Boot camp 5.0 issue: not finding Windows installation CD.

Guido,

I have try your method but it seem when my imac restart it could not found the usb/cd that contains the Win 7 copy. So it cant boot. It will the message : can't find the bootable device. some sort like this. why ? thanks !

Its more about the Windows format then if its a bootleg copy or not. I understand it that you need a ISO copy or a original copy of Windows 7. You can place the copy you have into your optical drive and boot your Mac holding down the option key. If you see the Windows install disc then it should be bootable. You have to first install BootCamp partition before beginning the Windows install. Also you will need the drivers for Windows for your Mac which should be available through BootCamp setup.

John Scott1,

I am stil encouter the problem where my iMac couldn't found the bootable device. I have the copy of Windows 7 iso and the bootable Windows 7 in 4 gig pendrive.

This is my situation and step yesterday for you infomartion :

1 - Plug in the bootable windows 7 in the pendrive and create the windows partition using bootcamp. but the bootcamp did not found the device.

2 - Because of step above didnt worked out i mounted windows 7 iso using daemon tool and recreate the partition in the bootcamp. yes it detected and bootcamp format my windows 7 partition. after complete the formating, the imac restart itself than after restart it show the black screen "no bootable device".

3 - i need to shut off the power to shutdown the mac. on the mac again and hit the alt key it shows only my mac os x mountain lion and recovery.

4 - where is my mistake ?

Thanks !

Hi!

I've a similar issue.

Running a brand new MacBook Pro with OS X 10.8.2 and boot camp 5.0.

Trying to install Windows 7 32-Bit, which was easy on several MacBook Air systems.

Boot camp tells me that only 64-bit versions of Windows 7 are supported.....We do not use 64-Bit versions.

Tried to give boot camp the 64 Bit media and it went through. During the reboot I changed the media back to 32 bit and Windows setup started. But it cannot use the bootcamp partition to install 😟

Why can't I use 32-bit Windows 7?

Thanks!

Dieter

I finally managed to install a 32-bit Windows 7 on the new MacBook Pro (10.2).

But as the boot camp assistant only creates 64-bit drivers, I'm again stuck.

Why's that so complicated?

I'm having the same problem on 2011 Mac Mini running 10.8 and have yet to find a solution to installing Windows 7 or 8.

this is unnecessarily complicated. i mean, even an iso image that mounts to your desktop should be enough to do this, as it is enough for vmware/parallels to do this. apple is making this too complicated for fear of abuse of licenses but it hurts people with legit stuff. for those saying they are installing 32 bit... why? dont install anything but 64 bit for goodness sake.

Yes, it's unnecessarily complicated, but still easy. The current fix is to use Guido's solution and use Daemon Tools Lite.

Guido deKwa

Create an .iso file of the windows 7 installation disk and put it on a (at least 4GB) USB stick. Then mount the .iso with Daemon tools LITE on your mac (free downloadable tool for OS X). Bootcamp now recognizes the installation disc.

This way I finally managed to install win7 as well as OS X on my 2010 air!

actually, this advice made my issue significantly worse. now i can't even boot my computer as osx, it continue to boot to a black screen that says

No Bootable device. Insert boot disk and press any key.

, and the only way to get away from the screen is to force power down the computer, but even on restarts it goes back to this.

this is ridiculous. you should be able to mount an iso and do this without an issue.

Reboot, as soon as you hear the chime hold the option key down, when the boot manager appears select OSX

ok. So i have the iso on the usb drive, and the iso burned to a disk, i also have the drivers burned to another disk, and a folder of that on the USB... no dice. 1, windows wont start unless i have the burned disk in the drive, it wont work form the usb, and then it gets to a screen saying the drivers are missing. I browser to the drivers from apple, does nothing, you can't make it past this screen and you abort the windows installation. this is the worst experience ever, and it doesn't even support windows 8 yet. it's a joke. I'm about to give up and just buy parallels and be done with it, but to use visual studio and the like, I would prefer full system resources.

I really do not know what Apple have done this. I had a MB 2007 and XP used to install fine. Then the superdrive on that went and you cannot install another OS apart from OSX via an external DVD drive (I do not have a superdrive, but apparently that would work).

I have a 2011 MBP now and I thought the installation of W7 would have been easy and simple. No such thing. Why are Apple not fixing it?

I think Guido's fix only applies to MacBook Airs.

I found this article (before I had a W7 install disc) which may help some people. I was not able to succeed with this as I tried it with XP.

http://insidethebrackets.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/install-windows-on-macbook-air-w ith-no.html

How I got it to work on my MBP? I had to install XP. I went through boot camp until the MBP went to restart, then added the XP disc and installed it. NOTE, if you want to subsequently upgrade to W7, then ensure the XP partition is formatted as NTFS, otherwise you will not be able to upgrade to W7.

Spent 12 hours of my Sunday on this today, hope to upgrade to W7 tomorrow. Will update this thread if I am successful.

Guido's solution definitely works for a mid-2010 Macbook Pro and early-2009 Mac Mini (mistakenly typed early-2008 in my previous post) running MacOS X 10.8.2. I used his method to install Win 7 Boot Camp on the Macbook and Win 8 Boot Camp on the Mini.

I installed the both the Win 8 and Win 7 Boot Camp partitions by using a bootable USB thumb drive created with Microsoft's Windows ** 7 ** USB/DVD Download Tool.

Thanks Scott. My MacBook created a bootable drive but still would not recognise it. I have not done anything Windows related on the MacBook since Sunday, so it is still running XP. Hope to upgrade it to W7 this weekend!

Upgraded successfully from XP to W7.