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Install Windows from USB Flash

finally working

somehow my optical drive started to read my XP disc, so I installed XP and then just mounted the ISO image and went from there, a couple reboots later and this is being written in Windows 7.
my other friend did the same thing with his mbp, also worked

the only problem I have now is that bootcamp installation, that won't even run under Windows 7.

edit:
fixed using the steps in post #8 in this same thread
thanks a lot guys

edit:
except for right clic, everything else was installed fne by bootcamp, including sound
 
Has anyone accomplished this on a Unibody machine? I gutted (and destroyed) my optical drive while putting in a MCE Optibay with a Vertex SSD - the SSD has a buggy, awful, nevershouldhavebeenshipped, firmware version and the only way to update is with a CD (which I do not have and even if I did there is no telling with fw version I have) or through windows. I am desperately trying to get my SSD to work so I can go about my business (my HDD, the secondary drive just crashed too - which was wonderful).


Bad bad luck. I'll do whatever it takes, even if it means I have to rent a computer from kinkos and do all this dos stuff over there.
 
A bit off-topic but...

I installed Windows 7 without a DVD. I copied the .ISO image
contents to an empty internal HD FAT32 partition using Finder
and booted from that partition. The only tricky part is getting
the volume boot record for that partition set up. I did that by
running the Windows 7 recovery tools in VMWare Fusion.

If you do it that way, you don't have to worry about booting
off USB sticks. However, this whole USB issue is curious. I will
follow this thread with interest.
 
Infared, I think you may be able to help me a lot and I'm pretty frustrated with my new machine. Did you need rEFIt for your installation? I copied all the contents to an empty FAT32 partition that I created using the bootcamp utility and rebooted my machine with no luck.

Did you use GUID or Master Boot Record for the partitioning of your FAT Drive?

Hopefully this will get me closer to where I need to be to get my machine working the way I want it to :( The SSD eats battery life and won't sleep so my machine will just die...
 
roaminggnome said:
Infared, I think you may be able to help me a lot and I'm pretty frustrated with my new machine. Did you need rEFIt for your installation? I copied all the contents to an empty FAT32 partition that I created using the bootcamp utility and rebooted my machine with no luck.

Did you use GUID or Master Boot Record for the partitioning of your FAT Drive?

Hopefully this will get me closer to where I need to be to get my machine working the way I want it to :( The SSD eats battery life and won't sleep so my machine will just die...
Click to expand...

rEFIt is not necessary. What you need is the bootloader code in
the first sector of your FAT volume. One way of creating this is
to use bootrec.exe:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

Now, bootrec.exe is in the Windows 7 ISO image, but how do you
run it if you can't burn that ISO image to a disc and boot from it?

One option is to use VMWare Fusion. Using that you can boot off
an ISO image of Windows 7 held on your hard drive. You can use

/Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion/vmware-rawdiskCreator

to allow your virtual machine access to the physical FAT partition.

This has been covered before in this thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-601414.html

There may be other ways of creating the VBR, but that's the one I
happen to know about. Would be nice to hear of others (hint hint) :)
 
Stormwolfski said:
Update: Things seem to be running fine, with one major exception: If I try to play any games, after a little while (5-20 minutes) the machine will suddenly shutdown, as if it's lost power. *poof* - gone. I don't know if this is a general problem with Win7, or if it's Mac-specific. Either way, it makes it pretty useless to me. :(
Click to expand...

I am having this exact same problem with Windows 7, and I have the same hardware.

It gets absurdly hot and I believe is overheating in my case. Unable to come up with any solution for this.
 
I DID IT! on a new aluminum unibody mac book pro

Well I did it and I don't know how I was so lucky, but I was. So I am just going to explain the pieces involved.

First of all I had tried to use bootcamp to install windows repeatedly and it would never read my windows DVD. So after wasting 5 DVDs trying to do it all kinds of different ways like making the .dmg bootable using disk utility to just copying the files onto a disk and burining in mac os x. Also on my desktop that has windows 7 on it right now, hence the desire to put it on my mac, I tried burning the directory directly on a dvd, burning from iso all with no luck.

So I decided to try and boot from USB. I drove to walmart and got the only one that was on a security locked hanger. A PNY 4GB usb drive for $14. I wasn't even sure if it was bootable from. I am not familirar with usb boots.

