Install Windows 7 (or XP) on macbook pro with *broken* DVD drive

Hi,

I'm an unlucky guy who dropped his late 2008 macbook pro. And now it won't plat DVD's *AND* CD's. OS X is just fine but the wizzkids over at iracing.com fail to provide OS X binaries. This forces me to install a copy of Windows 7 I have. (because let's face it ... emulation just doesn't work well)

Now, I'd like to use an external hard disk to 'burn' the ISO image on and then use either Boot Camp or rEFIt to install it. Any ideas?

I'm now trying Install Windows 7 From USB Drive/Pen Drive and Install Windows 7 From USB Drive/Pen Drive . This is my first attempt to get it fixed tonight.

What I'd like to know is if it's possible to install windows 7 through boot camp (or rEFIt) by using an external USB drive. A friend of mine can get a hold of one of those ... that would be my backup plan. But is it possible?

Omg!

It totally worked :') what I did was just format a 10GB partition on an old HD. It was the primery partition and it's FAT32.

After that you run the bootsector.exe tool as described in mentioned link (didn't do any of the stuff on the page before). Copied over the files to the disk... straight from the windows 7 DVD. I stuck that in the DVD drive of another windows machine I have running.

After that I started boot camp and made a partition. It told me that there was no windows install DVD found when I mounted the disk.

So I installed rEFIt (omg thank you refit developers .. you people rule!), rebooted twice and voila my USB disk popped up. Selected it, did the install to the bootcamp partition (which I had to format in the installer) and all was well


I think you can get around the OEM protection this way as well since OS X doesn't check what sort of OS you are installing.


I also think the external DVD drive would have worked with rEFIt. It's been the answer to my prayers. This way I saved up at least 200€ for getting a repair on a DVD drive that I have used now would have used for the first time in this laptop.