. Like older systems where Dell say they are not tested for Windows 10, they run absolutely fine.

By the way, thanks for your input - I just wanted to mention those things.

Thanks, indeed this did do the trick. I ended up with AMD drivers from HP and sure enough all is installed and working. Both ports are now fully functional and everything in the device manager is satisfactory.

But Windows 7 may be OK on your system - but it's one of the last hardware platforms where it is.

On the AMD Ryzen, Intel 7th and 8th  generation CPU platforms, there is no Windows 7 support at all - and it's Microsoft that never updated Windows 7 with native support for the AMD platform USB 3.0 you have (and the Intel contemporary - Skylake).

social.technet.microsoft.com/.../windows-7-support-for-intel-kaby-lake-and-skylake-cpus

This is a Microsoft issue - not one with Dell (or Lenovo, ASUS, etc.).

Glad you're sorted!  In terms of Windows 7 support, while I absolutely see your side on this, in addition to the note about Microsoft deliberately not backporting support for new hardware to older Windows versions, I wanted to offer the opposite perspective just for consideration.  If Dell simply posted drivers for older OSes that "should" work, without having fully tested their systems on those OSes and those drivers, then that would invite completely justified customer frustration whenever things didn't work.  But fully testing and supporting Windows 7 would mean Win8.1 should also be tested and supported, and initial testing and then continued support (testing new drivers) for 3 versions of Windows -- plus Linux on models where that's officially supported -- represents a non-trivial upfront and ongoing cost.  Profit margins on PCs across the industry have already become quite thin because more and more people increasingly rely on smartphones and tablets and therefore are willing to spend less and less on their PCs, and sometimes not buy a PC at all.  This is of course less true in the business market, where Dell offers the Latitude and Precision systems -- and perhaps not coincidentally, Windows 7 is still supported and even offered from the factory on several models in those lines.  But on the consumer side, the people who want to downgrade are a tiny minority to begin with, made even smaller by the fact that OEM licenses do not come with downgrade rights and it's hard to even BUY a Windows 7 or 8 product key anymore.  The vast majority of customers simply wouldn't be willing to pay more for a system just to have the option to run an older version of Windows with full manufacturer support -- and even if all of those upfront and ongoing costs could be recovered only from the customers who actually DID want to downgrade (highly doubtful), that would require charging those people MORE to ship an older version of Windows, which obviously wouldn't go over well either.

But if you do want downgrade capabilities AND are willing to pay for it, maybe a Latitude model would be worth considering next time you purchase a PC.

Just something to consider.

In addition to the above, should you ever decide to reconsider Windows 10 (or even 8.1), perhaps after Win7 stops receiving security updates, despite my own frustrations with 8.1 and 10, I've found quite a few things about them since leaving Win7 that would make it hard for me to go back at this point.  I recognize that not all of these will be important to everyone, or even most people, but for what it's worth, in no particular order:

- Hyper-V

- BitLocker and BitLocker To Go (without needing Enterprise/Ultimate license)

- Multi-display RDP host (without needing Enterprise/Ultimate license)

- When acting as RDP host, session scales to the client's display scaling setting

- Much nicer UI scaling, especially when using high-PPI displays and even more so when mixing them with standard PPI displays, which is a total non-starter in Win7 and even 8.0

- UEFI Secure Boot

- UASP (faster data transfers for USB-attached drives)

- SMB 3.0 (file transfers can use wired and WiFi connections in parallel, among other things)

- Fast Boot (without proprietary third-party implementations that usually break things)

- Per-display taskbar (again, without third-party applications)

- Virtual Desktops (without third-party)

- Significantly more informative Task Manager

- More efficient memory management

- Better battery life when comparing the same benchmarks on the same hardware

- Very useful WinKey+X menu

- Other UI touches like "Open PowerShell/Command Prompt" in Windows Explorer that opens those tools already changed to the path of that folder, and there are even separate choices for regular and elevated instances of those tools.

- Lots of new, now borderline essential PowerShell cmdlets, drastically improved PowerShell ISE

Hi ali69734,

I have a similar problem trying to install Windows 7 on a  separate partition and of course there are no SATA drivers at Dells website.  If  you can, please point me to the where you may have obtained yours.  My laptop is the same Inspiron 15 5565.  Thanks.