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strayduck

macrumors newbie
Feb 15, 2015
29
10
New York
Not to sound pessimistic, but this process is way too convoluted and time consuming.
It is most likely cheaper to get a 3rd party USB external cd-rw drive for mac and just burn a bootcamp ISO, rather then hassle thru all the steps and waste money on one time use software.

It is convoluted and time consuming.

It is also one of only a couple of options for those with Macs whos original optical drives no longer work or are no longer installed.

Windows installers will not run from external USB drives, the installer must be running from an internal device.
 

fromashes

macrumors newbie
Dec 3, 2013
8
0
I must defer to other forum members as I don't know the answer to this. You could try booting back into your VMWare/Parallels/VirtualBox and let the install go a little further.

The other guess is that Winclone is not copying something that is necessary. Maybe re-Winclone.

ANY UPDATES!?

Tried the real copy over with VmFuse on to the SSD without the virtual file. got stuck on a step where in Terminal I need to write :

2 411648 234029056 GPT EE Basic Data
Renatass-MacBook-Pro:~ renatasslekonis$ /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmware-rawdiskCreator create /dev/disk0 2 windows7 ide
Unable to copy the source files to the destination files...

I was reffering to this ?http://www.andrewsavory.com/blog/2011/2156
 

jvmaltez

macrumors newbie
Oct 27, 2015
1
0
strayduck, I must SAY that you are DA MAN.....it really worked your method....after I lost a couple of days in the Googleing.......Any WAY. My MAC:

MBP 7,1 ( MacBook Pro MID 2010)
Optical Drive Replaced by a SSD ( so no Optical drive at all)
Yosemite 10.10.5 installed
Now Running WINDOWS 7 ULTIMATE N EDITION
 

Pr1n1v

macrumors newbie
Oct 31, 2015
6
15
India
Tried all the steps above,restarted my Mac holding the option key,but it doesn't show me the Bootcamp partition for some reason.
Tried it again and this time i used the startupdisk option in system preferences, and after system restart it showed an error saying "No Bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key".

iMac 27' Mid2011
Trying it on 10.11 ElCaptian
Trying to run Windows 8.1

UPDATE: I downgraded to Mavericks since i was facing quite a lot issues with ElCapitan. Also i was able to successfuly install Windows8.1 by the above tutorial.
 
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Moonwreck

macrumors newbie
Dec 16, 2015
1
0
On the moon
HI Palgan,
I followed your steps and I got an error message when clonning the windows to BOOTCAMP. The error message is attach. Any help will be appreciated.

Screenshot 2015-12-16 07.50.38.png


checked with OSX: Mavericks

Many of us had extended the life of our old Mac computers replacing the optical drive with an SSD. But when some day you try to install windows in bootcamp partition you will start searching for ways and no one will works for your computer. My solution on the other had lets you install Windows in a partition without dealing with the pain on booting from USB or external dvd drive.

It took many hours for me to set it crrectly but now it should be easy for all of you.

The guide consist on 4 simple Steps:
1. Install windows in virtual machine with a little trick.
2. Create a Fat partition.
3. Mount a virtual hard drive.
4. Clone mounted HD to the Fat partition.

Software you will need.
VMware Fusion.
Paragon VMDK mounter
Winclone
Daemon Tools

Step 1. Trick on Virtual Machine. // Using VMWare Fusion.

1. Start the process of creating a new VMachine using a windows 7.iso
2. In the "finish" window select Customize Settings and then Save.
3. Go to Virtual Machine Library, right click on your VM to go to settings. Then go the Hard Disks and set the Size that you want to have in your windows partition. For example 25GB (use pre allocate disk sapce). Then apply.
4. Now start the Windows installation process and Shut Down/Stop the virtual machine just before it makes the first reboot.

