Tried to Install Windows on Bootcamp on MacBook..

Hi,

please if anyone can help that would be awesome. I tried to install windows on my macbook over the weekend, using the Bootcamp assistant. Not sure of how much space i would need to allocate at the 'partition' stage i picked about 250 gb and went on, the next step was to insert the windows disk and then came up the install windows wizard where i had to select the hard drive space i allocated for windows to install - it told me i needed something like 6000 gb which i had not allocated, so i was like ohkay i'll go back and allocate more space (have an external 1TB hard drive as well).. however when i ejected the windows disk and tried to reboot it said something like
cannot find bootable disk (or something like that)
so then i inserted the OSX disk and the same thing happened - i cannot turn on my computer now! i tried holding down the apple/function button when i turned on but that doesnt do anything.
can anyone help me because now i have a useless piece of crap instead of a computer that can run windows and OSX

Thanks
Tom

250GB is a lot of space and should be no problem installing any version of Windows. 6000 GB is 6 TB, so slightly confused to the problem at this point. You won't be able to install Windows on an external drive anyway.

The problem your stating is pretty normal, but the only solution I know is inserting the original OSX disc and then pressing the alt/option button and selecting the OSX disc to boot from the disc. After that, go to what I believe is the "Utilities" menu and "Startup Disk" and selecting the Mac OS X partition.

Let me know specifically what's happening, because I'm slightly confused about the errors at this point. Maybe someone else can shed some light on the matter as well.

I tried inserting the OSX disc and pressing the apple button - do i need to press the Alt key instead? okay i will try that tonight.
Thanks

Yeah, it's the alt/option button you need to be pressing in order to select the boot disk. Good luck! I could also help you setup boot camp.

I think you might want to make sure you haven't screwed up the OS X system on the computer first...

I would start by holding down on the option key while you turn on the computer. And when I say hold it down I mean don't let off it until you see the screen show you the choices of which hard drive to boot up from.... you should see two choices one which will be OS X and one that will be windows (but sense you didn't complete the install it wouldn't work if you select it).

But you should be able to get to the mac OS this way... once you are there I would start with doing the bootcamp assistant... the first time now will be to remove the windows partition... then run it again to set up the partition for the windows drive. You don't need 250 GB of space for windows unless you plan on doing a lot of stuff in windows. You can easily get by with 10GB for Windows.... then just add on to that for whatever you want to use in the future. if you wanted windows for games then assume 5-10GB per game.

Now when you do get back to trying to install windows, remember 1 crucial thing. You must do a real format from the Windows install on the drive you are going to put windows on... DO NOT skip this part, I did it and if you do skip the part of allowing Windows to do a format it will install Windows and everything will seem to work except when you are done it will not work and will ask you to select a drive with an operating system or something like that...

Thanks. okay so step one - try to get back onto mac OS, step two - remove windows partition and try again..

"You must do a real format from the Windows install on the drive you are going to put windows on..."

how exactly do i do the above? is this part of the bootcamp assistant/windows installer wizard??? :/

Thanks for all help so far

yes. He means once booted into OSX, go to the BootCamp Assistant and select the option to "restore" your drive. This will delete the windows partition. Then start over again and reinstall windows onto your hard drive (not the external drive). Two additional points - 1) I agree you don't need that much space for a Windows partition - between 10-32 GB suffices for most users, and (2) be careful because it requires some additional work to resize a partition once you create it, you can't just add on GB later without using 3d party software like CampTune. So, I would err on the higher side but 32 should be plenty.

Plus, be sure you are using a version of Windows that will work with Boot Camp, that's just a general piece of advice. I would definitely read the sticky at the top of the forum and print out Apple's Boot Camp guide (print it out, I mean that) and have it next to you for the install. Some of it is not inutuitive.

Cheers and good luck!

thanks for that - fixed!

managed to fix it thanks a lot guys