[x230] Linux vs Win7 Driver issues [Cry for help]

[samveen]

I've added an Seirra MC7710 and a Lenovo BT 4.0 daughter card into my x230 (both sourced via AliExpress as described elsewhere):

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samveen@samveen-X230:~$ lsusb |egrep 'Broad|Sierra'
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0a5c:21e6 Broadcom Corp. BCM20702 Bluetooth 4.0 [ThinkPad]
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 1199:68a2 Sierra Wireless, Inc. 

Ever since the installation of these 2 cards, windows has been behaving very erratically. Especially with regards to any updates to the system, the startup sequence has driver loading failures on the USB bus, especially the usb3hci driver and the Synaptics driver, leaving the keyboard and trackpad/trackpoint in a non-working state , so I am unable to do anything after reaching the login screen. The boot log entries of the failure:

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Did not load driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\cdrom.sys
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\iusb3xhc.sys
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\SynTP.sys
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\SynTP.sys
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\usbccgp.sys
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\MpFilter.sys
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\srv.sys

Of the above, the cdrom,MpFilter,NDProxy and thesrv drivers fail to load every boot ( I understand the CDROM driver failing, but the other three are beyond my ken).

At every input device failure, the drivers that fail as per the bootlog as well as the event viewer are iusb3xhc, SynTP and usbccgp. the event viewer also shows that each of these driver loading failures has an associated failure to load the USBD.sys. To get back to a working system, I end up going back to the last restore point. Another exercise in frustration is that the keyboard and trackpad/trackpoint work perfectly in the recovery environment!!!

On the other hand, everything works perfectly in Linux. The latest Sierra QMI drivers for the 7XXX series worked perfectly (the associated release notes had adequate instructions). A quick google search managed to get me the instructions for the BT firmware out of the Lenovo BT package (via a slackware wiki page), though things worked fine enough without them.

This is frustrating me no end as to why things don't `JUST WORK` in Win7 after banging my head over it for almost a week. The Wind7 Sierra drivers (matching the version with the linux drivers) work fine, but as soon as I install the Lenovo Bluetooth drivers, I get the above failure, and have to rollback to the last restore point. Another thing seems to be that any automatically installed update also seems to trigger the same issue. This last behaviour seems to imply that there is an issue with windows instead of H/W issues like a failing USB bus or bad cards, but I don't have the know-how to find the issue. My final try will be to set up Win7 using the Lenovo recovery set (without the application CDs, using just the OS CD), and proceed to check everything from there onwards.

I would really prefer to have a working dual boot setup, as I want to do a bit of gaming there. However, Linux as my primary driver works fine, if only to save me future frustration, as I've already wasted too much time on this.

My request is for suggestions or possible pointers to fix this, other than the obvious `Just dump Win7` (because I'm already considering just dumping it).

P.S. In case any further information is required, I'll dig it out and add it to this post.

[RealBlackStuff]

I suggest to reinstall W7 but this time from an X230 Lenovo Recovery set as found here: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=128170

[samveen]

I suggest to reinstall W7 but this time from an X230 Lenovo Recovery set as found here: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=128170

The messed up install was from exactly that source. However, I got another cheap 120G SSD and re-installed the OS, and Voila, no issues. Now the issue is, How do I set up Win7 on my dual boot disk without wiping out my Linux installation. The Recovery set will wipe out the complete disk, including Linux and all my data and shared folders, and I have no access to clean Win7 Media from M$haft.

The alternate is to alternate disks as required, completely wiping out Win7 from the disk containing Linux, making 2 single-boot disks. The headache is carrying a screwdriver everywhere, definitely a problem on flights.

[RealBlackStuff]

Remove the current drive with Linux.
Get an mSATA SSD for in the WWAN slot and install W7 on that.
Put the Linux drive back in.
When (re)booting, press F12 to select mSATA or SSD (Windows or Linux).