This will trick Windows installation and giving all the files you need. My file was named: Windows 7 X64

Step 2. Create a MS Dos Fat Partition // Bootcamp assistant or Disk Utility

1. Open disk utilities.
2. Add a partition and if u used the example above make it 26 GB (1GB bigger than the one in VMWare)
3. Name it BOOTCAMP
4. Format it as MsDos Fat.
5. Apply.

Or use Daemon tools to mount the Windows 7.iso to start the boot camp assistant installation and make the 26GB partition that way.
(you can also use bootcamp to get your Drivers)


Step 3. Mount a virtual HardDrive containing windows installation.

1. Get Paragon VMDK Mounter
2. Right Click to open the Windows 7 x64 located on Documents/Virtual Machines/ with Paragoun Mounter.
(Now you should see a new HardDrive on Finder devices.}

Step 4 Clone the VMware installation files into the BOOTCAMP partition

1. Get Winclone / I Bought it.
2. Start Winclone and now you can Clone the Windows Drive you just mounted to your BOOTCAMP partition selecting Restore

Now restart your computer and press ALT too select the Windows Partition to boot and continue with the installation.


EXTRA HELP:
If you have small SSD and you dont have enough space having your OSX partition, your VMWARE partition(windows7 X64) and the BOOTCAMP partition. You can copy the VMWARE partition on to the other HARD DRIVE to make space before you make the Bootcamp partition on disk utility.


i tried to do this many times but this time i did not surrender.
I HOPE THIS HELPS
 

Trucabulles

macrumors newbie
Feb 14, 2016
1
1
Hi,

I had installed my windows 7 bootcamp partition on my mid 2010 27" iMac doing almost the same things a few years ago without any problem.

Then I decided it was time to update my iMac with a brand new SSD. I also erased everything from the mac 2 TB HD, so bye bye bootcamp...

I followed the same procedure to recreate my bootcamp partition and move my winclone archive to the freshly created partition on the 2 TB HD (OS X is on my SSD). When I rebooted I got the same message than almost everyone else, something like "no boot files on drive...". After playing quite a bit with my files, checking drives and EFIs and whatever, I decided to give this a last try and copied the EFI folder contained in C:\windows\boot to C:\Boot. I also copied BOOTSECT.BAK from the "reserved to system hidden partition created in the vmware VM (visible when you mount the VM with paragon vmdk.

After reboot, the windows drive finally appeared when holding down option key and I finally managed to install windows 7. Bootcamp works great since then.

If you have similar problems, please try this and let me know if it works...

Cyril
 
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Gjwilly

macrumors 68040
May 1, 2011
3,216
701
SF Bay Area
Section 2: Partially Install Windows using VMWare Fusion

  1. Open VMWare Fusion and begin creating a new virtual machine
  2. Choose "Install from disc or image"
  3. Choose your Windows iso file
  4. You can choose 'Use Easy Install' and enter your Windows account information and product key, and choose which version of windows you are installing

While this was appropriate for Windows 7 and Windows 8 do not do this with Windows 10.
Windows 10 allows you to skip entering the product key until after the installation is complete and you will need to do just that. Windows 10 will detect the hardware change between the virtual Windows installation and the final Windows installation and if you use your product key at the wrong time it will no longer be valid at the end of the process.
Microsoft is cracking down on and enforcing their TOS and unless you have a full retail version of Windows 10 they will no longer allow you to reactivate with a simple phone call.
 
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LesterM123

macrumors newbie
Feb 21, 2016
1
0
Honduras
Tried all the steps above,restarted my Mac holding the option key,but it doesn't show me the Bootcamp partition for some reason.
Tried it again and this time i used the startupdisk option in system preferences, and after system restart it showed an error saying "No Bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key".

iMac 27' Mid2011
Trying it on 10.11 ElCaptian
Trying to run Windows 8.1

UPDATE: I downgraded to Mavericks since i was facing quite a lot issues with ElCapitan. Also i was able to successfuly install Windows8.1 by the above tutorial.

You can run whit El Capitan?
 

