Resolved Installing Win7 on a MBP with a broken SuperDrive

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Everyday for the past week, I've tried to find a way to get this to work.
I recently upgraded to 10.8.2 Mountain Lion, and while I was at it I figured it would be best to also wipe my Boot Camp partition to start a fresh installation of Windows 7. I have successfully installed OSX via a USB stick, and have my Win7 ISO prepared on a separate USB stick. After modifying the Info.plist file found in Boot Camp Assistant.app, I was able to get USB support enabled for my machine. I checked all the boxes in Boot Camp, pointed it to my Win7 ISO image as well as my USB stick, and it prepared it as expected.

The problem I face is that my machine doesn't display my USB device in Open Firmware while holding the option key upon reboot. And if I allow it to boot into the Boot Camp partition, I just get a black screen that says "No Bootable device -- Insert boot disk and press any key" which leads me to believe that this is an EFI related issue.

I've tried several options (and I am still trying), including the use of rEFIt. I'vm currently trying to figure out a way to use parallels desktop to install Win7 as a Virtual Machine, then trying to backup the entire Win7 partition, in an attempt to port it over to the OSX partition, convert it and run a restore on the Bootcamp partition. But I'm almost at a complete loss here.

If anyone knows how I can achieve a proper Windows 7 Bootcamp installation on a MacBook Pro without the use of my broken DVD Combo drive, I beg you to let me know!! Thanks!

 

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Well the Parallels method hit a few walls. Mainly, there was no real way to convert the virtual installation into a physical one. I am now trying the methods described in the following links:

http://blog.laaz.org/tech/2012/04/24/installing-windows-7-on-macbook-pro-without-superdrive/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/631901/

http://www.andrewsavory.com/blog/2011/2156

... I'll update this thread with success / failure stories.

 

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Okay so I finally got Windows 7 installing on my Bootcamp partition!
I followed the steps provided here: http://www.andrewsavory.com/blog/2011/2156
... with the exception of a few additional steps:

- Right after creating the raw disks (*.vmdk files), you might need to edit their permissions so that VMWare is able to read & write to them. You can do so by right-clicking the files in Finder, clicking "Get Info", scroll down to "Sharing and Permissions", unlocking the form by clicking the lock in the lower-right corner (if it's not already unlocked), then changing the appropriate user groups (or just all of them) to "Read & Write". If you don't see "Administrators" as a user group, it would be a good idea to click the '+' button and add it to the list, then modify it to "Read & Write" as well.

- In the virtual machine's settings, after you select the location of your Windows 7 ISO (Under CD/DVD IDE), be sure to also go into Startup Disk and change it to CD/DVD so that VMWare will boot the ISO image via emulation (as if it were an installation CD in a DVD drive).

 

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This is the final update to my previous posts. I have finally found a solution that works flawlessly, and allows you to install Windows 7 on your MacBok Pro's bootcamp partition via USB without the use of the internal SuperDrive: http://huguesval.com/blog/2012/02/installing-windows-7-on-a-mac-without-superdrive-with-virtualbox/

All prior attempts only got me as far as a black screen displaying various boot errors, but that article saved my life and I hope it can do the same for someone else in the future. Please note, however, that you will need to purchase a copy of Winclone in order to complete the steps provided in the article.