Boot Camp not installing Windows 7 - "No bootable device, insert boot disk and press any key."

I need some help with something. A while back, I put a brand new hard drive in my MacBook, a 500 GB model to replace the 120 GB one. I cloned everything successfully to the new drive via Carbon Copy Cloner, but now I want to make a Boot Camp partition on the drive. The SuperDrive in it is defective, so I use an external FireWire drive. So far the Boot Camp Assistant in 10.7 Lion works fine in creating the partition, but when it gets to the part where it tries to boot into the Windows installation disk (32-bit Windows 7 Home Premium, or could the 64-bit work fine as well?), it shows a black scree nwith "No bootable device, insert boot disk and press any key." I try pressing keys, but nothing happens.
I also tried using rEFIt, but that didn't work out either.
Here are the specifications of my machine...
MacBook (Early 2009 model)
2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
4 GB of RAM
500 GB SATA hard drive
Dual-layer SuperDrive (defective, may replace it once I have the cash)
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics chip
Mac OS X 10.7.2 Lion
Can anyone help me out with this? Is there some sort of workaround?

Wiley207 wrote:
Believe it or not, it was the FireWire drive that was the problem! I managed to successfully install Windows 7 using an external USB DVD drive!
Well I am truly staggered, I have tried this on two different MacBook Pros, with three different external USB optical drives. Don't know if you googled as I suggested but you would find hundreds of others who have found same thing. The exception is MacBook Air which works with the Apple writer, but I don't know much about this.
Were you doing any of the special workarounds with refedit etc?
What model USB DVD drive?

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Wiley207 wrote:
Believe it or not, it was the FireWire drive that was the problem! I managed to successfully install Windows 7 using an external USB DVD drive!
Well I am truly staggered, I have tried this on two different MacBook Pros, with three different external USB optical drives. Don't know if you googled as I suggested but you would find hundreds of others who have found same thing. The exception is MacBook Air which works with the Apple writer, but I don't know much about this.
Were you doing any of the special workarounds with refedit etc?
What model USB DVD drive?

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Hi,
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Gruß steini

Starte deinen iMac neu und halte dabei die Alt/Option-taste gedrückt bis der Start-Manager erscheint.
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Stefan

Problems with Bootcamp Assistant: no bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key

Hello Guys,
I got a problem setting up Windows 7 on my recently bought 13" MacBook Pro (2,3Ghz Core i5).
I used the bootcamp assistent to create a partition of 50GB on my Mac, everything is fine until now. I insert the Windows 7 disk and follow the instructions. But when I restart in spite of starting the installation of Windows 7, a black screen appears with a note saying "no bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key". To exit this screen I then have to restart my Computer again, holding down the alt-key. In the following window I can just chose my Mac-Harddrive to boot from, the partition is not shown.
I used the software actualization tool to update to version 10.6.7 which is the most recent one i think.
The Windows 7 CD I use is actually a burned one. My University is a member of the msdn academic alliance and therefore offers me to download microsoft software for my work. I stress out that this is absolutly legal, I will only be allowed to use the software unitl I finished my studyings.
So as I said, I downloaded the Version of Windows 7 Professional with Service Pack 1 (x64) on my computer and then burned on a DVD. I want to add, that the file I downloaded turned out to be an iso file. At first, I just burned this file on a DVD but since it turned out that i got the above mentioned message, I burned a second DVD with the actual files of the iso (with foldernames like autorun.inf, boot, bootmgr, bootmgr.efi, efi, setup.exe, sources support, and upgrade)
I dont know if these details are of any relevance, but i guess it may be useful since I believe that the burning thing could cause the problems.
I have already browsed the Forum for quite some time now, but I didnt find a case with the exact same problem that I have, so I decided to rather ask you for help now instead of killing my brain like I did before (and I dont really have a clue neither of Macbooks nor of Windows-Computers, its always try and error for me)
I hope somebody can come up with some helpful ideas or a solution.
If you need further details on my system or anything, please feel free to ask
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David

The Windows 7 CD I use is actually a burned one. My University is a member of the msdn academic alliance and therefore offers me to download microsoft software for my work. I stress out that this is absolutly legal, I will only be allowed to use the software unitl I finished my studyings.
Apple Disk Utility won't do a proper job and won't work (and it varies, some can start the install but fails later) Has to be burned at 2X Reduced Burn Speed
Also check the support articles for bootcamp
Apple Boot Camp Support

No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key, over and over again...

I've seen a lot of discussions about "no bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key" but the answers in them don't seem to help me at all.
from the begining...
i was tryin to instal windows 7 on my 2014 iMac and after bootcamp prepared the iso on a flash drive, the computer restarted in the windows instalation screen and i chose the "BOOTCAMP" partition.
After thi i got an error with a mesage that the partition wans not in ntfs, and a question if i wanted to format it. As i am recent to OSX but i was a windows user for quite a while i thought, ok there should be no problem about letting windows format this BOOTCAMP partition so i went ahead and did it. after this i stopped the process because at the moment i seem to recal that in the mac osx bootcamp help there was something about making sure to installing windows to the BOOTCAMP partition. So i canceled the process and restarted the iMac.
Now i get the "no bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key" message over and over.
I've tryed restarting with alt, alt+cmd+p+r, alt+r, etc and allways get the same message.
Just before tryin to install windows on a secondary partition had the iMac backup to an external drive on my airport express via time machine.
Questions.
are there any other ways to boot into OSX again, or after letting windows format the BOOTCAMP partition all is lost?
If everything is lost, how do i boot to restore my time machine backup from the external drive?
all help is apreciated.
Thanks in advance

Sorry about that I just realized that Boot Camp may have decompressed your ISO, We can't really do much because Boot Camp may have told the mac to boot from the flash drive, but now your mac is most likely not being told to boot from it. (You where able to boot from the drive before so I would keep it all intact) Is your keyboard wireless (because it can cause your mac to not to register keys being pushed at the Macs start) which this may be preventing you from getting into recovery mode (Command-R) or the OS choosing screen (Option).

No bootable device - Please insert boot disk and press any key

So I tried all yesterday to get bootcamp to work, and this is what happens. I get through all the steps of bootcamp with my USB, and when it restarts, it comes up with an error on a black screen: "No bootable device - Please insert boot disk and press any key". I checked that I have all the support files downloaded, but it just doesn't work. How can I fix this so that it recognizes my USB? I found this thread, but when I follow the first command that the answer does in the terminal, it doesn't work. Does anyone know the solution to get my computer to recognize my USB? Or be able to fix that command in the thread I linked? I'm on a Macbook Pro 2011 running 10.8.5 Mountain Lion, trying to install Windows 7 64-bit with a USB drive. Please HELP!

Since your MacBook Pro shipped with an Optickal Drive, Boot Camp it looking to that optical drive for the Windows bootable install media. My guess is that you "hacked" your configuration to get the USB installation options as they weren't there on teh stock Mountain Lion install on a Late 2011 MBP.
In the many threads about people who have done what you seem to be trying you will see thant some claim that just putting a disc in the optical drive will allow them to continue the installation from the USB stick. That might work for you, or it might not. If not, just use the Optical drive for your installation.

Boot Camp not installing Windows 7 - "No bootable device, insert boot disk and press any key."

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