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Late 2011 MBP install Windows 8 with bootcamp w/o optical drive?

L

lhan16

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 23, 2012
11
0
Hello,

I've got a late 2011 MBP. When I got it, I swapped out the stock HDD and replaced it with an SSD. Just recently, I decided I'd put that HDD back in - but in place of the optical drive. So I got one of the opti-bay knockoffs on ebay, which actually worked surprisingly well.

Well last night I decided that I wanted to put Windows 8 on the HDD with bootcamp, and just keep running OS X off my SSD.

I began going through the process and sure enough, it wanted me to install Windows from a disk. I read online that you can use Toast or Daemon Tools to mount the ISO so that you can get past that warning and continue.

That part worked fine, and it saw the ISO and let me continue, but as soon as the computer restarted (I'm assuming to begin installing Windows) it could no longer see the ISO and displayed a black screen with a message like "Could not find boot device. Please insert boot device and push any key to continue."

I was kind of freaking out at this point because to get past that, I had to manually power down the computer and the first couple of times I turned it back on, I got the same screen! But, finally it came back on and booted into OS X (after I pushed the option key to select my SSD to boot from, even though the HDD wasn't an option at this point, only my recovery drive).

I did a bunch of searching last night but couldn't really find a solution to my problem. Is there a way for me to install Windows with bootcamp but without an optical drive? If so, was I on the right track? How can I keep the image mounted when the computer restarts?

Many thanks in advance!
-Lloyd
 
As far as I remember, if your Mac came with an ODD, then you cannot install Windows using a USB stick or any other method. You have to install it using the ODD. I am not sure if someone found a workaround to this eventually.
 
Thanks for the reply! From everything I've seen online, it should be possible. That's where I got the idea to use Daemon Tools to mount the ISO (specifically using a 3rd party program to mount the image, since the built in Disk Utility is smart enough to know the disk isn't present).

I just don't know what I did wrong to keep the image mounted when the computer restarts during the bootcamp process?
 
lhan16 said:
Thanks for the reply! From everything I've seen online, it should be possible. That's where I got the idea to use Daemon Tools to mount the ISO (specifically using a 3rd party program to mount the image, since the built in Disk Utility is smart enough to know the disk isn't present).

I just don't know what I did wrong to keep the image mounted when the computer restarts during the bootcamp process?
Click to expand...

Having a quick look at what Daemon Tools does, there is no way it can be used to do what you're trying to do. It runs when the operating system runs, not during the boot procedure so there is no ISO mounted.

You would need something like rEFIT and install from a Windows 8 USB install that you've made.

http://refit.sourceforge.net/

Here is a procedure that you can follow

http://www.andrewsavory.com/blog/2011/2156
 
I wasn't able to get the terminal commands to run correctly... I'm not sure if something changed with the latest version of VMWare Fusion (5.0.0 is what I downloaded).

I also found an article where it shows you how to update a file so that the Bootcamp Assistant will let my MBP have the option to create a bootable windows USB drive, but again it can't find it once the computer restarts.

This is very frustrating - especially since I've wiped and formatted my HDD already.

I also saw someone mention putting the optical drive back in, then using boot camp correctly to install windows on the drive beforehand (which would require me to swap out my OS X SSD drive out with my original HDD, which has no OS on it currently, so I'm not sure how that could work...).

Does anyone have any other ideas, or maybe elaborate some more on those terminal commands for VMWare Fusion?
 
Why not just buy a Sata to USB cable? Connect it with your optical drive and hook it up to your MBP. It should work.
 
If you happen to have Parallels or VMWare I'd strongly recommend installing it on a virtual machine from an ISO file. It'll be easier to remove it when you come to the conclusion everyone else has that Windows 8 is abysmal. (Before anyone starts accusing me of being a Mac OS fanboy, I love Windows 7). I did the Win8 bootcamp thing and removed it after just a couple of days - it's pretty much unusable as an OS and a total mess.
 
The best way to do it, is to use WinClone. I used my GF laptop, a early 2011, and installed Windows 7 on it, then took a backup with winclone and exported it to my own MBP. Thats a Early 2011 aswell.

Eventually PM, and I might be able to help with one, but you will need your original serial and then upgrade to Windows 8. Thus I don't know if Bootcamp supports Windows 8 yet.
 
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