Installation of Windows 7 via USB External HDD (Boot Camp Assistant)

How do I mount Windows 7 Ultimate disk image (.iso) onto my USB external HDD so that I can boot using that USB external HDD? I have tried reEFIt, but it doesn't work for me. It may be because I did something wrong. I would appreciate a comprehensive guide. Thanks.

i suspect you haven't prepared the USB drive as a boot volume.
You can absolutely do this. It is detailed on CNET in the following article: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31012_7-20020513-10355804.html

Similar Messages

Can I install Windows on my Mac without Boot Camp Assistant?

I was wondering if this was possible, or does Boot Camp Assistant format the hard drive in such a way that makes it possible for Windows to be installed, or can I just create a new partition myself and format it and install Windows without having to touch Boot Camp Assistant?

Windows on Intel Macs
There are presently several alternatives for running Windows on Intel Macs.
1. Install the Apple Boot Camp software. Purchase Windows XP w/Service Pak2, Vista, or Windows 7. Follow instructions in the Boot Camp documentation on installation of Boot Camp, creating Driver CD, and installing Windows. Boot Camp enables you to boot the computer into OS X or Windows.
2. Parallels Desktop for Mac and Windows XP, Vista Business, Vista Ultimate, or Windows 7. Parallels is software virtualization that enables running Windows concurrently with OS X.
3. VM Fusionand Windows XP, Vista Business, Vista Ultimate, or Windows 7. VM Fusion is software virtualization that enables running Windows concurrently with OS X.
4. CrossOver which enables running many Windows applications without having to install Windows. The Windows applications can run concurrently with OS X.
5. VirtualBox is a new Open Source freeware virtual machine such as VM Fusion and Parallels that was developed by Solaris. It is not as fully developed for the Mac as Parallels and VM Fusion.
Note that Parallels and VM Fusion can also run other operating systems such as Linux, Unix, OS/2, Solaris, etc. There are performance differences between dual-boot systems and virtualization. The latter tend to be a little slower (not much) and do not provide the video performance of the dual-boot system. See MacTech.com's Virtualization Benchmarking for comparisons of Boot Camp, Parallels, and VM Fusion. Boot Camp is only available with Leopard or Snow Leopard. Except for Crossover and a couple of similar alternatives like DarWine you must have a valid installer disc for Windows.
You must also have an internal optical drive for installing Windows. Windows cannot be installed from an external optical drive.

I am having problems with downloading Windows Support Software by using Boot Camp Assistant. Is there somewhere else I can download from?

I am having problems with downloading Windows Support Software by using Boot Camp Assistant. Is there somewhere else I can download from?

No. There is no other location. Be patient. Read the posts in the Bootcamp Forum. There are hundreds of posts about your issue and what to do. https://discussions.apple.com/community/windows_software/boot_camp

How can I uncheck the option to 'download latest windows support software' in the boot camp assistant? The option to uncheck is locked

MBP 2013 Retina running OSX 10.9.2
I am trying to install Boot Camp using Boot Camp Assistant 5.1.2 (481)
I have a Windows 7 Pro ISO from MS.
When I open the Boot Camp assistant and try to create a bootable USB, it freezes on the 'downloading windows support software' part. I have tried multiple times.
I was able to download the latest support software from Apple, but no matter what I try I am unable to uncheck the box to download the software in the boot camp assistant
Ideas?

Me too have the same problem where i couldnt uncheck the 'download windows support software' option when im installing Windows 8 Pro (ISO in bootable USB 3.0) using Boot Camp on my MBP retina OS X 10.9.2.
And if i have to follow these steps, it takes too much time and im not sure if it will be finished or not (im stopping the process for i have waiting for at least 3 hours downloading). And im pretty sure my internet connection is doing good when downloading this thing. What's happening here?
Please help.

Clone Windows HD to use for Boot Camp

Hello Apple Forum!
I have a bit of an issue. I have had a laptop where the motherboard has died on me. The harddrive is perfectly fine though. What i want to do is clone the hard drive and have that set as the partition for Boot Camp. Is this possible?
- First, could I put the hard drive into another laptop to clone it to an external HD? Even though there will be driver issues when I boot up WIndows 7 Pro.
- Second, once I have the copied image onto my external hard drive, could I clone that to the boot camp partition?
Or, would I need to install a fresh installation of Windows 7 Pro on the Boot Camp, then download Acronis True Image and allow Acronis to handle the disk image on my external hard drive?
Thanks.

