Migrating bootcamp: driver issues

I'm trying to pull everything off of my old late-2011 macbook pro onto my shiny new late-2013 macbook pro, including my old Bootcamp partition.

I would prefer, to keep things as smooth as possible, in order to migrate via a clone-and-restore utility (in my case, Winclone), rather than by reinstalling windows from scratch and attempting to manually copy over all the important files via an external hard drive or target disk mode or something.

Everything went smoothly right up until the last step. My issue is in the drivers: any clone I make of my Bootcamp partition still has the drivers for the late-2011 MBP, so when I restore that clone to my late-2013 MBP and am prompted to re-enter my Windows 7 registration key (having used sysprep on the old partition before cloning), I can't click or type anything in order to enter my key because the system doesn't recognize inputs from my keyboard, trackpad, or USB mouse.

I used Bootcamp Assistant on the new MBP to download the essential drivers onto a thumb drive thinking that would help, but unfortunately they have to be installed within Bootcamp via running on a "setup.exe", which I can't do since I can't click or type anything to even get past the registration screen.

When I started running out of options, I tried taking that thumb drive and plugging it back into my old MBP on my old Bootcamp partition to see if I can install the new drivers on the old partition ahead of time, so that when I make a clone, the drivers would already be there--but that didn't work either; trying to run "setup.exe" on the old mac yields an error: "This version of Boot Camp is not intended for this computer model."

Does anyone else have any recommendations? Is there any way to install the new drivers on the old system so they can be there ahead of time when I clone? Or is the only option to make a new, fresh install using the Bootcamp Assistant and manually copy old stuff over item-by-item?

Thanks in advance.

Thanks a lot for your reply.

Quad5Ny said:

Now type "sudo bless --device /dev/disk1s# --setBoot --nextonly --legacy"

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I tried this three times, but unfortunately the mouse and keyboard still don't work at the registration screen.

P.S. You could also just use DISM to install the USB3 drivers offline.

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As a Mac user my entire life, I am unfamiliar with DISM. Can you explain to me what that is and how I use it?

EDIT: If the issue is exclusively in the USB3.0 drivers, can I possibly download some appropriate drivers somewhere on the web, install them on my old computer's bootcamp partition, then redo the clone-and-restore process?

EDIT 2: Now that I think about it, if possible, I would REALLY prefer to find some way to make my current clone work rather than re-doing the clone and restore process altogether, because I just remembered you can only sysprep an image 3 times and I'm pretty sure I've already done it twice.

OK, so with some googling I figured out what DISM is and a general idea of how to use it. As a proof-of-concept trial run, I used my Windows 7 install disk to make a bootable USB install drive. As I expected, at first, the mouse and keyboard weren't working when booting from the install drive. But, after using DISM to install the drivers downloaded with Boot Camp Assistant while the USB drive was "offline," the mouse and keyboard were working fine. So, I know that using DISM will work.

What's the target .wim file that I'm supposed to mount and modify using DISM in my bootcamp partition? When I was doing my trial run on my bootable install USB, I was modifying "boot.wim" and "install.wim" in the Sources folder. But what and where are the target .wim files in the actual partition?

I'm thinking I copy those .wim files and transport them via flash drive to a working windows computer, then use DISM to install the necessary drivers on those files, then transport them back and copy+replace (with a backup of course) back where I found them.

MacProCard said:

Seems like it would have been easier/faster to just go about it the backup files/clean install way. Then again it's fun to figure this stuff out.

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It's not as easy as you think! Last time I went through this process I did it the old-fashioned way, and that was just as much of a hassle, that I ended up having to re-download (where applicable), re-install, and re-configure literally every single application on the system.

Besides, I'm so close now I can almost taste it. I know how to use DISM, and I know I can use DISM to successfully install the drivers that work with my new MBP, because I already did it successfully on a proof-of-concept bootable drive.

I just need to know the name and location of the .wim file in my Bootcamp system that I need to change. I've tried googling around but everything I've found thus far isn't really all that clear.