Boot camp: "no bootable device" help

Greetings all.

Having some issues getting Windows 7 installed and working on Boot Camp on my riMac (just bought new).

I will run thought what I've done leading up to this but the current issue is that I've run into "no bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key" black screen. I found a way past it by holding down ALT when rebooting but I'm presented now with a black sceen and 2 pictures of "Macintosh HD" disk drivers and not sure where to go from here.

Process thus far :

- Have in my possession an activated Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit disk which works fine on my other PC.

- Made an iso of the disk and put it on desktop on Mac.

- Formatted my USB stick.

- Went into BCA (Boot Camp Assistant), checked all 3 boxes (install Windows, get installation files, make bootable device etc) and selected my USB stick to make as the bootable drive. That didn't work as it said I needed a 64-bit version of Windows. So I went through all this https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1561855/ and finally got it working.

- BCA then started running, copying the Windows files, then installing them etc and eventually got to the partitioning screen. I moved the slider to give 500 GB for Windows which left around the same for Mac. Set it going and after doing its stuff it rebooted the machine and I got a black screen for a short while until "no bootable device, press any key to continue". The bootable USB stick was still in at this point. Despite having a wired keyboard it wasn't responding and nor was the mouse (wireless).

- Hard reset the machine by holding power for 5 seconds and tried holding ALT instead. That brought me to a black screen too, but now "no bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key". Not sure what I did but got to another screen with 2x pics of HDDs both called Macintosh HD and a drop down menu for wireless I think it was (could be wrong). I selected the right hand drive and it's booted back into Mac.

Not sure where I go from here. I tried running BCA again, but the bottom option now says "remove windows 7 or later version" and when clicked says "the windows partition and all of its contents will be lost" so it would appear I do have a Windows partition now.

In Disk Utility it shows :

Macintosh HD (621.33GB Core Storage Logical Volume Group)
- Macintosh HD (Start up disk: Macintosh HD)
- BOOTCAMP (Mounted partition: Boot Camp)
USB MEMORY BAR Media

In the partition tab of the top Macintosh HD one it says Partition Layout: Current and shows Macintosh HD Size 500.35 GB in Mac OS Extended format and underneath it shows BOOTCAMP Size 499 GB in MS-DOS (FAT) format.


Where has Windows gone and what do I do now? Seem to have come to a dead end here as I don't know what I've done wrong.

Thank you.

PS. I do not have an optical drive, hence why it was done from USB stick.

Thank you gentlemen. However I need to know what's gone wrong here. Why am I getting a black screen? It's easy to say "just reinstall it again" but that will just lead me full circle to where I am now.

@ GJW, the USB stick is 2.0 for sure as it's fairly ancient. I formatted it in my W7 machine with whatever the default setting was. Is there some problem with this? BCA seemed happy enough to install the required files on it.

By holding down ALT when booting it takes me to the 2x Macintosh HD pic screen. I've now also tried the left hand one but that also boots into OSX the same as the right hand one.

What has happened to my Windows file that BCA was putting on the bootable USB stick and why am I getting "no bootable device found, press any key" when booting?

Mais78 said:

Did you try?

Your Windows is not installed, there is no way you will be able to boot in W7, jut delete and start again.

Click to expand...

Thank you sir, but you haven't answered my question. Why has it not installed? Saying "install it again" over and over is not helping me understand what has gone wrong. I have followed the BCA instructions correctly as far as I am aware and it hasn't worked. Why has it not worked and what has happened to my Windows files. I do not have time to be repeating the process time and time again whilst crossing my fingers hoping it may work on one of them.

Mais78 said:

Why you assume "over and over", just try it once! Trust me it takes less time to redo it then investigating what went wrong, you are not gonna fix it. I cannot help you with the forensic, I don't know what went wrong and when it happened to me I could not care less, all I wanted is to have W7 functioning, and redoing the process - like Apple support suggested - worked. During the installation Windows has to reboot a few times, during a reboot it is possible that the USB did not connect properly and Windows could not restart and complete the installation. You are going to spend all night asking yourself what happened, while deleting the partion and installing again will take no more than a comple of minutes.
Good luck

Click to expand...