Moving Windows means
You have retail copy in order to reactivate
Dell OEM won't work
The motherboard drivers are totally different and can't be uninstalled.
Clean install is required
I'll leave it to you as to what methods to clone that can restore onto a Mac with hyrid GPT

Multiple Partitions/ Windows 7 / Boot Camp Assistant

Hello All,
I scoured the post here and in the Snow Leopard forum and gathered a lot of good info regarding partitions and Boot Camp.
I am planning to divide a 500GB drive on a MacBook Pro into 5 partitions, one of which I plan to install Windows 7 Professional (32-bit). The 5 partitions I want/need are:
10.6.3 #1
10.6.3 #2 (for testing and experimenting or maybe my old 10.5.8 setup)
Media
Archive
Windows 7
I understand that Boot Camp Assistant will only allow me to setup a Boot Camp partition on a drive that has NOT been previously partitioned. Therefore I plan to use Disk Utility and iPartition....
I have come up with two possible methods to achieve my goal and wanted to see if any of you have any input as to whether of not I am setting myself for a big bag of hurt or not...
Method One:
Use Disk Utility to divide the drive into 3 partitions:
120GB for 10.6.3
325GB that I will partition later into 3 drives
55GB Windows 7 (MS-DOS (FAT))
(This will make the Windows 7 partition 4, which will satisfy the limitation of Windows only seeing 4 partitions.)
Install Windows and then use iPartition to resize and divide the 325GB partition into the 3 that I need/want. (Being careful that nothing I do in iPartition moves or changes the Windows 7 partition.)
Method 2:
Use Disk Utility to divide the drive into 5 partitions:
120GB -- 10.6.3
120GB -- 10.5.8 (or whatever)
55GB -- Windows 7 (MS-DOS (FAT))
100GB -- Media
RemainingGB -- Archive
This will still make the Windows 7 partition #4 or lower.
I have tried both way and have not had any problem installing Windows 7 but wanted to see if anyone had an strong feelings against this approach.
Any thoughts or suggestions??
Thanks
John

Hey, from having spent some time trying to partition many partitions on macbooks, here are some thoughts:
- Not sure if the boot camp assistant will let you go that interesting...
- Were you thinking about using refit to select partitions on boot? I can vouch that it works well, but keep in mind that the MBR that it creates can only support 4 partitions as you noticed.. in practice i've only been able to create 2 dos/ntfs partitions that you can use to boot windows off.
My drive setup is as follows:
- 1 420gb partition for osx and data (since bootcamp 3 has read support for the apple file system, i keep my media etc on this partition to keep apple app's happy and use read access from windows).
- 1 40gb partition for windows.
- 1 40gb partition for windows data (so you can reinstall windows if you need to and keep your games/standalone apps somewhere without having to reinstall).
How i go about this is:
1. Boot into your mac with the osx install/restore dvd.
2. Run diskutils.
3. Create your partition structure as needed. (i'm not sure if you can preserve your osx partition when creating new fat partitions, i think resizing works ok, but i always delete the partition structure and start fresh).
Its important under this step to create your dos partitions here and format them as fat32. I found it a real hassle/impossible to tell your osx about dos partitions later if you create them in a different way later. Without too much effort, osx doesn't seem to like logical dos partitions.
4. Reinstall osx if you want/need.
5. Boot into osx and install refit.
6. Reboot with the windows cd in, and from refit, run your windows installer.
Also important, while you install windows, chose one of the dos partitions, and format it to ntfs, but dont add/delete partitions from windows installer. In my experience, as soon as you let the windows built in partition tool touch the partition table on a mac, you've lost your mac partition. No refit, no mac selection, straight to windows. ie, start again. If you simply format a fat32 drive created via disk util.. all is fine.
After all is done, when you boot back into osx, your windows partitions will be available (though read only if ntfs). Your osx partitions should also be available in windows.
I've tried using a partition tool in windows with some success (easus partition manager i think) but when i added new partitions via this, i couldn't/gave up getting those partitions visible in osx..
Getting windows and osx partitions to play nicely in both operating systems is a quite fun and long adventure if you want more than 2 partitions As mentioned earlier, how i run is my bulk storage is on the osx partition, keeps apple apps happy and read access via windows works better than the other way around.
Another handy trick is you can backup your windows partition with a mac utility called winclone. If you've gotten into the habit of keeping images of clean, activated windows installs for a quick restore its great. I've tested myself on a windows 7 install and it works well (save that the boot entry somehow shows up as windows vista business on restore, i had to get in with bcdedit to fix it).