PrincipeAzzurro

macrumors newbie
Jan 28, 2015
14
2
Berlin, Germany
Thank you very much. After almost 6 months of trying, I finally managed to install Bootcamp and Windows on my MacBook Pro 17 inch / late 2011.
I failed on my the first attempt; it might be worth mentioning why: I noticed that the virtual Windows installed with VM was larger than I had set it up, therefore it was only slightly smaller than the Bootcamp partition. All went smoothly when I removed and re-installed the Bootcamp partition making it a comfortable 2.5 GBs larger than the virtual machine.
Thanks again!!!
 
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LouisOutLoud

macrumors newbie
Jun 6, 2016
1
0
Brussels
Hello there !

Anyone had the chance to try one of these methods (Palgan', strayduck's or Doyton's) on ElCapitan, to install Windows 10 ?

I'm on a 3Tb Fusion Drive Late 2012 iMac, and so far, it's been impossible to even get through Bootcamp's *Partition* step. My drive is (well, was at least) completely fresh, and I chose a 400 Go partition - maybe that was a mistake, I know FAT32 can support more than that, but maybe Bootcamp had trouble with it - and Bootcamp just stopped progressing (not frozen, but not advancing either). I had to quit, it left me with 800gigs of "free space" on the drive, I had to re-create the LVG and all that, well, I came back to a stable and full 3To OSX drive.

But I — as well as a lot of people around here ;) — don't want to quit yet. I want to make it work.

I am considering strayduck's method, but as it was on Yosemite and with Windows 8. Both my OSX and the Windows I want to install are more recent, and I'm afraid it will be a source of problems (again). Especially after Pr1n1v's comment :
UPDATE: I downgraded to Mavericks since i was facing quite a lot issues with ElCapitan. Also i was able to successfuly install Windows8.1 by the above tutorial.

So... Before I jump into it, has anyone succeeded with installing Win10 on ElCap ? Anyone else had issues with a 3To Fusion Drive iMac ?

Thanks anyway for this thread, it's a great deal of information to start with (or continue with...)

EDIT : Ok, so, I finally understand the main issue : 3Tb Drives are just too big for Windows to install properly. Apple's solution probably worked with previous versions of OSX (Mavericks, Yosemite...) on recent iMacs (2013, 2015 and whatnot) but I guess my system (the oldest mac that will support Windows 10 !) is really some kind of an exception. I'm going to follow this guide :
https://www.27partners.com/2012/12/how-to-install-boot-camp-on-a-3tb-fusion-drive-mac/ and see what happens. Cheers
 
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golosin2

macrumors member
Nov 22, 2012
50
9
Just to confirm that the method worked!! Windows 10 Pro x64 up&running.

For more details, I have a Late 2009 iMac 27" Core i7 2.8Ghz, with stock 1TB HDD and later I added a SSD where the SuperDrive was.

I just changed one thing: I used an USB HDD, where I have a Yosemite installation for emergencies. I booted the system from there, then installed VMWare, Paragon and Winclone. Everything went smooth, so I finally have Windows 10 on it.

Thanks everyone!
 
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gga

macrumors newbie
Jun 1, 2013
2
0
Palgan's method confirmed working with Windows 8 on an Early 2011 MacBook Pro

Section 4: Mount your virtual machine as a "real" hard drive using VMDK Mounter
  1. Right-click on this file and choose to mount with VMDK mounter. You might get this error.
    VOODOO ALERT: Once I got this error I tried a bunch of things but wasn't able to determine WHAT, exactly, fixed the problem: I tried again with VMWare on and off, I tried restarting my Mac, I tried starting the virtual machine and "shut it down" via VMWare and went back to step 2:1 and started the Windows installation over from scratch. Eventually it worked and I was able to continue.


Hey

I just wanted to say thank you! It worked for me too!



