Air, rEFIt, bootcamp and Vista x64 without external drive...not getting any closer

[kkrull]

Posted this in the Air Forum but have not gotten responses.

Any suggestions on next steps? USB dongle install? USB Hard Drive install? Bust out the USB DVD Drive instead of saving the $100?

I am thinking that it might run from the same partition to which I need to install if I converted that partition to NTFS first.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/428734/

First made an image of the x64 Vista and copied it over the network to my Macbook Air folder.

Second installed bootcamp and created a partition without installing Vista.

Third I copied the files from the ISO onto the new partition.

Fourth I installed rEFIt and shut down and re-powered on the MBA.

Fifth I chose from rEFIt the second windows icon, "Boot boot\cdboot.efi from BOOTCAMP". (I skip over "Boot bootmgr.efi from BOOTCAMP" which doesn't work.)

Sixth see the "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD" screen. I press a key.

Seventh I see the "Windows is loading files..." completion bar progress all the way to the end. It gets to the last character and the machine stops.

So close.

I realize x64 is not officially supported.
I realize that the external USB optical drive is the preferred Windows install method.
I realize that I am asking for trouble attempting to install to and from the same windows partition.
I have already used the partitioning shell to synchronize the partitions. They were not in sync originally and syncing them creates a fifth "Legacy OS" entry after MacOS, Apple Hardware Test, and two Windows OS placeholders.

Any ideas? suggestions?

 

[kkrull]

Second try still no luck...

Went ahead and unwrapped up the DVD drive.

Installed Vista x64 from a cold restart while holding the 'C' key to bypass rEFIt since I could not get rEFIt to complete the Vista install from DVD either.

Reformatted partition as NTFS during the Vista install.

Completed the install. Rebooted.

I get the rEFIt message "Error: Not Found while loading legacy loader" and "Please make sure that you have the latest firmware installed".

Any ideas?