windows 8.1 media driver is missing

Just to quickly add to this, I had heard that Boot camp doesn't give the option to create bootable usb media if you have a dvd drive, which obviously the macbook air doesn't so I found that confusing.

However, having been searching Google for options to make a bootable usb without the aid of boot camp I have just come across an article explaining the process to do it through the terminal, but the article states that it's impossible to do this on a macbook air because the EFI bios does not support booting from USB... Is that confirmed? And if so, is our only option to buy an external DVD drive to burn the ISO to? But surely we wouldn't be able to use it if we can't boot from a USB DVD drive?

I myself am not a mac user so forgive me if these questions sound dumb, and my mac owning friend is as computer illiterate as they come (he also lives 300 miles away and I'm trying to help him via phone / facebook, which complicates the matter)

Thank you for the reply, we will look into your suggestion and I will report back if it resolves the issue.

No joy with either ISO from either source (Microsoft or Dreamspark), both hash verified, both work fine outside of my friends Mac (tried on my PC virtually, physically on USB, and burnt to disk).

I can only think this is a Bootcamp specific issue, I have recommended he rolls back to factory settings to see if he can then use boot camp successfully but in the meantime I am looking into other avenues for bypassing boot camp altogether after finding a thread from one user that apparently has booted successfully via USB on 2015 macbook air.

The biggest problem we're facing at the moment is distance, he has no access to a windows PC and can not use boot camp to create a bootable usb.

Whilst it can be done through terminal I would prefer to avoid having to talk him through that due to believing it would be too complicated for him to comprehend (put it this way, I asked him to back up all his personal files to an external drive and he sent me a screenshot of his desktop covered in files, this is not someone who should be playing with the terminal)

Whilst I could create the drive my end and post it to him, I'd rather not do that either due to time and cost.

Is there a 3rd party application available for Mac that can create the bootable USB media?

Windows can't see the OSX partition, it doesn't support Mac file systems so that's no good to us.

We've rolled back to Yosemite and boot camp now offers the option to create a bootable USB, which saves me the hassle of talking him through the terminal.

As we speak we are attempting another ISO install through boot camp, if successful we can safely say the latest boot camp is just buggy.

This whole situation has reminded me why I prefer PC lol!

Rolling back to Yosemite brought with it it's own separate issue, whereby the system partition converted to a logical partition that boot camp can not resize / split into 2, and disk utility has every single option to do anything with the partition greyed out.

I quickly researched the issue overnight and have sent him instructions to use the Terminal to convert the partition using the command "diskutil cs convert disk0s2" and am waiting for him to wake up to try it.

From what I've read that command brings another issue to the table whereby the OSX partition will be listed twice by disk utility, but apparently has no affect on the actual usability of the mac or boot camp, so we can live with that.

We still don't know if this particular version of boot camp will actually be able to complete set up at this stage, and holding down the command key on boot to attempt a manual windows installation does absolutely nothing (no boot menu), so will report back later on any progress.

I've only just seen this, but we did use cs revert in the end after researching elsewhere.

The syntax is: diskutil cs revert *******

where ********** is the identifier for the Core Storage volume.

Oddly, inputting diskutil list after the operation completed didn't appear to show any change whatsoever, but boot camp was able to continue with the partitioning.

Unfortunately, and I now believe higher powers are against us, the USB drive we are using can not be booted, I'm unsure why, but I have requested he get hold of another one from a local friend and will try again once we are able.

Thanks for the heads up on the USB, I didn't know that Macs were also brand sensitive to USB drives but I have read elsewhere that SanDisk tend to be the most compatible. I believe in this instance the issue is because we're using a bootable SD card via card reader, under normal circumstances that shouldn't be a problem besides slower read/write times, but for some reason unknown to me it's not even recognized by the boot menu.

To be perfectly honest with you I have over 20yrs experience of PC systems and support but I have never dabbled with Macs until my friend asked about setting up boot camp, I can not honestly say it's been an enjoyable experience although I do appreciate the challenge it's presented. I just don't understand why it needs to be so complicated, or why there are so many hardware and software blocks in the way of users completing simple tasks like this, but I am determined to succeed!