Thank you sir. I will try it in the morning. Did you leave in the USB stick when rebooting or remove it? Should it sort itself out by itself when rebooting with it still plugged in or do I need to hold some button(s)?

Mais78 said:

I think I left the stick in at all times, but will not fix by itself, it is not just about rebooting, it is about launching the BCA again. What happened to me was that I got the same screen as you and could not do anything anymore, total black out. To get OSX back, press ALT R while rebooting, then apple logo top left, choose Restart.. then when you are in OSX launch the bootcamp assist again, delete partion, reboot, then again recreate partion and install Windows. This time it will be much faster as it does not have to copy W7 and drivers to the USB stick, you have already done it (so don't click that option).

Click to expand...

As I suspected, this does not work. I did that, deleted partition, repartitioned, set the installation running and it instantly rebooted and brought me straight back to "no bootable device".

Is there anyone else here that knows what the solution is please?

blueroom said:

What is an activated Windows 7?

You need to install it from a Microsoft uninstalled ISO image. After it's installed you then activate it normally.

Click to expand...

I don't have that option. The Windows 7 is already activated. There are several other threads where people have the pre-activated dual 32/64-bit copies working okay so I know that this is not the issue as I have already made the required changes in the terminal.

blueroom said:

Your activated Windows 7 licence is only for the machine it was activated on not the user (it's locked to a manufacturers code in the BIOS). It won't work on two machines. You'll need to do a fresh install and reactivate (purchase) a second licence.

Click to expand...

No sir. The copy is working fine on at least a dozen different machines.

Where do you even purchase a pre-activated Windows 7?

Click to expand...

Forum rules do not permit me to discuss this.

Gjwilly said:

And I don't know what the defaults are for a Windows 7 machine and formatting that particular USB stick so why take chances and risk more failures?
Put it in your Mac, open Disk Utility, partition it as one big MBR partition and format it as FAT32.
Then start again with the correct ISO and a USB stick that you know is prepared correctly.

Click to expand...

Gjw, I have just done all this, made 1 partition MBR on Mac and formatted it as MS-DOS FAT and went through the whole BCA process all over again. Same result after partitioning at the end for Windows - when it reboots it does nothing except comes to a black screen with "no bootable device". Only way to get back in is to boot with ALT.

This is turning into an absolute nightmare.

I've now completely broken the computer and will have to send it back. I followed the advice on Apple site to reformat the system back to factory settings as I was having issues with VMware Fusion not working and there is no way to uninstall it.

I did the reformat or so I thought, but all it's done is put a fresh copy of OSX on and apparently not actually changed anything because all the files are still there including VMware and other stuff which I wanted gone, so 3 hours wasted while it reinstalled OSX for absolutely nothing.

I now can't boot it up at all, I get an EFI boot menu which takes me back to the same page. I can't use Disk Utility but the partitions still show :

Macintosh HD
- Macintosh HD 580 GB
- BOOTCAMP 500 GB MS-DOS FAT

disk2
- OSX Base System


The Apple site says:

Select your startup disk on the left, then click the Erase tab.


Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) from the Format menu, enter a name, then click Erase.
Important: Erasing the disk removes all the information from the disk. Be sure to back up the information you want to keep to an external device.


After the disk is erased, choose Disk Utility > Quit Disk Utility.


Select Reinstall OS X, click Continue, then follow the onscreen instructions.

--

Which start up disk am I meant to be selecting? I have 4. I cannot remove the Macintosh HD partition, there is no option to remove or erase it. I have tried to erase the 2nd Macintosh HD partition and BOOTCAMP but even though it says it's erased them they keep coming back in the list. I just want it back to factory settings and don't see any option but to send it back. Sick of these problems on things that should be simple. The documentation makes no reference to these other partitions.

blueroom said:

Boot from the recovery partition <Command> R
Delete and Format the drive
Reinstall OSX

Click to expand...

Which drive(s) ?

CMD+R takes me to the same menu as detailed in my previous post. In Disk Utility I have all these drives/partitions showing and I can't delete any of them:

Macintosh HD
- Macintosh HD 580 GB
- BOOTCAMP 500 GB MS-DOS FAT

disk2
- OSX Base System