Windows 7, iMac 27-inch, Boot Camp 5.0 quandry

Though I was told the iMac I bought could run Windows 7 in a partition separate from my OS X 10.8.1, it seems quite impossible. Here's what I tried:
Failed to download "Windows Support Software" as first step. Boot Camp Assistant stalls about halfway through "download."
Tried using the Install Windows option in Boot Camp Assistant. The Assistant will only create a FAT32 volume; Windows 7 need NTFS+.
Used a hack (NTFS-G3) to restore NTFS as an option in the Disk Utility. Partitioned the drive with an NTFS partition (216GB) called BOOTCAMP.
Ran installer for Win 7 Home Premium, but cannot get it to complete because the installer can't control the restarts.
For now I've given up. What gives? Perhaps the iPhone market is sucking the life out of Apple computers. It's the first time I've had this experience with an Apple in 30 years of using their products.

MrClyne wrote:
Though I was told the iMac I bought could run Windows 7 in a partition separate from my OS X 10.8.1, it seems quite impossible. Here's what I tried:
Failed to download "Windows Support Software" as first step. Boot Camp Assistant stalls about halfway through "download."
Be patient. Read the hundreds of Windows Support Software posts. The download servers are notoriously slow. Keep trying.
Tried using the Install Windows option in Boot Camp Assistant. The Assistant will only create a FAT32 volume; Windows 7 need NTFS+.
Boot Camp Assistant does format the Boot Camp partition NTFS. You have not followed the Boot Camp Installation Guides. Select the Advanced menu option when you get to the part of the process about needed to format the drive. Make sure you select only the Boot Camp partition to be formatted. Boot Camp will automatically format it as NTFS.
Used a hack (NTFS-G3) to restore NTFS as an option in the Disk Utility. Partitioned the drive with an NTFS partition (216GB) called BOOTCAMP.
Use only Boot Camp Assistant to do the NTFS formatting.
Ran installer for Win 7 Home Premium, but cannot get it to complete because the installer can't control the restarts.
For now I've given up. What gives? Perhaps the iPhone market is sucking the life out of Apple computers. It's the first time I've had this experience with an Apple in 30 years of using their products.
Follow the Boot Camp Installation Guides.

Boot Camp Assistant NOT letting me to remove/install windows

Hi all,
Some how after an update, the Boot camp HD disapeared from the startup disk utility so I could not boot my Mackbook pro in Windows 7. Then I tried to uninstall Windows 7 using Boot camp assistant but with no luck. Finaly, I decided to erase the Bootcamp HD partition using the Disk utilities and then Enlarge my Mac HD.
Now, I am trying to install windows 7 again using the Boot camp assistant but I got this dioluge in teh pic attached. As you can see, i cannot select the second option which is install or remove windows 7.
Any solutions.

No, not now. Once you used Disk Utility to remove the Windows partition you prevented Boot Camp from managing the drive. You can either repartition the whole drive from scratch or you can purchase Paragon Camptune X 10 and see if it can't help put humpty-dumpty together again.

I'm trying to run Boot Camp Assistant, inserted a 1g USB to set up-but it's stuck at roughly 20%?!? Help

I'm trying to set up Boot Camp so I can play Everquest II (ha, yes...) on my mac but it only runs on Windows....
It's been at this status for over 30 minutes

Instead of downloading the Windows support software from the Boot Camp Assistant, try this from the Apple website. If you are trying to install 64-bit Windows 7 or 8, download this Windows support version > http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1638
If you are trying to install 32-bit Windows 7, download this software > http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1630

Boot Camp Assistant says Install rather than Partition

I have a second gen MacBook (Intel core 2 duo) I installed Windows XP via bootcamp back when I had OSX Tiger. Today, running OSX Lion, I deleted the windows partition with boot camp assistant, wanting to increase the hard drive size and install Windows 7. I successfully deleted the windows xp partition, and restarted the computer. Now I want to repartition the hard drive and install windows 7. I open boot camp assistant, click continue (only option) check 'install windows 7' and not 'download the latest windows support software from apple' as I already have this on an external hd and click continue. I choose the hard drive size, and boot camp assisnt has the option to 'install' and NOT 'partition'. I dont know why this occurs. anyway, if I click install, boot camp assistant says 'the installer disk could not be found' even though my windows 7 dvd is in the computer.
So, my question boils down to, 'why can't i partition my disk for windows 7?'
Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

After restoring, I lost my Recovery HD partition. I am currently working to get a new one. Perhaps I will install it AFTER boot camp is finished, which might solve the multiple-partitions error? I could use some advice here.
At this point, bootcamp is giving me a new error which says some files cannot be moved. I am moving this to a new discussion HERE:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread/3298756
Thanks for your help! Please respond to my new thread if you think you can contribute.

