virtualbox.org

Howdy all, I'm yet another one of those suffering from the inability to install my beloved Windows 7 OS due to it not supporting USB3 ports. I parted my C drive to make an F drive with 50gb space, from within my host OS (windows 8 ) I'm able to run the windows 7 setup and direct it to the F drive (setup is located on my usb stick), everything goes as planned until a reboot is required and it boots in to win7 continuing setup interface, eventually facing the dreaded user input screen where my keyboard and mouse won't function (i have no usb 2 ports, no legacy support in bios).

I have tried adding usb 3 drivers to the boot.wim file but this only helps win7 setup recognize the USB stick.

I was wondering, is there some way I could continue the setup of windows on the F drive from within my host OS instead of having to boot in to the setup outside of my host os, this way I could then perhaps manually add the usb3.0 drivers?

So, I had an idea, that probably wont work but I hope it will :/ Could i setup windows 7 in a virtual machine on my host os, install the usb3.0 drivers from inside the virtual machine and then SOMEHOW have this virtual machine added to the windows boot menu? perhaps add the virtual machines file added to the boot menu? ANY trick or tweak or hack? there must be a way

? You don't need USB of any variety in order to install Win7. The Win7 installer comes on a data DVD.

Also, notice that in order to boot a guest OS from a raw access USB drive would require that USB be working before the guest OS - meaning that installing USB3 drivers inside the Win7 image would be useless.

It's the VM BIOS that would have to support USB, and it presently doesn't.


Why do you think you need USB to install Win7? Where did this USB image come from?

mpack wrote:? You don't need USB of any variety in order to install Win7. The Win7 installer comes on a data DVD.

Also, notice that in order to boot a guest OS from a raw access USB drive would require that USB be working before the guest OS - meaning that installing USB3 drivers inside the Win7 image would be useless.

It's the VM BIOS that would have to support USB, and it presently doesn't.


Why do you think you need USB to install Win7? Where did this USB image come from?

I wrote the windows 7 ISO to my USB stick to install it from the usb, I did this because:
1 - it's a quicker install.
2 - I can add/remove/edit files on the usb whereas I can't on the dvd.

Using a DVD or USB the problem persists, Setup can not continue when I only have USB3 ports, I don't have a USB legacy option in my BIOS settings so that's not an option, I have no USB 2.0 ports so that's not an option, I have no spare computer so that's not an option. My option so far seems to be somehow copying the vdi image to my physical F drive and therefore I will have windows added to the boot menu. Perhaps I could convert the VDI file to an ISO file and burn the ISO file to the physical partition (F:) ? but that would require some tweaks and hacks and this is where i need help.

p.s: clearly I'd need to use usb ports in order to install windows 7 or else how can I complete the installation steps that requires I set the language and time zone and so forth?

It sounds like you want to get Windows 7 installed on your F drive in a dual-boot configuration, but you can't because it won't install on a USB3-only motherboard. So you want to see if Virtualbox can help.

What you're trying is the opposite of a common process called Physical-to-Virtual, or P2V, where folks take the OS from a physical PC and move it to a virtual machine. Except you're doing it V2P, installing the OS in the virtual machine and then switching it over to a physical machine. It has been done, but it takes a bit of finagling. Google "P2V site:virtualbox.org" for all the instructions on P2V that we have here, then maybe "P2V Windows 7 site:virtualbox.org" to possibly filter things down a bit. Just flip-flop the "physical" and "virtual" in the instructions and suggestions.

One problem in P2V or V2P is that the hardware presented to the OS changes when switching from virtual to physical. So your OS will have to hunt new drivers or have to be repaired. Also, can Windows 7 dual-boot after Windows 8 is installed? And can one edit the boot list (google "bcdedit") in Windows 8 to see the new OS in the F drive? (That was so much easier in XP...)

One other thing that you may or may not have tried yet is googling "windows 7 fails install usb3". Maybe there's something else you could try first.