oh! you don't NEED it- they just use it as their "failsafe" against dumb customers....

just boot in extensions off then run the installer

you can reboot normally when done...

I've been doing some research and while sonnet qualifies the card as 7.5 compatibile.. I have a feeling 7.x support wasn't a big concern and as such was somewhat neglected.. which might explain my expander problems... we'll see... more testing needed!