Windows 7 via USB

I could be way off base here, but I thought Win 7 didn't support booting from an external drive. I thought you needed 8.1 for external boot support.

Again, just relying solely on what others have told me, I could be totally wrong on this.

I read that to mean you can use USB as a media/driver installer drive, not a bootable OS drive. There again, I may be wrong, I've not tried it myself.

Good to know that. I may try this when I get time. Thanks for the info.

I will. I thought it had to have UEFI support to boot a USB on the Mac. I rarely use windows for anything and have it on VM at the moment.

adamisapple said:

Ok so I have 2 hard drives on my Mac Pro (1,1) OS X on a 320GB and an empty 250GB. I wanted to install Windows 7 on the empty 250GB so I made a bootable USB with my MacBook Pro (as it is not supported to make one on a Mac Pro). I installed refit to boot from the USB and it shows up as a bootable device but I just get this error:

Starting Legacy Loader
Using load options from 'USB'
Error: Not Found returned from legacy folder
Error: Not Found from LocateDevicePath
Error: Not Found from LocateDevicePath
Error: Not Found from LocateDevicePath
Error: Not Found from LocateDevicePath
Error: Not Found from LocateDevicePath
Error: Not Found from LocateDevicePath
Error: Not Found from LocateDevicePath
Error: Not Found from LocateDevicePath
Error: Not Found from LocateDevicePath
Error: Not Found from LocateDevicePath
Error: Not Found from LocateDevicePath
Error: Not Found from LocateDevicePath
Error: Not Found from LocateDevicePath
Error: Not Found from LocateDevicePath
Error: Not Found from LocateDevicePath
Error: Not Found from LocateDevicePath
Error: Load Error while (re)opening our installation volume

The firmware refused to boot from the selected volume. Note that external
hard drives are not well-supported by Apple's firmware for lehacy OS booting.

* Hit any key to continue *

After that, the computer freezes (I can't continue by pressing a key) and I have to restart.
Any Thoughts?
Cheers,
Adam

Click to expand...

You can't use a bootable usb from your Macbook Pro to boot your Mac Pro. The computer isn't just adding windows to the flash drive, instead it's also adding all the supporting boot drivers required to boot and install for your current hardware setup in your case the Mac Pro. In order to install windows on the Mac you need to run it from the CD or change the bootcamp files to make your Mac Pro create the usb bootable stick on its own.

A quick google search found this video. This is the correct way to make a bootable usb. Once you do this it should boot fine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBAQ3CNgfxc

buster84 said:

You can't use a bootable usb from your Macbook Pro to boot your Mac Pro. The computer isn't just adding windows to the flash drive, instead it's also adding all the supporting boot drivers required to boot and install for your current hardware setup in your case the Mac Pro. In order to install windows on the Mac you need to run it from the CD or change the bootcamp files to make your Mac Pro create the usb bootable stick on its own.

Click to expand...

On the Mac you can basically take a disc out of any Mac & boot it on another Mac. However Windows is very picky about hardware & won't install the necessary drivers for another configuration if those drivers aren't necessary for your current configuration. It's a pain in the arse & makes backups & cloning discs problematic on Windows.

cMP will only boot OS X from USB. anything else (DOS/Linux/Windows) only starts if it's on a disc or harddrive connected to one of the internal S-ATA ports.

edit:
you could try to boot the machine with Plop Boot Manager and then hop to the USB stick from there ->
https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanagers.html

newer Macs will start non-OS X operating systems from USB, too.

edit #2
on MacPro1,1 an unmodified Windows 7 64bit DVD will not start. see here:
http://glennstevenson.com/Blog/TabId/1115/Category/General/Default.aspx
and here:
http://sergiomcfly.blogspot.ch

nigelbb said:

On the Mac you can basically take a disc out of any Mac & boot it on another Mac. However Windows is very picky about hardware & won't install the necessary drivers for another configuration if those drivers aren't necessary for your current configuration. It's a pain in the arse & makes backups & cloning discs problematic on Windows.

Click to expand...

This is true with discs, but with USB drives it's not and I'm not exactly sure why I just know from experience that It just won't work with windows: however it does with OS X for some reason.

I actually tried the exact same method as the op but with different computers last year. On my MacBook Pro (had cd drive) in created USB from my 2013 iMac (no usb). It booted with errors similar to the op. I tried many different ways and they all failed.

So then I found a way to edit the bootcamp file in my MacBook Pro and once that was done I was able to boot and install windows 7. I'm sure their could be other ways to get it to work, but this method was far the easiest and allowed me to install windows right away.

Honestly since you have a CD rom already on the Mac Pro I'd just install it from the cd drive it's much easier. It's actually how I installed windows rently on my Mac Pro.