Boot Camp not installing Windows 7 - "No bootable device, insert boot disk and press any key."

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Level 1

5 points

Boot Camp not installing Windows 7 - "No bootable device, insert boot disk and press any key."

I need some help with something. A while back, I put a brand new hard drive in my MacBook, a 500 GB model to replace the 120 GB one. I cloned everything successfully to the new drive via Carbon Copy Cloner, but now I want to make a Boot Camp partition on the drive. The SuperDrive in it is defective, so I use an external FireWire drive. So far the Boot Camp Assistant in 10.7 Lion works fine in creating the partition, but when it gets to the part where it tries to boot into the Windows installation disk (32-bit Windows 7 Home Premium, or could the 64-bit work fine as well?), it shows a black scree nwith "No bootable device, insert boot disk and press any key." I try pressing keys, but nothing happens.

I also tried using rEFIt, but that didn't work out either.

Here are the specifications of my machine...

MacBook (Early 2009 model)

2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor

4 GB of RAM

500 GB SATA hard drive

Dual-layer SuperDrive (defective, may replace it once I have the cash)

NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics chip

Mac OS X 10.7.2 Lion

Can anyone help me out with this? Is there some sort of workaround?

MacBook, Early 2009 model

Posted on Jan 26, 2012 6:07 PM

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Answer 1

Jaygyver

Level 3

739 points

Jan 27, 2012 12:32 AM in response to Wiley207

Restart and hold down the Option key until the boot screen shows up then pick the Windows install and see if you can boot into it that way.

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Answer 2

Wiley207 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 27, 2012 5:43 AM in response to Jaygyver

Tried that, but I still got the "No bootable device" screen. Booting into the EFI thingy also just boots me into OS X.

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Answer 3

ktigerj

Level 1

0 points

Jan 27, 2012 3:15 PM in response to Wiley207

Wiley,

I am having the same issues. I bought a copy of OEM Builders and having problems with the install for boot camp.

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Answer 4

Jaygyver

Level 3

739 points

Jan 27, 2012 10:04 PM in response to Wiley207

It seems to be a format problem according to Apple. Look at # 10.

If it installs and then won't boot into Windows recheck how you have formatted the disk, GUID, MBR, etc, I can't remember the specifics but something's messed up. BCAssistant HAS to partition the drive and the Windows installer HAS to format it as most 3rd party formatter/partitioner's won't work.

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Answer 5

Jan 28, 2012 9:59 AM in response to Wiley207

Wiley207 wrote:

The SuperDrive in it is defective, so I use an external FireWire drive.

You can't instal Windows from an external DVD drive. It's in the Apple requirements somewhere, plus many threads about it, plus my own experience on two MBPs.

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Answer 6

Jan 28, 2012 10:50 AM in response to Mike Boreham

If you google a combination of "bootcamp, superdrive" you will find a lot of sites where people have managed to install Windows without an internal superdrive. You may have some luck with these, I haven't tried myself.

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Answer 7

Wiley207 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 28, 2012 11:42 AM in response to Mike Boreham

Believe it or not, it was the FireWire drive that was the problem! I managed to successfully install Windows 7 using an external USB DVD drive!

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Answer 8

Jan 28, 2012 11:50 AM in response to Wiley207

Wiley207 wrote:

Believe it or not, it was the FireWire drive that was the problem! I managed to successfully install Windows 7 using an external USB DVD drive!

Well I am truly staggered, I have tried this on two different MacBook Pros, with three different external USB optical drives. Don't know if you googled as I suggested but you would find hundreds of others who have found same thing. The exception is MacBook Air which works with the Apple writer, but I don't know much about this.

Were you doing any of the special workarounds with refedit etc?

What model USB DVD drive?

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Answer 9

ktigerj

Level 1

0 points

Jan 28, 2012 6:36 PM in response to Mike Boreham

Mine didn't work either on two seperate External DVD's. I have an SSD in the primary and HDD in the optical bay. Had to take the HDD out and reinstall the Optical to get 7 installed. It's in and working fine now though with everything back to normal.

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Answer 10

dplesu

Level 1

0 points

Jun 6, 2012 9:43 AM in response to Jaygyver

This worked for me,

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