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Installing Win7 when your DVD drive is busted?

I

illjazz

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 18, 2008
227
2
My sister needs to install Win7 on her Macbook Pro. Unfortunately, the DVD drive on the Macbook doesn't work properly anymore. She's currently got Win7 installed via WMWare, but for the software she needs Windows for, it's too slow and she needs to boot into Windows to get acceptable performance, i.e. she needs to install Windows using Bootcamp.

I thought it was a feature of both VMWare and Parallels to simply move an existing VM to a Bootcamp partition... some googling just now seems to have led me to the opposite conclusion, however. Namely that that's not possible and that you need to do a new Bootcamp install.

She's running Lion and is up to date.

Suggestions?
 
I needed to install Windows on my old Macbook a few years ago and had the same problem. I installed a third party boot manager that let me install it pretty trouble free. Sorry I can't remember the name of the boot manager. I just wanted to let you know that there is a free easy solution. I'd research that angle.
 
Thanks guys. I forwarded a link to this thread to her. I'll try to take a look at the other thread tonight as well.

Thank you!
 
OK, I read through that entire thread balamw posted, and the dedication to solving this problem over there is admirable. My sister is not going to understand any of that, though.

I'm surprised there is no commercial software available that covers exactly this problem. Installing Windows on a Mac whose DVD drive is busted. Seems like quite an opportunity!

Also, I'd suggest she just buy Apple's Superdrive, but it appears that only works with Macbook Airs/Minis... how lame :/

I think that would be by far the easiest solution for her as she needs this done fast and doesn't have the time to fiddle around and follow guides etc. Anyone know a good site for external DVD burner reviews? Or can you recommend a good one?

Thanks!
 
I am surprised no one has written an app that is essentially a virtual DVD-ROM from which you can load a DVD ISO file. But an Apple employee told me you should be able to load the disk in a drive on another computer an all you need to do is share the drive. I would imagine this also applues to virtual drives, too.

I have used Daemon tools on a PC an it loads up to four ISO files into virtual drives, and I can share them on my network.
 
balamw said:
FWIW there was a report recently that claimed that 10.7.2 enabled Boot Camp installs from ISO, at least for the MBA.
Click to expand...

That's how I did my install on my mba 13 ( was up on 10.7.2 before setting up my bootcamp ... on this machine ... long story ).
 
Why not just get an external DVD USB drive? I've used one to install Office on my older MBP (DVD drive broken) and also used one to install Win7 on my new MBA which has no disk drive at all.

Besides, if her disk drive is broken, having an external drive around can come in handy for other uses as well.
 
balamw said:
FWIW there was a report recently that claimed that 10.7.2 enabled Boot Camp installs from ISO, at least for the MBA.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1260388/

B
Click to expand...

Does this also work with DMGs or just ISOs? Does it make a difference? This would be by far the easiest method here, obviously. I still think she should get an external DVD drive, but for the moment, this would be perfect if it works.
 
Installing Windows from a USB is the way to go, so much quicker than using a DVD..
 
oli356 said:
Installing Windows from a USB is the way to go, so much quicker than using a DVD..
Click to expand...

I agree. I researched this option quite a bit and did not find a simple, working solution to do it... is there one?

I'm curious, even though my sister has solved the problem in the meantime. She just used an external DVD drive.
 
Use a USB drive, then use this command to bmake the drive bootable, from windows. CD "X:\Boot" bootsect.exe /nt60 Z: /mbr

nt60 is Vista or Win7, use nt52 for XP

X is your CD drive, Z is your USB drive.
 
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