Boot camp question

hey guys, my superdrive stopped working and i wanted to install windows, so i went out and bought an external usb cd drive (which works). i tried booting from windows with the device plugged in but i get the msg "no bootable device", i know that windows doesnt boot from usb, and i tried using rEFIT, im not sure what to do , any suggestions? also is it possible to enter the windows BIOS through mac?

appreciated.

Does the Win CD show up in the CD drive while you are booted up in OS X?

If it does, and you are trying to install Win into your BootCamp partition, you should read and follow the directions for the installation provided in the BootCamp documentation. Print it out if you need to. The installation of Windows begins in BootCamp and does not involve booting your machine from the Win CD.

The BIOS (Basic Input / Output System): there is no such thing as a windows BIOS. It has nothing to do with Windows nor any other Operating System. To put it simply, it is a function of the firmware of the motherboard which gathers information related to all the devices on the machine. It then provides this info to the Operating System.

The motherboard (called a system board in the Mac realm) does not use a BIOS it uses EFI. To answer your question, No, there is no similar access to the functions of the system board as there is with a BIOS. There really is no need on your Mac to be making any changes there.

To add to the good info given to you by bobtomay.... simply put, you can not install Windows from an external USB DVD\CD drive using Boot Camp. Repair or replace your internal Superdrive.

Regards.

cheers guys, i kinda found my own solution by getting parallels 4, its actually pretty good but thanks for the reply nyway

Note that with Parallels/Fusion/VirtualBox you will be limited in some respects with what you can do compared to actually installing Windows to the disk (a lack of adequate 3D acceleration comes to mind).

chscag said:

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you can not install Windows from an external USB DVD\CD drive using Boot Camp. Repair or replace your internal Superdrive.

Regards.

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thanks, had not tried it, so wasn't aware of that

vansmith said:

Note that with Parallels/Fusion/VirtualBox you will be limited in some respects with what you can do compared to actually installing Windows to the disk (a lack of adequate 3D acceleration comes to mind).

Click to expand...

yeh but im only gona use windows for some apps, im not a gamer (anymore) used to be a WoW addict but yeh..