Win 7 install - no ps/2 emulator

nealsmith, the bottom line is that ASRock officially supports only W10 on the the Ryzen boards.  That does not mean it will not work - others have been successful.  Does you board have a combo PS2 KB/Mouse port on the rear panel.  If so, I suggest you get a Y-cable and use your old PS2 KB and Mouse.  I think the real problem is that W7 does not have USB drivers before install.  Please let us hear what you learn.  Enjoy, John.

codename47 wrote: I just registered to tell you that I had similar issue while I was installing Windows 7 I would recommend you using 2 USB's  1. Source USB with Windows 7 (bootable) 2. Empty Destination USB Now use the AsRock patching tool to browse source and destination drives. Press Start and wait for it to finish Now you should be able to boot using the destination one usb. Very Important: Do not put the USB in USB3.0 PORT! Always use the old Black ports (2.0) for booting and same for the keyboard and mouse. I hope that helps, please let me know if you have success/fails

First for nealsmith, my ASRock X370 board's UEFI/BIOS does not have a PS2 Emulator option, so I doubt that yours will, sorry to say. I do have that option in the UEFI of many of my ASRock Intel chipset boards, so it does exist.

codename47, this is great advice, and the use of the USB 2.0 port is also critical, if not required. This is true for the Windows 7 installation, and there is never any reason to use a keyboard or mouse on a USB 3.0 port, unless that is all that is available. Why it is missing in the Ryzen board UEFI's, I don't know, there may be a reason for that.

Some AM4 boards do not have any USB 2.0 ports on the IO panel. But they have a USB 2.0 header on the board, for use with a USB 2.0 PCI slot adapter that provides multiple USB 2.0 ports on the back of a PC case. I'm not talking about a USB 2.0 card, I mean simply a PCI slot adapter that connects to the USB 2.0 header on a mother board.

Newer Intel chipset boards also have the same situation with Windows 7 and all of the USB ports not working, due to the lack of a USB 3.0 driver. Boards like the AB350M that has USB 2.0 ports on the IO panel, still won't work with a standard Windows 7 installation, seems strange, right? So what is it about these boards that cause them to refuse to install or use a USB 2.0 driver? Intel has a document that implies that a board with USB 2.0 ports will not be affected by this situation, but that does not seem to be true.

My X370 Killer SLI/ac board has two USB 2.0 headers on the board for connection to a PC case's USB 2.0 ports, or a USB 2.0 PCI slot adapter. I have some idea why the USB 2.0 driver will not install, but I have heard multiple explanations for this situation. I'd love to hear what others might know about this.

nealsmith,

with parts from PC Part Picker

I have seen this multiple times, mainly with power supplies that are not sufficient.  As I said in my first reply, officially ASRock only supports W10.  I do not understand the "patcher" process you used, but referring to this:

I tried adding drivers to the Win 7 boot USB and re-installing Win 7 but no joy.

If you mean you just copied them to the USB stick, then NWNJ (no wonder no joy.)  Please try starting your install again and when you get to the screen asking you to select an install disk, click Add Driver (or something like that), I think it is in the lower left area of the screen.  Navigate to your USB stick folder containing the USB drivers and select the folder.  Setup should install the USB drivers for your Mouse/KB.  The folder should contain an .inf, .sys, .cat and perhaps a few more files.  Please let us know what you learn.  Enjoy, John.

Thanks for the suggestions but I still couldn't get Windows 7 to work despite trying everything suggested and everything else I could think of.