Comments:

  • After force-quitting VMware Fusion, I got that error from VDMounter when mounting the Virtual Machine. It worked for me only by normally quitting the VMware Fusion when Windows wanted to restart (that involved suspending).


Specifications:

  • Macbook Pro 15” (late 2011)
  • Running Sierra 10.12.5
  • SSD Samsung 1tb
  • Window 8.1 Pro
 

Niwla

macrumors newbie
Jul 11, 2017
2
0
I just registered to this forum to say: THANK YOU!!! I've been struggling so hard to get windows running on my mid 2011 iMac without the optical drive (placed an SSD instead). I've tried just about every (video)tutorial I could find and nothing worked. My knowledge of iMac and OS X is limited since this is my first Mac but I'm completely OVER THE MOON right now. I did everything step by step and spend the $30,- for the winclone software and everything worked the first time installing Windows 7 on MacOS Sierra. After that I removed the virtual machine and erased the partition and tried again with Windows 8 en Windows 10. Both worked flawlessly!! I'm very happy with running Windows 10 for now. All the Apple-software I already archived on a thumb drive worked in Windows 10.

I've read people talking about this method being very time consuming. Maybe it's because of the SSD I'm using but installing Windows in VMware and cloning the image doesn't take more than 5 minutes.

Once again, thank you soooo much for this tutorial.
 

doynton

macrumors 6502
Oct 19, 2014
299
17
Hi There :)

I've been trying this for a week now ^_^ but there must be something missing in you explanation ...
It does not work ... :-( besides the cost ...

(y)
It does work.

What cost are you concerned about? You can do it all from Windows for free or you can use VMWare or VirtualBox or command line utilities. These are also free.

All you have to do is put Windows on a partition anywhere and update your ESP to see it.

There is no need to purchase anything apart from Windows license (unless you want to support the developers of pointless software for some reason).

Honestly the most simple way would be to install rEFInd, make a partition (on any disk) and then install Windows. Nothing tricky - just copy the contents of the ISO that will do.

It takes 20 or 30 minutes. Why you all make a meal of such a simple procedure is beyond me.
 

McRen

macrumors newbie
Nov 1, 2017
4
0
^_^
I'm sorry but there MUST be something , either , I m doing wrong ( probably ) or the hardware is some how behaving differently :)
I did follow your instruction ... but even the rEFind ( which was installed with it's own script) does not boot .... :-( :(
My iMac is a late 2009 ( iMac 11,1 ) and if I try to use bootcamp the outcome is always " no boot media insert etc etc etc " let alone trying to simply copy the content of the iso ... :-(
 

VeganHipster

macrumors regular
Jun 18, 2011
193
0
I did this before and it worked but now I'm having some issues. I transferred my data from my old hdd to a ssd minus the bootcamp partition. So now going through this again, I get up to winclone and whenever I try to restore to the new partition i get an error writing to disk0s3 saying NTFS is not available. Any ideas?

I wonder if something got left over from my cloning my drive. I was thinking about doing a clean install to High Sierra anyways.

EDIT: The only way I got around this was by decreasing the size of my Bootcamp partition and VMware image from 256gb to 128gb (also taking into account of making the virtual smaller than the partition). This let winclone finally copy the files to the bootcamp partition, but restarting into windows setup would give me a black screen with an error saying system32/winload.exe was either missing or corrupt. To get around that, I installed Paragon NTFS to access my bootcamp drive from OS X, deleted everything (hidden files too) that could be deleted and replaced the bootcamp drive with all the files from my Windows 7 iso, and finished the install.

I got the idea from https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...011-wont-boot-from-usb-no-superdrive.1534533/ , if anybody has other issues I would look through this thread for some different workarounds.

Now I'm gonna update to high sierra and hopefully my bootcamp partition will stay.
 
