External Windows bootable drive freezes boot screen

Question

I installed Windows on a 128 GB USB drive to run on my 2017 MacBook Air. I boot into it by plugging in the drive, holding Option key and select the Windows drive. It worked really well.

Yesterday, I booted up in to Windows as usual, everything went well, and suddenly, everything froze. I got a Blue Screen Of Death saying stopcode BUGCODE USB3 DRIVER. And as it told me to do, I restarted my Mac.

But now, if I start up and hold the Option key the Windows drive won't appear. And if I plug it in after I hold the Option key, the entire screen freezes for about 30 seconds and then the USB is ejected again.

I am still able to use my other USB to boot up in to Linux but if I boot into macOS, it doesn't even detect the Windows Flash drive. Windows (on another pc) seems to detect it but ejects the flash drive after 10 seconds. And I really don't know what to do.

The Flash drive does the same on other Macs.

How do I resolve the issue?

Answer 1

1. After the BSOD your mac should restart to "Start Windows Normally" screen hit Enter To Start Windows Normally
2. Go to device manager (Press Start and type devmgmt.msc and hit enter) and uninstall "unknown device" under "Universal Serial Bus Controllers" Tick "Delete the Driver Software for this device."
3. Now go to your Bootcamp folder i.e. BOOTCAMP_5.1.5621 or BOOTCAMP_5.1.5640 and go to Bootcamp > Drivers > Intel
4. Now run the file IntelxHCISetup.exe. It will show you the intel usb3.0 setup assistant. do not install or cancel the setup as it will delete the temporary folder in temp
5. Now go to Start and type taskmgr.exe and hit enter. It will open up Task Manager.
6. In that you have to select Intel Installation Framework and type Shift + fn + f10 to open right click menu (Right click may not work unless you finish installing bootcamp fully).
7. Select "Go To Process", and again press the Shift + fn + f10 key combination to bring up the right click menu
8. And then select Open File Location, Now copy the contents of the folder to a new location i.e. by creating a new folder in the desktop or any other location
9. After copying the contents of the folder to a new location go to Device manager and right click the Unknown Device and press the Right click key combination Shift + fn + f10 and select Update Driver Software > Browse my computer for driver software and browse for the folder that you created in Step 8 and click next. It will detect the driver and installs it automatically.

That should solve your problem with the USB Drive.

Answer 2

I was having the same problem booting Windows 10 created by WinToUSB to run Windows on my MacBook Air. After I selected to create a MBR Partition on the USB drive instead of GPT, the installation went fine and so far I'm running it with no problem.