Boot Camp Assistant leaves me at a gray apple screen

I am working with a 2008 Mac Pro 3.1 w/ 1TB hard drive, a Lite-On iHAS dvd optical drive. My operating system is Yosemite. I am trying to install a Windows 7 partition, but Boot Camp Assistant is not being cooperative. Here's my process for installing it with BootCamp:
1. Created Windows 7 x64 install disk from downloaded .iso file (en_windows_7_....iso) — Maybe I am using the wrong installer?
2. Open Boot Camp Assistant, went through the motions of downloading the drivers onto a separate external thumb drive, then partitioning hard drive to have WINDOWS partition.
3. Boot Camp Assistant mentioned something to me about there being an extra bootable drive on an external drive (the thumb drive, I believe) and it wanted to disable that.
4. I disabled it.
5. Yosemite restarts.
6. The gray loading screen pops up with Apple logo.
7. Frozen for more than 10 min, at which point I believe something has erred.
If anybody can help me resolve this issue, it would be much appreciated! I'll be paying close attention to e-mail in order to provide quick responses to this thread.
Thanks!
Mac Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10), Early 2008 Model

I have read that I should try buying a second hard drive for Windows. Confirm or refute. It seems highly unnecessary.
I have also tried going to the manual boot screen–holding alt at boot time. same results occur as above.

When you load Windows via Boot Camp Assistant program and run Windows does not recognize the "usb" outlets cannot identify the device through the Dvd or flash

When you load Windows via Boot Camp Assistant program and run Windows does not recognize the "usb" outlets cannot identify the device through the Dvd or flash

Did you install BC drivers on the Windows side?

Boot Camp Assistant "Windows 7 Installer disc could not be found"

I'm attempting to Boot Camp a partition on my MacBook Pro Retina (13", early 2013) and it's not working. I purchased a Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit DVD and i'm accessing it through the optical drive on my desktop iMac. So far so good; MBP shows the disc on its desktop through remote disc sharing. The USB drive with downloaded Windows drivers is in place.
However, Boot Camp Assistant won't recognize the Windows 7 DVD, even though it's right on the desktop (remotely). There is a dialog box and it says "Installer disc could not be found .. wait a few seconds"
And that's it. Nothing further happens.
Help! I hate Windows! Why am I doing this??

Lightwave wrote:
Thank you! I bought Windows 7 on a physical DVD (it's the Home Premium 64bit disc). Hope that was the right thing to do?
Yes.
So let me get this straight. I can either use this DVD directly on a superdrive plugged in to MBP, or else burn a copy to the USB stick.
MBP will not install from an external SuperDrive due to Windows installer limitations, because it has no driver for the SuperDrive.
How exactly do I do the latter since my own DVD reader right now is by remote disc on my iMac?
Create an ISO using the following procedure on the iMac and then copy it over the network to the MBP or create an ISO by attaching the SuperDrive to the MBP. Use Bootcamp Assistant to point to this ISO when creating the USB for installation.
From Disk Utility 12.x: Duplicate a disk, CD, or DVD
Step 7 will give you an ISO, that you can then copy to the MBP.
Duplicate a CD-RW or DVD-RW
Disk Utility can’t create usable copies of discs with an incompatible format or discs that are copy-protected. (These include most commercial movie DVDs and audio CDs and some software and data discs.) To copy music from an audio CD to another CD, use iTunes, not Disk Utility.
To burn a disc, you need an optical drive in your computer or connected directly to your computer. You can’t burn a disc using a remote optical drive.
Open Disk Utility, in the Utilities folder in Launchpad.
Insert the CD or DVD disc in the optical drive, and select it in the list at the left.
Choose File > New > “Disk Image from [disc name].”
Type a name for the disk image.
Choose an option from the Image Format pop-up menu.
Choose “compressed” to create a smaller disk image.
Choose “read-only” to create a disk image that’s quicker to create and open.
Click Save.
After Disk Utility creates the disk image, eject the original CD or DVD.
Select the disk image in the list at the left, and choose Images > Burn.
When the Burn Disc dialog appears, insert a blank CD or DVD, and then click Burn.
You can continue using the disk image to create as many duplicate discs as you need.