Last edited:

hazbiy97

macrumors newbie
Jan 10, 2018
1
0
Hey I know this is an old thread but from what I searched this whole month, I think this thread have the most detailed process so I followed all of it but I get stuck at after cloning my bootcamp partition, I got an error in winclone but the file is copied so I just get over it and restart my Mac but I can't see windows partition (the partition where I installed my windows is not even detected). what should I do ??
 

rickpouwelse

macrumors newbie
Aug 14, 2018
1
0
Palgan's method confirmed working with Windows 8 on an Early 2011 MacBook Pro

I'd like to confirm that Palgan's method worked for me. I was able to install Windows 8 from an iso on my Early 2011 MacBook Pro running OS X 10.10.2 Yosemite which had no optical drive and was not allowing me to install from a USB drive.

I'd also like to thank him for putting this together. I found this thread on day 4 of trying to wrestle windows onto my laptop. I tried all of the other methods found on Google including using a Rufus-created USB thumbdrive, modifying plist files for Boot Camp and others. I even tried multiple USB drives having read that certain brands work better than others. This was my final attempt and I couldn't be more satisfied having finally "won". THANK YOU.


Since there is a fair amount fear, loathing and uncertainty involved here (as well as some voodoo, I suspect) I thought I'd take the opportunity to rewrite the guide to include a little more information and reduce forks in the road.


In addition to a Windows iso you will need the following:



Section 1: Download Apple Windows drivers and copy to USB drive

  1. Open Disk Utility
  2. Click on your USB thumb drive
  3. Choose the "Erase" tab
  4. Choose MS-DOS (FAT) format
  5. Name it (I called mine MBPDRIVERS)
  6. Find your model of Mac here and click the link to download the driver software: http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204048
  7. Copy the contents of the downloaded file to your USB drive


Section 2: Partially Install Windows using VMWare Fusion

  1. Open VMWare Fusion and begin creating a new virtual machine
  2. Choose "Install from disc or image"
  3. Choose your Windows iso file
  4. You can choose 'Use Easy Install' and enter your Windows account information and product key, and choose which version of windows you are installing
  5. Choose 'More Isolated' for level of integration
  6. On the "Finish" screen click the "Customize Settings" button
  7. Choose where to save your image and click "Save". It will default to your primary hard drive in ~/Documents/Virtual Machines/
  8. In the Settings screen that follows, choose "Hard Disk" (SCSI) and select the size that you want for your partition. I chose 60GB because I planned to install a bunch of Windows junk. Once you set your size click 'Apply'
  9. Once you close the settings your install will begin. If it doesn't press the "play" icon in the middle of your VMWare window
  10. Shut down (DON'T SUSPEND) or Force Quit VMWare before Windows reboots the first time. The Windows installer has created enough files onto this virtual machine to continue later from your BOOT CAMP disk partition. You'll know when it's time as Windows will warn you that it's about to reboot.
    first-reboot.png


Section 3: Prepare a FAT partition on your Mac's hard drive using Disk Utility

  1. Open Disk Utility
  2. Click on the disk you would like to add a boot camp partition to
  3. Click the "Partition" tab
  4. Click on the partition you'd like to split
  5. Click the "+" button to add a partition
  6. Click on the new partition you just created
  7. Name it BOOTCAMP
  8. Format it MS-DOS (FAT), even if its a large partition
  9. Set it to the size you would like. I chose 64GB to leave a little extra room for my 60GB Windows install.
  10. Click Apply


Section 4: Mount your virtual machine as a "real" hard drive using VMDK Mounter

  1. Find your virtual machine image. If you used the default settings with Windows 8 it will be in ~/Documents/Virtual Machines/Windows 8 x64.vmwarevm
  2. Right-click on this file and choose to mount with VMDK mounter. You might get this error
    used.png
    .
    VOODOO ALERT: Once I got this error I tried a bunch of things but wasn't able to determine WHAT, exactly, fixed the problem: I tried again with VMWare on and off, I tried restarting my Mac, I tried starting the virtual machine and "shut it down" via VMWare and went back to step 2:1 and started the Windows installation over from scratch. Eventually it worked and I was able to continue.


