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Trouble installing Win7 with bootcamp

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Danando1993

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 14, 2010
162
66
Im losing my mind at the moment, for the past two days I've been trying to use bootcamp to partition my rmbp hard drive and create a bootable windows usb so I can access windows and use revit.

Ive had so many problems and after finally thinking i had created a bootable windows usb and successfully partitioning my hard drive I was very annoyed to find that after the partition via bootcamp had finished and the reboot began a black screen appeared with 'non-system disk' written and 'press any key to reboot'. (I read that this was the system trying to open up the windows partition but it couldn't find it?)

I rebooted again and held alt hoping that both the mac and windows startup disk would appear but only the mac one did. I entered the mac setup and checked finder to see that a hard drive named Bootcamp was in the device list, I'm confused because it shows as a hard drive but doesn't appear to be useable.

So basically I'm lost, can anybody direct me to where I might be going wrong?
Im pretty sure its nothing to do with the windows 7 iso because I used it to set up a virtual machine with parallels. I've never installed bootcamp so I'm pretty clueless.
 
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Gjwilly

macrumors 68040
May 1, 2011
3,216
701
SF Bay Area
Did you let Bootcamp create the bootable Windows USB?
That's worked best for me because it installs the Bootcamp drivers during the Windows install without you having to do anything manually.

I put my Windows ISO on my desktop and then instructed Bootcamp to use that ISO while also telling it to download the latest Bootcamp drivers.
Bootcamp downloads the drivers, and then creates a customized bootable Windows USB, using your Windows ISO, with the driver installation procedure already built-in.
One USB flash drive does it all.

The other common headache is trying to use a USB 3.0 flash drive.
The installation flash drive must be USB 2.0 and you can't have any other USB devices connected to your rMBP.

An other problem could be that your Windows ISO isn't actually bootable.
Not all of them are.
That can be fixed by downloading the Microsoft USB download tool but you'll need a Windows computer to run it on.
It will create a Windows USB that is bootable and then you'd use the ISO off of that USB to create your Bootcamp installer.
 
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Danando1993

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 14, 2010
162
66
Iv'e just tried again.

1. I had the usb plugged in
2. Entered bootcamp assistant and selected 'create a windows 7 or later version install disk' and 'download the latest windows support software from apple'
3. I selected to continue and then chose the windows 7 ISO located on my desktop.
4. For about half an hour the drive formatted and eventually it got to the part that involved downloading the windows support software a window then appeared that said 'cant install the software because it is not currently available from the software update server' and it quit completely.

Ive read that it's possible to download the windows support software directly instead of letting bootcamp do it but the 'download the latest windows support software from apple' selection is greyed out and un tick able :confused:

The usb seems to have had a lot stuff put onto it whilst it was formatting, so I thought that perhaps the only thing it was missing was the windows support software. So I went ahead and downloaded it directly and put it onto the usb. I then tried to partition the hard drive again and reboot it to see if the windows system would load like its supposed to but nothing, just a black screen with 'non-system disk' yet again.

Im so frustrated.
 
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Gjwilly

macrumors 68040
May 1, 2011
3,216
701
SF Bay Area
Well I think you're first step is confirming that your Windows USB is actually bootable.
Put your ISO on to a USB stick and see if you can use it to boot an actual Windows PC.
If you can then you know the problem is your Mac.
If you can't then use the Microsoft USB download tool to make it bootable and try again with the Windows PC.
If you still can't then you might have a bad USB stick or your might have a bad Windows ISO.
Once you have a working USB install you should be able to use it on your Mac.
You don't need to let Bootcamp create the installer. I just think it's easier if the Bootcamp drivers get installed along with the OS cuz then you know you've got the right version of the drivers and you know that they're being installed correctly.

Doesn't sound like you need it but here's a pretty good walk through of the installation process.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Install-Windows-7-on-MacBook-Pro-with-Retina-Displ/
 
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