Optical Disk drive broken on 27" late 2009 iMac/Lion - any way to install Win7?

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Hello, first poster here.

I have a late 2009 model 27" iMac running OSX Lion 10.7.5. The Optical Drive is currently broken, and I am unable to send it away to be repaired at this time.

I have a Windows 7 iso file, however, that I am able to place onto a memory stick/hard drive. Is there anyway I can run Bootcamp to install Windows 7 without a disc drive?

Also, bonus question: my disk drive doesn't work with DVDs, but runs and burns CDs fine. I try to play a DVD movie, for instance, and it doesn't work. I could, however, run the software required to set up my Wacom tablet... what's going on here?

Thank-you in advance for your help.
 
Raz0rEdge

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Where did you get a Windows 7 ISO from? Without a functioning disk drive, you could potentially try a USB flash drive and failing that you'll need to get an external optical drive..
 
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Raz0rEdge said:
Where did you get a Windows 7 ISO from? Without a functioning disk drive, you could potentially try a USB flash drive and failing that you'll need to get an external optical drive..
Click to expand...

Using the Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool on another computer. I have tried via USB, but it fails to recognise the device as a legitimate way of installing Windows, as the Bootcamp software appears to only accept DVDs. There is no USB option. I was wondering if there was a way to cheat the system, via third party software or using Terminal in some way?
 
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I figured that the USB wasn't going to work..and I don't know of any way of cheating the system as it stands. So you'll have to find an external optical drive to get past this..
 
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Raz0rEdge said:
I figured that the USB wasn't going to work..and I don't know of any way of cheating the system as it stands. So you'll have to find an external optical drive to get past this..
Click to expand...

I was really hoping there'd be a way. I've looked into rEFIt but I'm not sure it provides a solution. It claims to make it easier in booting under multiple Operating Systems, but I'm not sure it can install them.

I find it very hard to believe that you can't install Windows via USB with a legitimate iso file.
 
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I have not tried installing anything other than OS X on my iMac, so I'm not an expert at all that is involved with Boot Camp and various boot options. When I do need to run Windows for any reason, I do it within a VM and that works for what I need it for..
 
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Raz0rEdge said:
I have not tried installing anything other than OS X on my iMac, so I'm not an expert at all that is involved with Boot Camp and various boot options. When I do need to run Windows for any reason, I do it within a VM and that works for what I need it for..
Click to expand...

I will look into VM solutions, such as Fusion 5. I have heard the have a major hit on the performance of your machine, however - is this true? is there a possibility it may mess my computer up?

I have a 500GB backup, but that's not the point!
 
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I have a 27" 2.8 GHz i7 iMac with 16GB of RAM. and I give my VMs 4GB of memory and 2 processors and can run a VM of Linux and Windows at the same time without any performance hit on the host.

So the performance hit depends entirely on your host machine's configuration, as well as, the VM configuration. Now I don't play games in my VMs and my Windows VM is mainly to run IE to test web sites that I design..

The Linux VM does get a good amount of beating as I work on that as a continuation of what I do at work..and even compiling code and so on as no real hit on OS X which I use for everything while waiting for the compile to finish..

I use VMWare Fusion 5 as my VM choice..
 
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Raz0rEdge said:
I have a 27" 2.8 GHz i7 iMac with 16GB of RAM. and I give my VMs 4GB of memory and 2 processors and can run a VM of Linux and Windows at the same time without any performance hit on the host.

So the performance hit depends entirely on your host machine's configuration, as well as, the VM configuration. Now I don't play games in my VMs and my Windows VM is mainly to run IE to test web sites that I design..

The Linux VM does get a good amount of beating as I work on that as a continuation of what I do at work..and even compiling code and so on as no real hit on OS X which I use for everything while waiting for the compile to finish..

I use VMWare Fusion 5 as my VM choice..
Click to expand...

I'm looking at Parallels now, as it seems like the better choice (albeit more expensive... I'll take the trial for now) regarding performance/speed. I'm looking to play games primarily, through Steam, and Fusion 5 was also criticised for poor OpenGL support.

Would I be able to pretty much stop OSX completely and just give all my performance to Windows? The last thing I want is a game crashing on me.
 
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If gaming is your top priority, then no VM solution will truly serve you. The boot camp path you were going is the only real viable option for gaming. Each new iteration of the VM software is getting better 3D graphics and other things that games need since that's the type of software that stresses the VM's capability the most..

Some simple games might be entirely playable through a VM, but it's not ideal.

Also, another alternate to consider is a dedicated gaming machine that can be built on the cheap rather than messing with the iMac..
 

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