So I got home and I tried to find a program that would do it all for me, make the usb bootable and load the directory on perfectly. I found this http://www.askvg.com/a-bootable-usb-utility-to-create-bootable-usb-drive-to-install-windows-vista-server-2008-and-7/ and the program related with it.

I downloaded the program and tried several times to format the usb drive and put the iso on it. I am very impatient like most of the internet generation so I ended the task a lot. Finally, I had the iso directory on the thumb drive and i plugged it into my mac and restarted, upon startup i held down 'c' to boot from disc, and it did boot from the thumb drive. However, it gave the bootmgr error.

So frustrated I plugged it back into my pc, this time i ran the program again and it did its thing, however nothing was copied over to the thumb. So I tried copying the directory onto the thumb. I plugged it back into my mac, booted with 'c' held down and the installation started. Everything went fine.
I now have Windows 7 on my macbook pro, no cd required.
 
wesrk said:
I thik it's a boot option issue. I mean, the thumb drive is properly formatted since it acts like a bootable disk in other machines, and my mbp sees it accordingly, it's just that the next step comes up empty.
I have an early 2008 mbo by the way.

Can I use daemon or other tool under XP to mount the image and install into that same partition XP is on? (this would be in another mbp, not mine)
Click to expand...

wersk, i have the same problem as you, early MBP 2008 133 and I created a USB boot disk with Win 7 ISO, formatted NTFS using RPREPUSB under WinXP running in Parallels.

When I select the far-right option in Refit 0.13 to boot from windows on Partition something, it loads for a bit grey screen, then black screen and says "No Bootable Media..."...

I tried using the USB stick on a Windows machine and it booted up fine to Win7

Any idea / solutions as to why this is the case?
 
Success

ken694 said:
I don't fully understand what this guy is doing, and have not tested it myself yet. But looking at the comments it looks like this method works.
http://insidethebrackets.blogspot.com/2009/04/install-windows-on-macbook-air-with-no.html
Click to expand...

OK I tested this and it WORKS like a charm on a MacBook mid-2007 too.
Oh, and I have a broken Superdrive (DVD player). The only thing you need is an hour or so of spare time, it should work on all recent laptops reading at the comments.
 
A few months ago I managed to install Windows 7 on my MacBook from the ISO using VMware. I recently got a uMBP and tried the same method but couldn't get past the stage where I use rawdiskcreator to recognise the physical partition.

I have finally managed to get Windows 7 installed from a USB flash drive last night when I tried formatting the drive and copying over the files using cmd.exe on the Windows 7 ISO in VMware. Please note that this is the first time I have actually got this to work and I needed to use rEFIt to boot from the flash drive.

  1. Partition your HD using Boot Camp. Quit the application when you get to the step where you're asked to insert your Windows installation disk.
  2. In VMware, create a new vm using the Windows 7 ISO as an installation disk image.
  3. Once the ISO is booted access cmd.exe via the repair options. If you haven't already done so plug in your flash drive and mount it on the vm.
  4. Now to use diskpart to format the flash drive. Type the following into cmd.
    Code: 
    diskpart
    Then..
    Code: 
    list disk
    You'll get a table of recognised drives. Then we need to select the flash drive..
    Code: 
    select disk #
    # being the disk number of your flash drive in the printed table.
    Code: 
    clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=ntfs
    I have not tried this with FAT32, so can't say if it will work. Once the formatting is done you need to assign a drive letter and you're done with diskpart..
    Code: 
    assign
exit
  5. Now you need to copy the contents of the ISO to the drive. I used..
    Code: 
    xcopy D:\ E:\ /E
    The /E flag copies the directories as well as files, so just replace the drive letters. The first drive letter is the source(Windows 7 disc) and the second is the destination(USB flash).
  6. And finally, make the drive bootable. Navigate to the flash drive you copied the files to and then the 'Boot' directory.
    Code: 
    E:\
cd Boot
    Then to make the device bootable.
    Code: 
    Bootsect.exe /nt60 D:
    Again, replacing the drive letters to your own. I encountered an error during this step but was still able to boot from the drive using rEFIt. I'd think you would be able to boot from a flash drive without rEFIt if you managed to get past the last step with no errors. This may also be possible using an SD card on the MBP but I've yet to try it.
 
Usb Won't Format/erase. Help!!

