Downgrade to BC4 from BC5 in Mavericks?

I'm trying to install Windows 7 on a single partition 2nd hard drive, that replaced my Super Drive, on an Early 2009 MacBook Pro (17"). I'm running Mavericks OSX on the main "drive #1". Drive 2 is formatted to MSDOS fat 32 btw (both by me, and then when i get Bootcamp to do it's 1%, the drive reappears relabled as BootCamp).

I attempt to use the software Boot Camp and it tells me it only supports Win7 for this Mac (yes!), but after a few seconds cannot reach server to update. I've tried this many times over the last few hours.

I then tried to boot directly from said Windows disc using an external FireWire DVD player, but the screen locks up at the Apple screen. Also oddly enough, it takes all power away from all devices (USB stick I use stops flashing, fans stop, and eventually disc player stops spinning all while screen stays on). After 20 minutes I hit the power button off, as I'm sure i'd hope to see something by then.

Finally, I went and downloaded support files for Bootcamp 4.0.4033 (even though Mavericks runs BC 5 natively, my machine only supports BC 4 apparently and I don't see a straight up 4.0). Not sure if they're compatible, but anything to just get it "talking" to Bootcamp, but it doesn't work.

I copied files to both USB stick AND destination hard drive for windows. Several restarts, alt boots end in the same problems. Is there a way to downgrade to BC4 while using Mavericks? That's the last hope, and sad that I'm leaving it with software, but i thought booting from the Windows disc would be an option, as stated, it's not working. If I can't get this resolved, has anyone used a newer version of Linux lately? Is Ubuntu still the cream? What flavor do Steam users use? Trying to get the most out if this 80 GB drive. Thanks.