I’ll asume tht you are reading this as you have recently attempted to install Windows 7 using a USB Flash Drive onto a system that only has USB 3.0 ports, but wasnt able to get past the windows partition create section.
In this post i will go through the steps to inject some USB drivers into the windows 7 wim file so you can install onto a device with only USB 3 ports.
First off you will need USB 3.0 Drivers
The laptop i was trying to install windows onto is a PCSpecilist Lafite II (http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/lafiteII/) he motherboard has an Intel USB 3.0 port, and so I downloaded the latest version from Intel’s site.
If you are unsure which drivers you need, or have multiple computers you need to install windows on to, you can grab all of them and inject as many as you need.
- Intel eXtensible USB 3.0 Host drivers Win 7
- Create a folder called usb3win7 (any name will do) and place it some place easy to access (for me c:\usb3win7)
- Extract the drivers to a new folder in the one you just created (usb3win7) (eg c:\usb3win7\driver)
Next we need to get the files we need to install the drivers into.
Open up your USB thumb drive that has your Windows 7 image on it and go the Sources folder.
- Move the “boot.wim” file and “install.wim” into a folder (e.g c:\usbwim).
- Open up a command prompt session “cmd” as administrator. (right click on the cmd application and choose Run as Administrator.)
- Once open, navigate to the folder you placed the boot and install files in the cmd window
- Now type in the following commands in this order to update the boot.wim file:
- dism /mount-wim /wimfile:boot.wim /index:2 /mountdir:mount
- dism /image:mount /add-driver:”usb3″ /recurse
- dism /unmount-wim /mountdir:mount /commit
Next do the same thing to the “install.wim” file.
- The install.wim has a couple different index values depending on what type of windows you are installing.
- in CMD you can list all of the indexes and their contents by typing in:
- dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:install.wim
I’ll be installing Windows 7 Professional on the destination computer, so I’m going to just update that one. Bus simply repeat the following command for each one you wish to update.
- dism /mount-wim /wimfile:install.wim /index:3 /mountdir:mount
- dism /image:mount /add-driver:”driver” /recurse
- dism /unmount-wim /mountdir:mount /commit
Now you’re done!
- Simply move the modified “boot.wim” and “install.wim” file back into the “sources” directory on your Win 7 iso bootable USB thumb drive and install windows as normal.
If this doesn’t work make sure you have the correct USB3 drivers.
