Could I install Windows 7 this way?

[anamznazn]

Alright, so here's the background. I have a Macbook Pro (early/mid 2011). The superdrive is broken and I'm having trouble installing Windows 7 via bootcamp because booting up via USB is not supported.

I made a partition on the harddrive for windows through disk utility. Can I take the physical harddrive out and place it inside a PC laptop and install windows on THAT partition?

Afterwards, I'll just put that harddrive back into the Macbook Pro. Is this possible or do you think any problems will come up?

 

[huguesval]

Hi,

Yes, you can do that.
Or you can follow the tutorial I wrote to install Win7 without superdrive.

http://huguesval.com/blog/2012/02/installing-windows-7-on-a-mac-without-superdrive-with-virtualbox/

 

[anamznazn]

I didn't think anyone would respond, but thanks. Here's my experience if anybody's curious.

I went ahead and took out the MBP's HDD and placed it inside a Dell's laptop. I booted the laptop with a Windows 7 install CD and installed Windows on the partition I made previously from disk utility. The Mac's partition could not be seen - I'm assuming it's because its format is mac's journaled extended. The install went fine without any hiccup.

After the install, I removed the HDD and placed it back inside the MBP. I held the option key and turned the laptop on. I was happy to see that the Window's partition was selectable so I went ahead and clicked on that. Unfortunately, I was presented with the blue screen of death and the system turned off immediately. I was unable to get into Windows no matter how many times I tried.

I was able to boot into the System Recovery Options screen and tried letting it repair itself. That was an endless loop and did not help at all.

I had this weird idea with a Windows 7 usb flash drive install I had. I clicked on Command Prompt and tried accessing the flash drive. It was able to read the flash drive and all the install files were there! I went ahead and ran the setup.exe file and it took me directly to the Windows 7 install screen. The install went perfectly fine and I was able to boot to Windows 7 normally after everything was done.

d:
d:setup.exe