HELP! I tried everything to reformat my USB in Disk Utility but it won't work! Please help.
Here's a picture:
 

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@mrs.bass

I'm no IT guy but it looks like your problem is the FAT16 format (look in the bottom left)

Try this:
- click on 972 MB Generic USB SD... in the left of the window
- choose the "Partition" tab in the top center of the window
- under volume scheme choose "1 partition" and take up all the space available since it looks like you are not using 300MB of the disk
- under format choose "Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) if you're planning to use it on Mac, or choose FAT32 if you're planning to use it on PC
- EDIT: click apply ;)

Hope it helps :p
 
Hey this is probably a stupid question. But can you put windows 7 on a external hard drive and just plug in a firewire to your mac and run it from there?
 
EX1127 said:
Hey this is probably a stupid question. But can you put windows 7 on a external hard drive and just plug in a firewire to your mac and run it from there?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, no. I've read that some people have done it, but it takes quite a bit of work.
 
No luck with booting from USB

Hi,

I'm still having trouble with this. I'm trying to install the recently released Windows 7 on a bootcamp partition alongside Snow Leopard on my Macbook Pro 2.5 Penryn (May 2008).

I've formatted and copied the Win7 install DVD contents after the instructions. The only thing I never did was edit that .msi which thefunkymunky mentioned. Mostly because I didn't understand it. Did you other guys who got this to work do that part aswell?

My errors have been two, but similar. I manage to get the USB to show when booting with rEFIt, but when selecting it (it never says USB anywhere, I just regocnize that little yellow disc icon) to the far right, I get this message:

"No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key"

and once I got this instead:

"non-system disk. Press any key to continue".

Any thoughts?
 
CJ Berri said:
[*]And finally, make the drive bootable. Navigate to the flash drive you copied the files to and then the 'Boot' directory.
Code: 
E:\
cd Boot
Then to make the device bootable.
Code: 
Bootsect.exe /nt60 D:
Again, replacing the drive letters to your own. I encountered an error during this step but was still able to boot from the drive using rEFIt. I'd think you would be able to boot from a flash drive without rEFIt if you managed to get past the last step with no errors. This may also be possible using an SD card on the MBP but I've yet to try it.
[/LIST]
Click to expand...

The reason you got that error is because you had open handles to the drive that you're trying to modify the boot sector on (i.e. you're running the .exe from a directory on that drive). I had the same issue, but if you add /force to the bootsect.exe parameters it forces a dismount and no errors are generated.

Thanks for your post though... wouldn't have been able to make it work without bootsect.exe and your post specifically :)
 
pysen said:
My errors have been two, but similar. I manage to get the USB to show when booting with rEFIt, but when selecting it (it never says USB anywhere, I just regocnize that little yellow disc icon) to the far right, I get this message:

"No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key"

and once I got this instead:

"non-system disk. Press any key to continue".

Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

Hey pysen. Just follow CJ Berri's post above re. bootsect.exe and you should be up and running. For the record, navigate to the \boot directory on your Windows 7 install source. Assuming it's mounted as drive E:, you'd then type
Code: 
bootsect /nt60 e: /force
This has to be done from a Windows machine (XP worked for me).

And no, I didn't do anything with the MSI editor.
 
i finally got win7 to install from the usb. On a pc running vista, i mounted the .iso and made the drive bootable. I used a program to mount it (the icon was a sheep, don't remember the name) and another program to copy it to the usb. Then i ran boot camp assistant on my aluminum mb and partitioned the drive, but did not try to install. Next, i installed refit and manually made it run on startup. I also ran the blesser. In finder, i copied the contents of the mounted image (shows up as folders and files) to the BOOTCAMP partition. I restarted, and when refit started up i hit + (shift and =) to get more options on the windows icon with the hard drive image in the bottom corner ( i also had a windows icon with a removable drive icon). I chose the first option and the screen went grey with a windows-like icon and kind of just froze. I held down the power button till it shut off and restarted it. This time i just tried to run the same windows and it loaded the windows installer. When it asked where to install, i chose bootcamp and had it formatted by the installer. the rest is history.
 
Croxall: More details please!!!

Specifically what machine do you mean by Aluminum MacBook? Is it the one without Firewire? What kind of USB drive did you use?
 
i'm on one of the early aluminum 13 inch macbooks (no firewire). i used a western digital passport, 120gb. I don't have bootcamp in windows, so i'm trying to get the drivers installed, but it's running fine right now (i'm on it).
 
i got the drivers installed and everything is working perfectly (sound, scrolling, right click, etc).
I skipped the serial number entry during the install, and when i downloaded microsoft's free antivirus, i passed the validation. not sure how that worked
 
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