Section 5: Clone the VMWare system to your BOOTCAMP partition on your mac

  1. Open Winclone
  2. Choose to clone your mounted .vmwarevm disk to BOOTCAMP using "Restore"


Section 6: Finish the Windows install natively

  1. Restart your mac and hold down the alt/option key
  2. Choose the "Windows" disk that shows up
  3. Windows will boot and finish installing. If it reboots itself in the process hold down the alt/option button to ensure that your mac boots back into windows to continue
  4. Once all of the updates are complete insert your Apple Drivers USB drive, navigate to the BootCamp folder and run setup.exe. This will install support for the Apple hardware and make it fully functional


Section 7: Cleanup on your Mac

  1. Boot back into your mac and run your uninstaller for Paragon VMDK mounter
  2. Manually uninstall VMWare Fusion using these instructions: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/se...ype=kc&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&externalId=1017838
  3. Manually uninstall Winclone using…actually what the heck. You paid for this one, might as well keep it.


As a side note: there was some discussion about whether or not you need Winclone, as it is a paid app. While I'm not the most qualified person to answer this, I personally did not see any way around this. After days of time wasted on solutions that didn't work I also didn't try that hard. :D When you consider that you are already buying Windows ($120) and a USB drive ($10), another $30 to finish the job is completely worth it. I value the engineering time spent by two canoes, as well as time that I saved.

Now with all of that out of the way I'm off to play with the Zwift beta which is currently only available for Windows on dedicated hardware. :cool:



Hey, I know I’m reading this 3 years later, but I ran into all the same problems. I’m just wonderinfg, does this work with a Parallels virtual desktop installed as well? Since I already have one there, it saves me re-installing!

Thanks in advance!
 

griftopia

macrumors newbie
Apr 7, 2016
7
0
So I've been looking at this thread for some time now in my quest to install Windows on an iMac8,1. While I have not been successful, hopefully my experience helps someone.

First my situation. Large HDD in the rig, DVD drive removed and replaced with SSD (this is the second drive). Not only does Bootcamp not install without DVD, nor will it boot USB, nor will it install on what it recognizes as the 2nd hard drive (and I'm not going to open the iMac to disconnect/connect the HDD), so *this* thread gave me some hope. Alas, didn't work for me.

I've tried Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, all both x86 and x64. iMac 8,1 suggests only Windows 7 x86 will install, regardless does not work. I've tried with VMWare Fusion and Virtual Box. Does not matter.

For me, I get hard disk corruption while installing Windows 7 after starting the aborted VM install. Some device driver doesn't install and corrupts the disk. I've got too many different errors to recount here. I've even tried different VM settings when building it. Must have tried like 30 times in all for sure. The 29 odd times I tried installing on the SSD where my MacOS install is. 1 time I tried on the HDD - worse outcome, error "Error Starting Operating System", white text on black screen.

Now, here's what might help others. If you have trouble cloning your VM to the "BOOTCAMP" (sic) FAT32 partition - I did too - first create an Image using WinClone. Then Restore *that* image to the partition. If this trick works for you, perhaps you can move further and it will install Windows for you, whatever version and on whatever machine you are trying.

Now I hope to try on an iMac9,1 I'm fixing soon. Once again officially only Windows x86 is supported, so I'm just going to try with that. Once. Maybe twice.

For everyone else, there is always Parallels...
 

AchiStyx

macrumors newbie
Nov 12, 2019
1
0
Even 4 years later, I can confirm that this still works. It worked on the very first try and I now have Windows 7 up and running flawlessly on my MBP late 2011 13 inch model. I’m running on High Sierra, and the only error I encountered was during the Winclone phase. I tried using Winclone 7 and it ran into some problem installing the helper tool. So I switched to Winclone 6 and it told me to disable SIP, so I did and there were no problems after that.
 
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