windows 7 usb 3.0 creator utility stuck initializing dism

It might be possible to stash the drivers on some other medium (if it’s readable somehow) or even on the target main drive. The old-school fix for this is to put the necessary drivers on media and do an “F6” driver add during the install process, but… since we only have USB 3.0 ports we can’t read flash media. At some point the install drive access is handed over to the newly-booted install code, which doesn’t have 3.0 drivers. What happened is that the initial boot was done via BIOS functions.

Huh? You’ve already booted from the flash drive, so how can that be? What it means is that the installer is missing the driver it needs to access the flash drive. This can be a little startling, especially if you’re installing from a flash drive. The strange outcome of this is the misleading “ A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing” error. The chipsets don’t support plain-old USB 2.0 sockets. Many, if not all laptops these days are USB 3.0 only. This makes a “clean” install impossible without some work. OEM images like Lenovo’s preload and recovery media will include appropriate drivers but Microsoft media will not. Lack of USB 3.0 drivers can make the install media unbootable (past the initial boot) and lack of NVMe SSD drivers can render the target drive invisible to the installer. This has become more of an issue lately with Windows 7 installs and contemporary hardware. It’s the same old story: hardware marches on, and operating systems play catch-up. This is the 4th and final (for now…) in a set of small articles on modification and use of Windows 7 install media: multi-version, UEFI boot, driver injection, and downgrade activation. Those with weak stomachs may want to look away… It may be worse watching install media being modified.

Follow this guide and I'll show you how to accomplish this using the CMD line and the DISM utility.You know what they say about watching sausage getting made.

USB 3.0 drivers need to be added to the boot media. You might ask, well why did the DVD drive throw the error? Well, that's because the DVD drive was an external because there is no internal DVD drive on this model laptop. This issue is caused because the installer media doesn't have a driver to install through a USB 3.0 port. That's like your car throwing a CEL for the carburetor not working when you're using fuel injection. Well, how does this make sense? It's asking for a DVD driver when using a USB device. Well, I thought I would be smart and instead do the install via a USB device. iso image of Windows 7 installed on it, but when after clicking the install windows button, I would get a notice that the installer couldn't locate the CD/DVD driver and I needed to browse to locate it.

Recently I came across a problem when attempting to install Windows 7 onto a Dell Precision 7710.

Windows 7 usb 3.0 creator utility stuck initializing dism