Windows 7 64bit stuck on language select: USB3 not working?

Question

I decided that I wanted to put Windows onto this MacBook. So I went and began to partition my harddrive in a way that I could tripple-boot easily.

So then I created the boot drive using the Boot Camp assistant. Once done, I booted into Windows. I had a strange feeling, since this boot method felt strongly like it was using legacy BIOS booting. And when the installer showed me the language select, i was greeted with the issue of no Keyboard or Trackpad input. Further, I could not connect anything to it that would work.

Checking the USB structure on my maschine revealed, that Trackpad and Keyboard are bridged into one of the controllers. So I can not use my mouse or keyboard while USB3 is not working either.

My stuff: - MacBook Pro, mid 2014 - Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit, SP1 is said to be in it already - A 16GB USB drive - The following partition data:

[e-mail] ~ $ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            819.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data LINUX                   20.0 GB    disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data SHARE                   10.0 GB    disk0s4
   5:       Microsoft Basic Data WINDOWS                 151.2 GB   disk0s5

I tried to patch some Intel USB3 drivers into boot.wim and install.wim but it did nothing at all. So I am at a bit of a loss...

Answer 1

I found the solution, and it is more of a bottleneck than you would expect.

Yes, Windows does not have the fitting USB 3 drivers. More so, it does not support the MacBook Pro's chipset! So here is what I did in order to build a proper image.

Requirements

• A virtual maschine
• An ISO of your Windows disc
• The Automated Installation Kit (AIK). This link leads to the right one.
• A USB drive of 8 GB capacity.
• Patience and your favorite drink. Possibly a book.

Steps

First, you should get yourself a VM system like VirtualBox. It's free and essentially worked for me. Once downloaded and installed, create a new VM with your Windows ISO. This VM does not need much memory at all. Mine had 15GB. This VM is essential to prepare your boot stick.

Now to start off:

• Open the "Boot Camp Utility"
• If it gives you a notice about your start voluem not being able to be formatted, ignore it. I had made a custom partition layout, and all I really cared for was to tick the first two boxes. These are:
  • Preparing a USB drive with a bootable Windows installer
  • Injecting the Boot Camp drivers (Careful: ~1.5GB of download)
• Tick these two boxes, select your iso and your usb drive and hit next. Now grab your book or whatever, this is going to take quite a while. It will write the ISO properly to your USB drive, and download thus copy the Boot Camp drivers.

This is the easy part, in fact, this is what many tutorials, even the original Apple ones, say. Except the VM part. And this is what you now need.

• Once the process is done, close the utility and open up your VM. Open the "Shared Folder Settings" and add your USB drive as one. In my case, it was renamed to WININSTALL.
• In your virtual windows, download and install the automated installation kit (AIK). The good thing is, this already is an ISO. So you can just mount it as a virtual cD through your VM. It does not matter if you download AIK in your VM or your host system. You just want the ISO, and it mounted int he VM.
• Install the AIK and give it some time.

You are now ready and set to patch your Windows. Before we do so, it is recommended that you save two files off your installation drive:

WININST/Sources/boot.wim
WININST/Sources/install.wim

Put them somewhere safe, they are very important.

• In your VM, open your Start menu and look for the "Deployment command line". Right-click it and open it as an administrator. Use cd to navigate through folders. In this case, you want to navigate to the C drive itself:

  cd \

• Now we have to patch the boot.wim file first. Copy it from your installation drive into a root folder in your virtual C:. In my case, I created a folder simply named os to work in.

• Once boot.wim is copied, create another folder in the same folder and name it something simple. I choose wim.

  mkdir wim

• You now need to also copy the BootCamp and $WinPEDriver$ from your installation drive into this working folder. For these two, create a new folder named bootcamp and place them inside there.

Just to review, you should have a file structure like this now:

C:\
  |– os\
     |– wim\
     |– bootcamp\
        |– BootCamp\
        |– $WinPEDriver$\
     |– boot.wim

If you have it thus far, then you are ready to begin patching.

• To finally patch the first of two windows "images", we have to mount the boot.wim file to our drive. We do so using this command:

  C:\os> imagex /mountrw boot.wim 1 ./wim

• Once the mounting is completed, we now inject the drivers:

  C:\os> dism /image:./wim /add-driver /driver:bootcamp /recurse

For me, it said that it would inject 231 drivers. I was...surprised. But well, give it some time to finish.

• Once the command has finished, we save our changes to the image:

  C:\os> imagex /unmount /commit wim

• Now, we mount the second part of the boot.wim image:

  C:\os> imagex /mountrw boot.wim 2 wim

You can now copy-paste the dism command from above, its the exact same. Also repeat the unmount and commit command.

• You now have patched the installation runtime! Congrats! But you are not done yet. Copy boot.wim into your installation drive's source folder, overwrite the old one, and take a deep breath. You are halfway done.
• Copy install.wim into the place that boot.wim was before.

• Now, it depends on which version of Windows oyu intend to install. You have to grab the image number. Use this command to output the XML structure of the available images:

  C:\os> imagex /info install.wim

The structure of the output is fairly straight forward. There are a set of <IMAGE ...> sections, each with an attribute that has a number. Reading further into this block, you will discover a <WINDOWS> block. This one has the name of the respective install version. In my case, I had the Windows Version I wanted straight in the first image.

• When you have the image number, mount it just like you mounted boot.wim:

  C:\os> imagex /mountrw install.wim wim

Replace <NUM> with your image number.

Now, repeat the commands I already showed you, they are the same!

C:\os> dism /image:./wim /add-driver /driver:bootcamp /recurse
C:\os> imagex /unmount /commit wim

• After these commands have finished, you are almost done. Time to tidy up the dirty house.
• Copy (and overwrite) install.wim back into your install drive's sources folder.
• Go one level up and finalize your stressful time by erasing your working folder. You don't need it anymore.

You can now reboot your Mac and hold the Option-key to be able to select the Windows installation. You will notice that most, but not all, of the BootCamp drivers will activate. In my case, half of my laptop suddenly worked and I was able to install.

After the installation, do not unplug your installation drive. Instead, open your Start menu and go to Computer > Your installation drive > Boot Camp -> Setup. This program will finalize your installation, for real.

Done, done, done! You can get rid of the VM now and enjoy Windows on your Mac, and thus having a totally patched Windows that should work just fine across a variety of Macs.

Oh yeah, I said that you'd need patience. I used a timer on my phone and almost periodically took a nap.

• Transfering the Image to the USB drive: 1h30
• Downloading Boot Camp Drivers: 40 Mins
• Installing Windows: I dont know, I slept too long.
• Patching boot.wim and install.wim 30 Mins

I hope this helps other Mac users too who get stuck there. I did not want to give up and just try to roll with Windows 8... so here I am, Win7 works just fine now. :)