Macbook Air - Attempting to Install Windows 7 - Cannot Boot From USB

snogry said:

Hi everyone,

I just got my new Macbook Air 13" in the mail today and have attempted to install Windows 7 on it. At first I tried using Bootcamp but because my Windows 7 iso contains both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows it decided to reject it. So I followed the instructions from here. Formatted my 8gb usb to FAT32, partioned my HD using Disk Utilty creating a partion for Windows in FAT32 and copied the content of the iso onto the usb, as well as the Bootcamp Support Software. I then rebooted my laptop to then boot from my usb and begin installing Windows, yet when I held alt/option to select where to boot from, the usb didn't show up. The only options given were 'Macintosh HD' or 'Recovery-10.9' (Or something like that).

So basically I'm asking; how can I get my usb to show up in the boot options so that I can install Windows 7?

Thanks

Click to expand...

I would start by getting a genuine Microsoft ISO and allow Boot Camp Assistant create the media for you. Microsoft, to my knowledge, has never created media with both x86 and x64 code on one DVD.

Hi snogry

I hope you have a normal, operating windows 7 at you hand, otherwise it will get a bit difficult.

The best wy would be the following:

1.) Download the windows 7 iso in your version (so home premium or professional or whatever and make sure you download it in the right architecture, so x64 or x86. All this has to mach your win 7 license!) (You can download it legally from microsoft!)

2.) Put you USB dongle in the win 7 machine. Download the drivers from the dongle to, let's say, the desktop.

3.) Download and install the Win 7 USB/DVD Install tool
http://images2.store.microsoft.com/prod/clustera/framework/w7udt/1.0/en-us/Windows7-USB-DVD-tool.exe

4.) start the tool after installation. It will select you the downloaded win 7 iso and the usb dongle and copy all the files to your dongle

5.) Recopy the drivers onto your dongle

6.) Put the dongle into your mac, boot from it

7.) make sure you reformat the win 7 partition to ntfs during win7 setup
3.) Download the win 7