[urgent]get "appleSSD.sys" error when installing windows 7 through bootcamp
Please help me. I keep google for this error for days, but still can't find a solution.
MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013), OS X Yosemite (10.10.4)
- How I fixed ALL of the Windows 7 installation errors in one swoop on a Mac Mini (Late 2014) for a Windows 7 64-bit install.
(Might help with other models as well)
(This is long, but it's worth it so people now what I did and how I fixed everything with one fix)
Hi Everybody! I'm new to this forum and to the Apple Mac world. I'm typing this up to hopefully help people who need it all in one big bang story.
I've been a Windows I.T. guy my entire career but moving over to Mac for audio/video editing.
I just got my (first, ever) Mac a few weeks ago. I have some feedback with BC on this system I want to share.
Something changed between August 29th and September 3rd with the Boot Camp auto download support file package like people have stated. I am 100% sure of this.
I'll get to the fixes first, and then you can all read the story behind it, if you wish. 🙂
This solves all of the problems I've read about. The "A Valid Windows 7 image is needed" error thing, the "Windows cannot install because it can't find a valid partition" or whatever error that is trying to select the 4th partition on the drive in the Windows setup screen, the mouse and keyboard not working, the AppleSSD.sys file not being signed, all of it.
If you want to do this right, one time on a Mac Mini and not have to mess around for days like I did, do this:
(And thank you all because this was a culmination of all of your forum posts from various articles on here)
1) Use Boot Camp Assist to create your bootable flash drive (16GB or higher (read the story for more info on this one) from your ISO, but uncheck the selection that creates the Windows partition (not yet).
2) Download the appropriate Boot Camp support package from here: Install Windows 7 and earlier on your Mac using Boot Camp - Apple Support
3) Unzip the files to a folder somewhere but keep them together.
4) Delete the BootCamp, $WinPEDriver$ folders and the AutoUnattend.xml file from the bootable USB Windows install flash drive Boot Camp just created.
5) Copy these same folders/file from the Boot Camp support package you just downloaded/unzipped to the same bootable USB flash drive Boot Camp created.
6) Run Boot Camp Assistant again, but this time, do not check the options to create the bootable USB drive, nor download the Boot Camp support files. With your bootable USB drive inserted (so it can verify you have one), continue to create the Windows partition.
7) The PC will reboot automatically afterwards, boot into the Windows setup, mouse and keyboard working and all, install Windows, reboot with no AppleSSD.sys error and all is grand in the world.
8) After you get through with your initial Windows setup, install the Boot Camp drivers from the Boot Camp folder on your bootable USB flash drive you copied over previously.
And by the way, the package downloaded automatically through Boot Camp Assistant was 2.9GB as compared to the one I downloaded manually off their site which was around 910MB. That was part of this mess of a problem, as someone mentioned, BCA downloading the WRONG package/drivers, etc.
- Story -
The weekend of August 29th is when I first used Boot Camp and it worked beautifully with zero problems with Win 7 Pro 64-bit. I did exactly what I was supposed to; used BCA to image my 8GB bootable USB 2.0 flash drive, download the support files and create the Windows partition, etc. The install went perfectly, after which point I installed the Boot Camp support package I downloaded off the site, and everything was fine.
I then upgraded to Windows 10, and after a few hiccups with trying to get the Bluetooth drivers working, I figured it out, using the Win 7 driver packages manually from the Boot Camp support file folders.
Windows 10 worked flawlessly, by the way.
I had a memory leak issue with Windows 10 and Avid Studio Pro so I went to downgrade back to Win 7 (which I did successfully with my Windows laptop), and Windows 7 died an unrecoverable death. RIP
That was September 3rd.
I then said, OK, I'll just do this all over again, the same exact way, using the same flash drive, same process, same ISO, etc. This turned into a major cluster, to say the least.
First off, Boot Camp kept giving me my first problem which was that I was required to have a Windows 7 ISO compatible boot image, etc., blah blah blah and that my ISO apparently wasn't that. It didn't give me that error the first time and I was using the exact same ISO. The only change was that the newer version of Boot Camp had installed on OSX since I did the initial setup the first time around.
After days of scouring the forum trying to fix THIS problem, it turned out that the fix was moving from a 8GB USB 2.0 drive to my 32GB SanDisk USB 3.0 drive (I don't think the USB version mattered as much as the size). Mind you, it worked fine with the 8GB flash drive before.
I'll get to what I found about that in a bit.
After that, it did it's thing, downloading the support files it needed via Boot Camp Assist, but now after the initial Windows install, I saw this new message about the AppleSSD.sys file. After reading through this thread, I downloaded Paragon NTFS and got passed that by deleting/renaming the file as you all have recommended. I knew something was off considering I don't have a SSD in this box.
Well, then I had the problem of the mouse and keyboard not working post-Windows 7 install. I fixed this by deleting the auto-downloaded BCA support package, ie: USB Installed BootCamp, $WinPEDriver$ folders and the AutoUnattend.xml file and replacing them with the package I downloaded from the site, as suggested by all of you. I then ran ONLY the BCA partition creation part and let it reboot, as in my steps listed earlier.
No more AppleSSD.sys problem and no more keyboard/mouse not working problem. The install ran perfectly.
Here's the thing; these original folders downloaded by BCA on the flash drive were 2.9GB! The package I manually downloaded from the support site was around 910MB uncompressed. VERY odd. That was a red flag right there that it's not downloading the right files for my Mac.That's also why it probably needed a larger flash drive now, moving from the 8GB to my 32GB one, but BCA didn't tell me that. I had to figure that out on my own. It just gave me errors that I didn't have the right Windows ISO. Funny how it told me that with my 8GB drive but that went away with my 32GB drive. It obviously wasn't/isn't the ISO file.
Something with the files Boot Camp Assistant downloads during the prep process had to have changed between August 29th and September 3rd. Maybe it was the updated version of Boot Camp that caused the issue or maybe that's when they put their support for BC 6 and Win10 up, I don't know.
I appreciate ALL of your posts and pages of feedback.
At the end of the day, I fixed the "You need a Win 7 image...." error by using a larger flash drive, and fixed the AppleSSD.sys & non-working keyboard/mouse issue by replacing the flash drive auto-download BC package with the manual package I downloaded off the site.
I really hope this helps people fix and avoid all of these messes.
