Windows without disc? on macbook air

[jc8081]

I know i could hook up a cd drive but dont have one and really dont want to have to buy one.
I didnt get my macbook air yet but when i do is there a way to install windows without the disc? thanks

 

[balamw]

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I'm on my phone, but there is a long thread with "without SuperDrive" somewhere in the title.

Different Macs require different solutions, but there are three general approaches.

Boot from USB with rEFIt.
Use VMWare/Parallels to do the initial loading of the files to your Boot Camp partition.
Create a "throwaway" partition on your internal drive for the install files.

B

 

[Xgm541]

this is a copy + paste from a blog I found instructions on.

Required:
•USB Flash Drive (4GB+)
•Microsoft OS Disk (Vista / Windows 7)
•A computer running Vista / Windows 7
Step 1: Format the Drive
The steps here are to use the command line to format the disk properly using the diskpart utility. [Be warned: this will erase everything on your drive. Be careful.]
1.Plug in your USB Flash Drive
2.Open a command prompt as administrator (Right click on Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt and select “Run as administrator”
3.Find the drive number of your USB Drive by typing the following into the Command Prompt window:
diskpart
list disk
The number of your USB drive will listed. You’ll need this for the next step. I’ll assume that the USB flash drive is disk 1.
4.Format the drive by typing the next instructions into the same window. Replace the number “1” with the number of your disk below.
select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=NTFS
assign
exit
When that is done you’ll have a formatted USB flash drive ready to be made bootable.
Step 2: Make the Drive Bootable
Next we’ll use the bootsect utility that comes on the Vista or Windows 7 disk to make the flash drive bootable. In the same command window that you were using in Step 1:
1.Insert your Windows Vista / 7 DVD into your drive.
2.Change directory to the DVD’s boot directory where bootsect lives:
d:
cd d:\boot
3.Use bootsect to set the USB as a bootable NTFS drive prepared for a Vista/7 image. I’m assuming that your USB flash drive has been labeled disk G:\ by the computer:
bootsect /nt60 g:
4.You can now close the command prompt window, we’re done here.
Step 3: Copy the installation DVD to the USB drive
The easiest way is to use Windows explorer to copy all of the files on your DVD on to the formatted flash drive. After you’ve copied all of the files the disk you are ready to go.

source - http://kmwoley.com/blog/?p=345

After you create this bootable USB, install rEFIt (http://refit.sourceforge.net/) and start the boot camp assistant in your OS X install. It will create a partition of the size you want, and ask you to restart to install. Put the bootable USB stick in. Once you restart the rEFIt menu will pop up. If it doesnt restart again. It can take up to 2 restarts for rEFIt to show. When you see the menu you will have 2 options, OSX and Windows (with a USB icon on it), select the windows and go through the process. Dont take out the USB stick untill the install has completed (you see a windows desktop). Also, everytime it asks you to restart, make sure you re-select the windows icon in rEFIt.


For drivers, if you have a large enough USB stick, they can fit right on there. In OSX boot camp assistant, click the option that asks to download the windows boot camp drivers. Once that is done, it will ask you to save. Save it to your desktop then transfer to your USB drive. Boot back into the windows partition, insert the usb drive, and load setup.exe from the bootcamp folder to install drivers.

Personally, I havent removed the rEFIt install, but once you have installed windows 7 you can remove it by deleting the refit folder on your osx drive and bootcamp will automatically see your windows installation next time you boot up. If it doesnt, press and hold the option key on your keyboard while you boot to force your mac to go into the boot selection screen.


For a macbook air, I slipstreamed my version of windows 7 to take out a lot of unnecessary components. My MBA is used for gaming on the windows 7 partition so things like remote desktop are not necessary. My installation file went down to <1GB and the installed size was 5.05GB.

I hope this made the least bit of sense...

 

[balamw]

Just to point out that rEFIt doesn't work for this purpose on all Macs all the time, so YMMV.

Definitely give it a shot! First without rEFIt and then with, but don't assume that it will work for you unless you have hard evidence that someone with the same model Mac and exact version of Windows made it work that way.

B