USB not working in Windows 7. Can't install BC drivers

Here are all 9 devices I plugged into the computer at various times testing this. The first two are USB3, although now I notice they are only experiencing USB2 speeds on the mac side whatever that means. The next 4 are USB2, and the last 3 are all USB2 Optical drives. Every one of them appear and function on the Mac OS and none of them appeared even in disk management in the windows side before I installed the boot camp drivers.

YukonHut wrote:

No, I could not install Windows at all until I figured out a workaround. I posted it here: "A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing"

Saw the thread. Your $WinPEDrivers$ was moved to a different location, because it could not be read from the USB disk. The problem with the USB was not addressed. Did you use BC Assistant to create/install Windows?

Is your USB a USB3 flash drive? Is the keyboard a wireless keyboard?

You can

Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac - Apple Support

How to Reset NVRAM on your Mac - Apple Support

and test. If you have any other external storage or USB hubs connected, please disconnect them.

I have the exact same problem; I have a Retina Macbook Pro that only has USB3. I finally figured out installing Win7Pro only to be completely prevented from installing BootCamp on windows due to it not recognizing the USB ports anymore. I have no working ports within Windows so how can I install BC? WiFi doesn't work yet and I would need my USB ports to work in order to use a USB stick, CD, or USB to Ethernet adapter in order to obtain the driver installers. When I boot back to the Mac side, I can no longer write to my windows side and thus cannot even copy over the BC drivers from there.

Update: I solved this by having a friend come over with his mac THAT HAD PAID NTFS SOFTWARE installed on it, then we thunderbolt bridged it and copied the needed driver files to my windows user account. I then booted back to the windows side and installed, no problem. I could also have just purchased the PAID NTFS SOFTWARE directly on my own Mac and copied the files over, but isn't there a Mac supported method of getting the Bootcamp Drivers all of the way to Windows without some third party support? BTW the software we used was https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/ for $19.99.

The USB3 ports are backwards compatible with USB2. If you have the BC drivers on a USB2 flash drive, it can be read by the USB2 drivers included in Windows. USB3 will not work, if the initial Windows installation failed when silently installing the BC drivers.

YukonHut wrote:

I tried no less than 6 separate usb drive types sizes and brands; only one was USB3 but Windows did not recognize any of them, nor did it recognize my USB2 Optical drive.

Was the Windows installation initially successful? The Windows Installer has USB2 drivers. If your Mac was able to successfully read the USB installer, the Intel xHCI drivers from the $WinPEDrivers$ folders were read correctly and the environment supported USB2 devices.

Yup, I ran all available updates on an out-of-the-box Retina MBP and used Boot Camp Assistant to create the Bootcamp USB and the Windows Install USB (from a direct Microsoft serial verified download). Later when those failed I undid and restarted the process with a different USB drive for the drivers (USB2 this time) and a new retail install disk using my external optical drive. This also failed but the workaround of copying the drivers to the HDD got me going. I still don't know if it was a fault of the MBP firmware or the Windows environment that failed to support USB past the point of beginning a windows install.

Using the various USB sticks you used, very curious what the OSx System Report -> USB (the screen shot I posted) would show for them? Do you mind posting such screen shots for each of your devices (you can include your Optical drive)? If you did not use an Apple Superdrive, BC drivers do not have the correct drivers for supporting a different brand. AppleODDInstaller64.exe is used for the Apple SuperDrives.

I have seen brand-specific issues on USB that claim to be USB2. For example, PNY and Kingston create issues, but SanDisk and Lexar seem to work much more reliably. In my example, i have used a 16GB Sandisk Cruzer with 100% success.

Everything is resolved. USB3 speeds, recognition, windows installation, everything.

It turns out the updates I performed originally on the Mac OS did not work right. After removing all traces of bootcamp, I erased and installed the Mac OS and ran all updates again. This time, Boot Camp installed flawlessly with no driver issues. I think the problem was the original Mac OS software did not set up the install USB or the BootCamp Driver USB correctly the first time.

Hi,

I have the same problem.

I Installed windows 7 with bootcamp and a usb stick. All is well but when i want write a user name, my keyboard isn't working.

My usb aren't working.

I have NTFS software and I can write on my bootcamp files. Where can i upload the usb drivers and where should I write them? Which file?

Thanks a lot in advance

corentinsimon wrote:

Yes there are usb3 on my iMac, and i ' have an wire keyboard.

The ports on the iMac support both USB2 and USB3 devices, but the flash disk used for the USB Installer needs to be a USB2 flash drive. No other external devices or hubs should be attached to the Mac before and during the installation of Windows.

Please see System Report -> USB and the attached screen shot on how you can check the USB on the OSX side.

No, I could not install Windows at all until I figured out a workaround. I posted it here: "A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing"

Boot Camp: Install or repair Boot Camp drivers is another option.

I tried no less than 6 separate usb drive types sizes and brands; only one was USB3 but Windows did not recognize any of them, nor did it recognize my USB2 Optical drive.