Hi all, I'm not sure if I've written about this here before, but I'm having one hell of a time trying to install Windows on my Mac, the biggest problem being that my internal superdrive no longer works. I'll explain what I've tried so far in more detail below:
First, because my superdrive is broken, I tried using 2 external USB DVD drives. One was an LG that worked with AC power, the other was powered purely by USB, but I don't know its make or model. In both cases, I could select the Windows DVD as a startup disk in System preferences. However, the LG AC powered drive hung on the "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD" message, while the USB only drive Skipped booting from the disk entirely. This happened both when trying to install Windows to a Bootcamp partition, and when changing the partition map scheme of my internal hard drive to MBR and trying to install the way you would on a traditional PC, which, just so everyone is aware, actually does work. I did it in January of this year when my Superdrive was still functional, and had no problems. Next, I created and booted from a CCC backup, downloaded and installed VirtualBox, and used its command line interface to create a vmdk file that would give me raw disk access to my internal hard drive. I used VMWare Fusion to create a new, custom virtual machine, then edited its configuration file to include the vmdk file with raw disk access. I was able to boot the virtual machine from both DVD drives, so I went through the Windows install process until I got to the desktop. I Rebooted the Mac from the internal drive, and got all the way to "Starting Windows" before the computer restarted itself and went to the Startup Repair screen. I told Windows to fix whatever it thought the problem was, but no luck. It did the same thing. So I started up from my external hard disk, booted the virtual machine and reran the installer from within Windows itself, thinking that my previous attempt may have failed due to hardware changes that occur when running Windows virtually ass opposed to natively. I hoped that, by running the first part of the install that copies the files from the DVD to the hard drive, then rebooting the machine completely and finishing the install on the native Mac hardware, all the correct components would be detected. Well, that was, and still is, merely a nice thought. I got as far as "Setup is loading files" and "Starting Windows" when I rebooted, then got a "Windows was unable to start the installation" error and an "OK" button. I pressed it, the computer restarted, and came up with the same error. Lastly, I tried using a flash drive created with the Windows 7 USB DVD download tool to install from, but the Mac wouldn't boot from that either. I installed the rEFIt boot manager and used that to boot from the flash drive, but still had no success. I'm at my wit's end here. Is the Mac seriously that full of crap about the devices it boots from? I've reset the parameter RAM, reset the SMC, checked for possible software updates, used different flash drives and Windows DVD's, but none if that seems to make any difference. I don't have, or know anybody who has, access to an Apple USB superdrive, so I can't confirm whether or not that will work. Does anyone know how I could possibly resolve this? I need the resources on this Mac for large sample libraries i want to run, and my PC just doesn't have enough power. Thanks for all the help you guys provide. It's very much appreciated. Regards, Gavin Grundlingh Phone: +27 (0) 83 713-6191 Secondary Phone: +27 (0) 79 157-2466 Fax: +27 (0) 86 617-5792 Email: [email protected] Secondary Email: [email protected] Skype: Batworx Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/batworx Twitter: http://twitter.com/batworx -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
