Like 6urden, I have a late 2011 Macbook Pro 15˝ (MacBookPro8,2), and I'm having trouble installing Windows 7.
I recently got a new SSD for the computer, and installed it in place of the old HDD no problems. The OS X 10.10 installer flashdrive I created worked perfectly, and I've been using the computer for a month no problems. Because I didn't really care for the optical drive, I took it out and installed the old HDD in its place instead. Now, because I have a few pieces of software that necessitate the use of Windows, I've been trying to install it on the new SSD. Deluded as I was, I believed this would be a simple enough task, since I'd done it before for my friend's new Macbook Pro Retina with no problems. I thought since I had a legitimate Windows 7 ISO image it would be a piece of cake to use it instead of the physical disk. Boy was I wrong; every guide I followed to create a Windows install USB drive failed, with both Bootcamp failing to recognize it as an installer disk and the computer refusing to even recognize it when I tried selecting a boot drive on restart. I tried installing rEFInd in the hopes that it would recognize the flashdrive where the default EFI software wouldn't, and although rEFInd installed fine, even it wouldn't recognize the installer drives I'd created through multiple methods. I'd almost given up hope until I found this thread.
I've modified Bootcamp (5.1) fine, and the new 'Create an install USB drive' option comes up and functions just fine. However, although Bootcamp now recognizes the created flashdrive as an installer drive and will proceed just fine, the computer won't boot from it. As soon as Bootcamp restarts the computer to begin installing Windows, the screen goes black and nothing happens save for a blinking underscore. I tried leaving it alone in the hopes that perhaps it was just slow, but I've come to the conclusion that it really isn't doing anything. I originally just modified the info.plist file for Bootcamp by simply removing the 'Pre' from the USBBootSupportedModels string, and although that enabled the creation of the USB install drive fine, I still had the problem with booting. I originally tried jognt's suggestion of using a Windows machine to create an active partition, but that was to no avail. Instead I went in and changed the UEFIModels string and DARequiredROMVersions string by adding the appropriate model numbers and ROM codes. Still nothing. I'm fairly sure they're in proper order, but not 100% sure. I even tried a PRAM reset, but that helped not one bit.
Now, rEFInd identifies the install drive easily enough, but it will only show the option to boot from the /boot/memtest.efi file, which does nothing. I'm 99% certain that my problem is that the computer refuses to boot from the drive, but I'm not sure how to solve this problem. Is it an issue with the EFI boot manager (default OS X one won't even show the flashdrive as an option)? Is it an issue with the firmware itself? Is it an issue of the computer trying to use the HDD in the optical drive bay? Is it an issue with Bootcamp? Is it an issue of the boot manager looking for an .efi boot file in the /boot/ directory that it can't find? I've even tried adding a duplicate of the bootmgr.efi file to the /boot/ directory, thinking that maybe it was that file that the boot manager wanted to boot from, but to no avail.
At this point I may just reinstall the optical drive and be done with it. But I don't want to quit just yet. Does anyone have a solution?
