09-09-2011, 07:01 PM

Hi Gang,

Having a heck of a time here. This is my situation. I bought a new 13" Macbook Pro and upgraded the ram to 8gigs and installed a 750gig 7200 RPM Hard Drive and then also installed a second 750gig 7200 RPM hard drive in the DVD slot and took out the DVD Player. I made the second one a windows partition as I was told this can be done. Now, I am trying to bootcamp the second hard drive. It has been partitioned to windows and I was able to choose the drive. I have the DVD player put in as a usb drive and it reads and recognizes it. Now when I hit continue it restarts and goes to a black screen with a white underscore cursor that is blinking. Then nothing. I've let it sit there for 20 minutes or so just to see if anything happens and still nothing.

Here is the thoughts I'm having. First I thought it was because my DVD player was only powered through the usb port so I found another DVD Player that was powered not through the USB. Same results. I have a Windows 7 Upgrade DVD since my previous version was Vista. I'm also trying to instal the 64 bit version since I have 8 gig of ram. I was told it would ask me during the setup for my old version. And that I wouldn't have to buy a new full version. I'm hoping this is the case and I didn't waste 119.00 on an upgrade that can't be used. The only other thing I'm thinking is that because I am not using the DVD Player hooked up in its original form that could be the problem. I guess I really have no clue what to do and just trying to trouble shoot this whole situation. I'm sure it would be easy if I used the same hard drive with the same DVD Player already installed, but hopefully there is a work around to make this work. Thanks for your help in reviewing this and giving advice.

09-09-2011, 08:13 PM

Sorry,

From page 3-4 of the Boot Camp Installation and Setup Guide which you can open, print and read from the first screen of Boot Camp Assistant:

What You Need

• An installation disc with Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate. You must use a single full-install Windows installation disc. You cannot use an upgrade version of Windows.

You need a full version, not an upgrade disc. You can get an OEM full version of Home Premium for about $99 any number of places including newegg and Amazon.

Windows 7 requires an activated copy of Windows already be installed in order to install the upgrade.

Here's a ink to the Boot Camp manual - link.

I am not really sure that you can install it onto the 2nd drive - just never tried it.

09-11-2011, 12:48 AM

Thanks. I went out and got a windows 7 64 bit today full version. Unfortunately I'm having the exact same problem! Very frustrating. A friend told me to stop trying to install it on the second internal hard drive and just install it on the main hard drive and then put all of my files on the second hard drive. Ok maybe that was the problem. So I created about 50 gigs on my main internal hard drive and still getting the same problem. I go through the bootcamp assistant and soon as it restarts it goes to the all black screen with the white blinking cursor and then stays there for 10 to 15 minutes and I finally just shut it down. I'm assuming it is supposed to go to the windows set up. I can't seem to get it to do that. Then I try to hard boot and it shows the windows disk, I click it and still goes to the blank screen with the blinking white cursor. Starting to get very frustrated. I am using an external DVD drive but it is the actual mac DVD optical via usb. So I do not understand why it isn't working. Any thoughts would be great.

09-11-2011, 02:14 AM

The external USB drive can not be used to install Windows because the Windows USB drivers are not loaded until after Windows boots. It doesn't matter if it's the primary or secondary drive, the result will be the same.

What you possibly could do is put back the optical drive, install Windows on the primary HD and then remove the optical drive and replace it with the secondary drive. Both drives are large enough so you shouldn't have a problem with space.

09-11-2011, 04:40 AM

???

Why would this be the case with the MBP since the only way to install Win7 on the new mini and the MBA is via USB?

Although, putting the optical drive back in might be faster than figuring out how to get it done might be.

I have not yet put Windows on my MBA, but even as rarely as I use it, already looks like I need to.
It already appears that there are some issues with certain brands of USB sticks not being bootable.
Will do some digging.

09-11-2011, 04:48 AM

^^^^Stupid question^^^^
Because nothing's ez.
Been reading for awhile already.


They're sure making it hard just to keep up with getting Windows installed to a Mac.
To answer my own question - because the EFI does not allow booting to a USB drive - therefore the USB drivers must be installed by the bootable USB device. I still don't understand - but that's ok.

You might try this work around - link.

09-11-2011, 02:38 PM

Thanks for everyone's help. I now have Windows 7 on my computer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! woo hoo. What I ended up doing was installing the DVD back into the computer and installed to my main hard disk that worked. Now I'm going to take it back out, put in the second hard drive, and format it to be my windows hard drive. But I'm going to continue running windows off 50 gigs that I put on my main Lion Hard Drive and the rest of everything on the second hard drive. Not the original goal, but will certainly work and working right now is what I want.

09-11-2011, 07:51 PM

Glad you worked it out. It's a real pain and has been from the beginning to get Windows any version installed without an optical drive. As bobtomay stated it "should" install on the MBA via a USB flash drive but unfortunately it's not as simple as it sounds because of the lack of drivers as he stated.