Unsigned 64-bit RAID drivers during Windows 7 setup?

I'm in the process of installing Windows 7 64-bit. I use a raid card, Promise tx4300. I have the latest 32-bit & 64-bit drivers for it.

During setup, I need to load drivers so that setup can see the Raid array. I find the 64-bit drivers on my USB drive. Setup finds and recognizes the drivers but then complain that Windows cannot use these drivers because they are unsigned and can cause problems with Windows... So it won't find my raid array.

I try repeating the process and this time choosing the 32-bit drivers. Setup accepts these and it shows my the raid array and I can continue with the setup.

I have a couple questions:

1. How can I make Windows 7 64-bit Setup accept and use unsigned raid drivers?
2. Is it possible to alter or forge the drivers to make Windows think they are signed?
3. If I use the 32-bit drivers during the 64-bit setup, will this cause problems?

UPDATE This issue ended up being something to do with the Windows 7 installation disc I was using. The disc included both Windows 7 32 and 64 bit versions on it. After borrowing a friend's disc that included only Windows 7 64-bit, the drivers were properly recognized and everything worked fine.

I'm not into fake signing, but this might help you in the right direction:

1. How can I make Windows 7 64-bit Setup accept and use unsigned raid drivers?

   Your could try to use Windows AIK to include the drivers and perhaps fake signing them.

2. Is it possible to alter or forge the drivers to make Windows think they are signed?

   Booting from an original installation medium... No. You can try to alter them, see step 1.

   As for fake signing them, you might need to include a certificate for it to work, similar to DSEO.

3. If I use the 32-bit drivers during the 64-bit setup, will this cause problems?

   This sounds strange, but I guess you could try and see. If it doesn't work you'll know soon enough...

I believe the Windows pre-installation environment is a Windows-32 environment so it would need the 32-bit drivers in order to access the RAID controller. Transitioning into Windows is where it gets interesting. My hope is that once you install Windows on the drive, you access to the full driver library which should at least let you boot into the OS. From there, you could install the 64-bit version of the driver to improve performance.

So to answer your questions:

1) To add drivers to the Windows installer, you will should be able to slipstream them into the OS build using something like vLite or OPK. I don't know if that also applies them to the pre-installation environment.

2) Not really, the whole point of signed drivers is to make sure that they are not forged.

3) I don't think so (see answer above), but you never know until you try. Just make sure that once you get into the full Windows environment that you make sure to install the 64bit driver.

Hope this helps