Windows 7 install via boot camp assistant fails

I have a iMac 2.8 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with Mac OS X Version 10.6.8.
I also have a USB drive formated as Master Boot Record in MS-DOS (FAT) format. The USB has a capacity of 4GB+ and for now only includes a file named 'unattend.xml' and a folder named 'drivers'. I created this USB drive when advised by a Boot Camp support site, because the Windows 7 install created a blank screen with a small flashing line on the upper-left of the screen.
The I have burned an ISO file of Windows 7 Pro English 32 bit from the Microsoft site (I'm Gold partner).
So I started of by clicking on the Boot Camp Assistant, tried to download the nesecarry Windows drivers, but it refused... This seemed to be a normal problem which I could ignore (I heard). So I selected 'I have the Max OS X Installation Disc....' and pressed continue. I now prepared the size of the Windows environment and when that was finished, I inserted the burned DVD (which works perfectly fine on non-Apple computers).
All this time, the USB drive was in the back of the iMac.
I waited a while and the computer rebooted. A white screen appeared and after a while, the screen went to black, with the flashing little line on the upper-left of the screen...
What is it that I do wrong? Any help is really appreaciated.

Partitions are not drives
you are just seeing user volumes
your sig showed you still run 10.6, not Lion, no recovery partition (which is hidden)
The update to lion puts the recovery partition between where Mac and Boot Camp use to be and would have been.
I am opposed to upgrading to Lion. Do clean install, even to an external drive.
To me all that is needed is in the manual and here
http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp

Help: Windows XP on MacBook Pro Boot Camp Partition via Target Disk Mode

Firstly, let me lay out my situation. I have an old MacBook Pro (2,2) with a broken disk drive. It was dropped in its youth and can no longer read from or write to CDs or DVDs of any kind. I have just recently bought a new MacBook Pro to replace it (6,2) and am currently trying to convert the old computer into an XP machine through Boot Camp. I'd like to be able to do so without having to buy an external disk drive.
After a clean install of OS X (10.6.3) onto the old machine, I successfully partition 85GB of space (although I previously attempted the same with a 32GB file system to no avail as well) for XP to be installed upon. Because I cannot boot my XP install disk directly from the broken disk drive, I then close Boot Camp Assistant and shut down the computer. I start it up in Target Disk Mode to be accessed from the new MacBook (6,2).
Once the old MacBook is connected, I insert my XP install disk into the new MacBook (6,2) and boot from the disk. After allowing the XP (Professional) boot to load the install files, I arrow-key down to my 85GB partition (FAT32, named standard as "BOOTCAMP") on the old MacBook (2,2)'s hard drive and select it as the partition I would like to install to. This is where I am directed to a new boot window that tells me in a series of paragraphs that the XP installer cannot reach the selected partition for what seems to be a number of reasons. What it seems to be trying to say to me is that it cannot do a remote install of XP on a Target Disk Mode-connected machine, while not "knowing" that I am trying to do so. It's a similar message to the one that Boot Camp Assistant shows when one tries to create a Boot Camp partition on a machine that is being accessed via Target Disk Mode (Apple puts it much more clearly than Microsoft).
I'd be perfectly content, albiet slightly vexed, to conclude here that it is not possible, shuttle over to the nearest Best Buy, and purchase an external disk drive if it weren't for one thing: I tried the same thing two weeks ago with Ubuntu 10.10 and it installed perfectly on the Boot Camp partition I had created then (I have since wiped all and installed OS X cleanly on the laptop).
Here comes the point/questions:
If the Ubuntu boot disk can access the partition, why can't the XP boot disk?
Is there some way to convince the boot system that the drive is local, rather than being accessed via Target Disk Mode?
Is there an easy solution that doesn't even require that, and will allow me to install to the disk over a firewire connection?
If anyone's knowledgeable and/or brave enough to tackle this one, I'll be eternally grateful. Heck, I'll be grateful if anyone even attempts to tackle it.
Thanks,
-Alec Page

Windows XP will only install from the optical drive. Target Disk Mode does not work with Windows volumes. Windows will not install from any external device.

Installation of Windows 7 via USB External HDD (Boot Camp Assistant)

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for