Just so everyone is aware, Microsoft and Intel have discontinued USB 2.0 EHCI driver and hardware with new processors. This EHCI driver is required to install Windows 7 with USB. What that means is: 1) You cannot use a USB keyboard or mouse to do a Windows 7 install when using the Z170 chipset or newer 2) You cannot install Windows 7 from a bootable USB drive (usb install is about 10x faster than DVD install) 3) You cannot use an external DVD drive that plugs in with USB. Integrating the Z170 chipset USB 3.0 drivers has so far not been successful to allow USB installation of Windows 7. Myself and probably many others are working to find a way to get this working but so far it looks like that you will not be able to use a USB keyboard to install Windows 7 with Skylake and any other future processors. The current only solution is to use an old PS/2 keyboard to do the install. This of course requires that your motherboard has a PS/2 port, some do not any longer. While this will not be an issue of any relevance in a couple years, right now there are still a significant number of people who are still running and want to run Windows 7 because of a dislike of Windows 8 and issues with Windows 10 still. Anyway, I just wanted to put this information out here so that anyone thinking about buying a new Skylake processor is aware that you must use a very specific piece of hardware if you plan on running Win7 still. EDIT: Seems motherboard makers can make a bios workaround for this. Some may have it working already, but from reports I have seen there are quite a few boards that still dont work when the option is enabled in the bios, so many boards may have the setting non-functional right now if it looks available.
