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I want to install Windows 7 onto an SSD from a USB 3 drive, however it won't let me boot using USB 3, however it does work using USB 2. I guess that's because Windows PE doesn't have the needed USB 3 drivers so my question is how can I fix that?

Edit: Sorry for being slightly unclear. The installer boots but after choosing disk drive it tells me that it need drivers for the installation disk (USB3).

Edit2: I can get it to work by adding the drivers to another USB memory but I can't get it to work by adding them to the install drive, does anyone know how I should add them to the main media?

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You mean you can't get to the installer when using USB 3.0 because the disk is not recognized? – slhck♦ May 4 '11 at 7:24
The computer finds the USB memory in USB3 but once I boot from it the computer complains that it's not bootable (probably because there's no drivers). However it works using the same memory in USB 2. – Hultner May 4 '11 at 8:28
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This is to be expected. USB 3 is not considered part of the basic driver set so Windows 7 needs to fetch it. Why don't you just install it from USB 2? – Blomkvist May 4 '11 at 11:27
Well the whole point was that I wanted to see how long time it took (2 minutes by the way). And I know USB 3 isn't I just though that I could maybe in someway put the driver somewhere on the intall medium so that it would recognise it without loading the driver from another USB Memory. – Hultner May 5 '11 at 6:14
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Sounds to me like you might need to slipstream the drivers into the install, like you would for a RAID controller or such on earlier systems. – Iszi May 6 '11 at 14:20
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1 Answer

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As the comments said, USB 3 drivers are not something that Windows supports natively.

Your main question came about the speed - there will be no difference unless your USB memory stick is USB 3 compatible.

This gets quite advanced, I am assuming you have a working knowledge of the command prompt. I would recommend you add the various Microsoft directories to your path, or run the Windows PE Tools Command Prompt instead of the standard one. If I loose you at any point, please write in comments and I will be happy to help.

What I recommend you do is download the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, and download your USB drivers.

Once downloaded, load the Deployment Workbench and load the WAIK / Windows Automated Installation Kit.

Once this is downloaded, you can use the "copype" command to copy the required Windows PE files to a staging folder. Assuming you wanted c:\win_pe_32 you would use:

copype.cmd x86 c:\win_pe_32

For 64 bit use:

copype.cmd x64 c:\win_pe_64

(I won't give two versions from now on, simply use common sense and replace 64 with 32!)

This will basically copy the required Windows PE files to the folder above.

Next, we need to mount the boot.wim file (The part that actually loads Windows PE). Do this with the ImageX command:

imagex /mountrw c:\win_pe_32\winpe.wim 1 c:\win_pe_32\mount

This will mount the Wim file to the \mount directory.

To load the driver, have the path to the .inf file and run:

peimg /inf=<path> c:\win_pe_32\mount\Windows

If you explore this folder, you can add additional files if you wish. Personally, I include ImageX so it is available from Windows PE.

Now commit the changes by typing:

imagex /unmount c:\win_pe_32\mount /commit

Now you simply overwrite the default boot.wim file with the winpe.wim you just changed.

copy c:\win_pe_32 c:\win_pe_32\iso\sources\boot.wim

Lastly, we use the Microsoft Mastering tool with the following command:

oscdimg -n -bc:\win_pe_32\etfsboot.com c:\win_pe_32\iso c:\win_pe_32\winpe_32.iso

and congratulations! You now have a new bootable Windows PE iso file with the drivers included.

You can burn this to disk, and hopefully, everything should work - as long as the driver is compatible with Windows PE!

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That is so awesome and exactly what I wanted. To bad I don't have my USB 3 memory as I lost it, however I remember that it took about 2 minutes to install Windows 7 from the USB 3 memory to an SSD but then I had to load the drivers from within Windows PE. – Hultner Jun 29 '11 at 11:48
Please note that this will ONLY create the Windows PE disk, you will still need to manually launch setup and/or do other tasks to install Windows! – William Hilsum Jun 29 '11 at 12:15
So it won't work as the normal Windows 7 installer? – Hultner Jun 29 '11 at 22:19
Sorry... My bad... If you simply replace the boot.wim with the .wim from here, it will... just skip out the burning disk stage.... If it does just launch a command prompt (e.g. basic windows PE build) then in addition you need an unattend file (let me know and I will create one), or just launch setup.exe and it will work. – William Hilsum Jun 29 '11 at 22:40

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