W7 will not install.

[Deepsiix]

I've tried just about every way to install W7 on my new 2011 15" MBP that I've come across.

First thing I did was take out the optical drive and replace it with an SSD, which is my boot drive. I then put the optical drive in an enclosure so I could use it to install Windows 7.

I'd like to have OSX on my SSD and W7 on a partition of the additional 750gb drive that came with the computer.

I tried the standard way of creating a boot camp partition on the 750gb HDD and booting, holding option to for the boot disc. It either goes to a plain black screen or with a cursor blinking indefinitely. So this doesn't work.

Next I used the W7 disc image to install it to VMWare Fusion 3.1, I followed the instructions of deleting the 100mb partition. Here

W7 installed successfully and works fine. Now I tried to use Winclone 2.3 hacked to run on Lion to create an image of my VM and restore it to the bootcamp partition I had created earlier on my hdd. I unchecked the correct boxes and the image was created successfully.

When I try to restore the image I created to my bootcamp partition, it gets to 100% and says "error found check log" I also unmounted my bootcamp partition as suggested by some other forums posts I found here.

 99.92 percent completed
100.00 percent completed
Accounting clusters ...
Space in use       : 10099 MB (23.5%)
Collecting resizing constraints ...
Schedule chkdsk for NTFS consistency check at Windows boot time ...
Resetting $LogFile ... (this might take a while)
Updating $BadClust file ...
Updating $Bitmap file ...
Updating Boot record ...
Syncing device ...
Successfully resized NTFS on device '/dev/disk1s3'.
Unmounting /dev/disk1s3
/usr/sbin/diskutil unmount "/dev/disk1s3"return value of unmount is 256

output is disk1s3 was already unmounted

Unmounting /dev/disk1s3
/usr/sbin/diskutil unmount "/dev/disk1s3"return value of unmount is 256

output is disk1s3 was already unmounted

Unmounting /dev/disk1s3
/usr/sbin/diskutil unmount "/dev/disk1s3"return value of unmount is 256

output is disk1s3 was already unmounted

Unmounting /dev/disk1s3
/usr/sbin/diskutil unmount "/dev/disk1s3"return value of unmount is 256

output is disk1s3 was already unmounted

Unmounting /dev/disk1s3
/usr/sbin/diskutil unmount "/dev/disk1s3"return value of unmount is 256

output is disk1s3 was already unmounted

Unmounting /dev/disk1s3
/usr/sbin/diskutil unmount "/dev/disk1s3"return value of unmount is 256

output is disk1s3 was already unmounted

Unmounting /dev/disk1s3
/usr/sbin/diskutil unmount "/dev/disk1s3"return value of unmount is 256

output is disk1s3 was already unmounted

Unmounting /dev/disk1s3
/usr/sbin/diskutil unmount "/dev/disk1s3"return value of unmount is 256

output is disk1s3 was already unmounted

Unmounting /dev/disk1s3
/usr/sbin/diskutil unmount "/dev/disk1s3"return value of unmount is 256

output is disk1s3 was already unmounted

Unmounting /dev/disk1s3
Use of uninitialized value $command in concatenation (.) or string at /Applications/Winclone.app/Contents/Resources/winclone.perl line 551.
/usr/sbin/diskutil unmount "/dev/disk1s3"return value of unmount is 256

output is disk1s3 was already unmounted

 did not complete successfully
cleaning up: Mounting Disk
Volume (null) on /dev/disk1s3 mounted
Sat Aug 20 15:08:50 CDT 2011

Any ideas?

Last resort I can take my ssd boot drive out and use the optical drive to install w7 on the 750gb hdd. I can parition it in osx before I take the boot drive out. Will I be able to start the computer and install W7 without the boot drive present? It will only have my hdd with no evidence of OS X and a 160gb empty boot camp partition.

 

[ZBoater]

Did you try Bootcamp Assistant?

 

[Deepsiix]

Did you try Bootcamp Assistant?

Yes, that's the first way I tried. When I boot to install Windows, it's just a blinking cursor or a black screen. External optical drive works fine as Mac OS X can see the disc and it's contents.

Gonna borrow my bro's Macbook to install W7 on my HDD since it's much easier to take it out of mine, than put the optical drive back in to install Windows.

 

[ZBoater]

Sorry, but I am confused as I don't know where the optical drive comes into play. Must be because I'm using a MacBook Air and it doesnt come with an optical drive, so Bootcamp works it thing without one.

Good luck!

 

[Quad5Ny]

Make sure to power down the computer right after Windows setup does the first restart, DO NOT let it go back into setup. You don't need the DVD anymore after this point, everything is already loaded onto the drive.

After you power down swap the drive into your computer.

The reason your doing this is because after the first restart it starts doing hardware individualization steps (Windows is a bit more picky than OS X if you swap hard drives from a already setup system).

 

[Young Spade]

Yes, that's the first way I tried. When I boot to install Windows, it's just a blinking cursor or a black screen. External optical drive works fine as Mac OS X can see the disc and it's contents.

Gonna borrow my bro's Macbook to install W7 on my HDD since it's much easier to take it out of mine, than put the optical drive back in to install Windows.

Yea, you cannot just burn the ISO to the disk and run it. I went through 2 blank DVDs thinking you could simply do that.

I would get the guide but I think I deleted my history; find a guide online that shows you how to create a bootable Win 7 disk. You have to go into the Program (I forgot what program I used, it was for Windows though) and mess with a few files/settings before burning.

 

[Deepsiix]

Make sure to power down the computer right after Windows setup does the first restart, DO NOT let it go back into setup. You don't need the DVD anymore after this point, everything is already loaded onto the drive.

After you power down swap the drive into your computer.

The reason your doing this is because after the first restart it starts doing hardware individualization steps (Windows is a bit more picky than OS X if you swap hard drives from a already setup system).

I dont think you read this properly. I couldnt even get to the windows set up at all.

Yea, you cannot just burn the ISO to the disk and run it. I went through 2 blank DVDs thinking you could simply do that.

I would get the guide but I think I deleted my history; find a guide online that shows you how to create a bootable Win 7 disk. You have to go into the Program (I forgot what program I used, it was for Windows though) and mess with a few files/settings before burning.

Yes you can just burn the iso to a dvd. I did it on my previous macbook pro and I just borrowed my brothers computer and it went off without a hitch.

I ended up putting my hdd into my bro's macbook that had been partitioned by bootcamp assistant, installing W7 on it, then putting the hdd back in my own macbook pro.

 

[Quad5Ny]

I dont think you read this properly. I couldnt even get to the windows set up at all.

Yes I did. Those were the instructions for you putting the drive in your brothers computer and then swapping it back.

It was telling you to power down your brothers computer after the first setup restart and put the HD back in yours.