Hi everyone. I want to install windows 7 on my iMac 24'' (mid 2008) but my optical disc drive is broken. I tried to install it with an USB flashdrive, but the system don't recognize it as a bootable device. I have the windows 7 ISO, vmware fusion, refit (i searched on the interet for the solution but i couldn't find any). thanks for help !
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
***Solution That Worked for ME***
I had a similiar problem where I wanted to install windows on a macbook pro (early 2009) that had a broken optical drive, using a bootable windows 7 USB, but the mac wouldn't recognize the USB because it only checks in the optical drive.
Solution:
1. Download the Windows 7 ISO file here: http://www.w7forums.com/threads/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-image-downloads.12325 /
2. Use Windows 7 USB DVD Download tool (found here http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool to make a bootable windows 7 USB. (this has to be done on an exisiting windows machine, but there are googable solutions to do this process using just a mac)
3. Also transfer a copy of the ISO file to the mac
4. Use Daemon Tools Lite (free, found here: http://www.daemon-tools.cc/products/dtLite) to mount the ISO file thats on your mac. (open daemon tools, click quick mount, click the iso file, very easy!) This tricks bootcamp into thinking that a windows 7 install disk is inserted.
5. Run Boot Camp, I chose to skip downloading the drivers and did that separately here: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5634 by cliking on the macbook pro model and then the number in the grid to download the boot camp drivers to a separete usb. Once windows was installed, it was easy to open the USB and run bootcamp settup.
**THE TRICK**
6. When the computer restarts after bootcamp finishes, insert the bootable windows 7 USB into the mac when the screen is black, and then hold down the C key as soon as you hear the mac turning on sound. This command tells the mac to boot from USB.
I did not find any discussions of simply pressing the C key to boot from USB in similiar threads, and people just said that you need the disk if your mac has an optical drive. I finally found this trick out here: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1533
The windows installation should now be running, and all thats left now is to choose the Bootcamp partition when it asks, and to click on it, click drive options, click format, and then click next to continue on with the installation.
Hope this helps anybody that had the same problem as me, I did a lot of googling!
goodmorning,
I did not have the specified directory on there, so that didn't help with the problem.
I had paragon and tuxera on my mac, uninstalled them both, before and after the disk wasn't and isn't show on sys pref/startup disk only the OSX.
1. Does the disk show up when you press Alt/Option?
2. Tuxera and Paragon are notorious for leaving modified KEXTs behind even after a removal/uninstall. Did the disk show up in Startup Disk with either of these installed?
3. If you can run BCA, use option 1 and 2, and create a USB.
4. Erase the current NTFS partition to be FAT32.
5. Copy the contents of the USB to the FAT Partition, make it bootable using Gdisk and let us test booting.
1. The disk didnt show up at the alt/option
2. No it didnt show up at all in "starting disk"
3. will do when i get home in about 4 hours
4. ok
5. will do report back
hey loner,
My mac self destructed. After booting I got the stop sign, it wouldn't boot. So I have a fresh install of yosemite and am back at square one.
How do i proceed?
There is a method to resurrect Macs with such issues, unless the hardware has completely failed. We start over.
Where do i begin? Can you lay out the steps again for me? or just do the ones above?
1. Create the USB installer using BCA (use the first two options - USB Install and Download Software).
2. Create a partition and format it as FAT and put the contents of the USB in this partition.
3. Bless it and try to boot from it.
do i create the partition with g disk or with the disk utilitity and do I have to make it a bootable disc with gidsk?
Use DU to create the FAT partition. Use Gdisk (or Fdisk) to mark the partition bootable.
Done and done however the following problems arise:
- it boots up and sees the disk, its named EFI boot
- If i choose it it gives me a windows error 0xc000000(don't remember the last part)
0xc000000e to be exact
1. Can you post the GPT and Fdisk commands' output?
2. This looks promising.
fdisk
Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 38913/255/63 [625142448 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
Starting Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [ start - size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1: EE 0 0 2 - 25 127 14 [ 1 - 409639] <Unknown ID>
2: AF 25 127 15 - 1023 254 63 [ 409640 - 418466408] HFS+
3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 418876048 - 1269536] Darwin Boot
*4: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 420147200 - 204994560] HPFS/QNX/AUX
gpt
gpt show: /dev/disk0: mediasize=320072933376; sectorsize=512; blocks=625142448
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Sec GPT at sector 625142447
start size index contents
0 1 MBR
1 1 Pri GPT header
2 32 Pri GPT table
34 6
40 409600 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
409640 418466408 2 GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
418876048 1269536 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
420145584 1616
420147200 204994560 4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
625141760 655
625142415 32 Sec GPT table
625142447 1 Sec GPT header
Can you try to use the Bless command and see if you a Windows boot?
EFI found at IODeviceTree:/efi
Mount point for /Volumes/WINDOWS is /Volumes/WINDOWS
Common mount point of '/Volumes/WINDOWS' and '' is /Volumes/WINDOWS
No BootX creation requested
No boot.efi creation requested
Could not find object for s4
Bootcamp without Optical disc drive
