Stuck on gray screen. Cannot install windows (broken superdrive).

I have spent the last two days trying to find a way to install windows 7 on my imac to no avail. This is what I've done:

I have a 2007 imac with lion installed and a broken superdrive. I have an external usb optical drive and my w7 dvd. I have also made a bootable usb with it that doesn't work.

I have tried installing refit. Nothing. I make my bootcamp partition and when I select it to boot from the dvd the screen stays gray with the wndows symbol. I have formated lion to a clean install: same problem. I even went back to snow leopard to see if that could make it work, thinking maybe something was wrong with lion. Nothing.

I even tried cloning the bootcamp partition from my macbook pro, but that will get me to a black screen with a white underscore and nothing else (same shows on vmware).

I have changed the windows dvd with another one. Tried the bootable usb with refit. I cannot think of any more possibilities.

Where is the problem?

Oh I forgot to add, when I downgraded to snow, I did it with refit so my usb optical drive is working fine with refit, just not with the windows dvds...

The problem is that you can not install Windows from an external optical drive. It just doesn't work because the drivers for the external drive do not get loaded until Windows boots. As soon as the Boot Camp Assistant hands over the Windows install to the Windows DVD, you'll be dead in the water.

The cure: Replace the internal drive or install Windows in a virtual machine with software such as Parallels, Fusion, or VirtualBox. Then you can use the external USB drive.

Thanks a lot for your answer! It was really quick

I'm not sure if I understand what you mean. Do I install windows on the partition I made with boot camp via VMware or just a clean installation with the VMware wizard? What do I have to do after that? Just boot it and install the drivers?

EDIT: Nevermind me. I actually managed to run windows on the imac after 3 days of trying. The BC partition on my MBP was a FAT32 partition. I re did the whole thing on the MBP to a NTFS partition and cloned it. After successfully restoring it in the imac I got it running. Thanks a lot for the help.

Very good work - around. I assume you used WinClone as it only works with NTFS. Anyway, thanks for posting back.