Force Bootcamp to acknowledge USB Keys

1. Make sure Boot Camp Assistant is closed before proceeding.


2. Open Applications / Utitlities / System Information.


3. Click Hardware in the left pane to make sure it's the active portion. Copy the value for boot ROM Version. In my case it's as shown below
   
   


4. Go to your Applications / Utilities folder and right click bootcamp assistant and choose Show Package Contents.


5. In the new window, go to Contents and make a back up of info.plist by selecting it and then option dragging it into the same window. It will ask you for your password, once confirmed rename the file to something like info-bkup.plist.


6. Open info.plist in your favourite text editor like Text Edit, mine is BBEdit. Changing anything might ask you to unlock the file and will definitely ask you to authenticate when saving. Locate a section <key>DARequiredROMVersions</key> and insert <string>BOOT ROM VERSION</string> as a new as a first line. It should look like this:
   
   


7. One last thing, the same thing needs to be done a little further in the PreUSBBootSupportedModels section. Once again insert a new line as the first line, this time just the model number
   
   
   
   
8. Save and close the program.


9. Open boot camp assistant and you should have a new option as shown below
   
   
   
   If you don't see the section highlighted in blue you need to redo the above section.

Installing Windows 7 on a Macbook Pro 2011 with no DVD drive

• rEFInd


• Windows 7 (image)


• USB key / external DVD Drive / ISO of Windows


• VMware Fusion (5 trial)


• Terminal


• Tuxera NTFS / Paragon NTFS

1. Download all the above mentioned software


2. Install rEFInd. Because I have 2 hard drives and ultimately have 3 partitions I made sure I had it on the SSD and not in my home directory before I installed it. To install rEFInd open terminal and drag the install.sh into the terminal window. It will ask you for a password, that is the same password you would us to log in. Note the message at the end, it should say something on the lines of Successfully installed. A good way to check is to open Macintosh HD (Macintosh SSD for me) and if there's a directory called efi then you're set. (to uninstall just trash that folder).


3. Open Boot Camp Assistant and make sure the three boxes are checked and hit next. Make sure to have the Windows DVD (image or actual DVD) and a usb key plugged in. It will create a wininstaller and download all the necessary drivers. After that it will ask how much space you want to give bootcamp. Since I have 2 hard drives it gave me another option of which hard drive do I want to use and if I'd like to reformat my secondary and use the whole thing as a bootcamp drive. Once it's finished it's going to reboot the mac. To avoid any issues hold the option key before the apple logo comes up and reboot back into OS X.


4. Now that you're back in OS X, open disk utility (Applications / Utilities / Disk Utility) and in the left pane select the Boot Camp partition and hit command i to get info on the partition. Take not of the Disk Identifier. This is very important so make sure you have the correct disk and then mark it down and keep it somewhere safe. Quit Disk Utility.


5. Open Vmware Fusion and create a new Virtual Machine (command n). It will ask you to please insert disc, click continue without disc.


6. Choose Create Custom Virtual Machine.
   
   
   Choose the appropriate version of Windows, and then customize settings. Choose a safe place to keep the virtual machine, I like /Users/username/Documents/Virtual Machines. Do not save your Virtual Machine on the Boot Camp partition!


7. Close Vmware Fusion.


8. Open Terminal (Applications / Utilities / Terminal), and go to the Virtual Machine. In other words, type "cd " (without the quotes) and then drag the Windows 7 x64 file from your Documents / Virtual Machines into the Terminal window and hit enter. Now, check to make sure that Disk Utility is correct by copying the following and pasting it into your terminal window
   
   /Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmware-rawdiskCreator print /dev/disk1
   
   You should see something like this:
   
   
   
   The highlighted portion is the bootcamp partition. The identifier was right, #4, so we're good to proceed.


9. Now we're going to link the virtual machine we created in VMware Fusion to the Bootcamp partition. You'll need to edit the disk numbers accordingly, this is what it was for me.
   
   /Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmware-rawdiskCreator create /dev/disk1 4 win7_raw lsilogic
   
   There's no feedback for this command, but it does create a file called win7_raw.vmdk inside Windows 7 x64. To finish the process we need to edit one last file so type
   
   sudo pico Windows 7 x64.vmx
   
   It's going to ask you for your password, it's the same password as your login.


10. In the editor you're going to change 2 lines. I've highlighted them below.
    
    
    
    Once you're finished hit control x. Save changes by hitting y.


11. Open VMware Fusion, you'll know it worked when you try to boot the Virtual machine and it asks for a password. It needs your permission to access the bootcamp partition. Pause the Virtual machine.
    
    
    
    • If you have an external DVD drive put your dvd in the drive and restart the virtual machine.
    
    
    • If you have an image of Windows in an iso, go to settings (command e) and go to the cd / dvd section. Click Autodetect and select choose image, find your image and finally click the enable button at the top.
      
    
    


12. Install windows through VMware. At one point the installer is going to complain about the bootcamp partition being a Fat32 disk, just use the tools in the installer to format the disk.


13. When the installer is finished, it's going to try and reboot the Virtual machine. Stop the machine and quit the program.


14. Open the bootcamp partition and delete all the files you can from that drive.


15. Copy all the files from your USB key, windows DVD or ISO onto the partition.


16. Reboot the mac and hold option. While the mac is rebooting unplug all usb and external dvd drives you may have plugged in. If rEFInd is working, the main drive should be called EFI Boot, select that and then choose the Windows part ion (mine was windows partition 4).


17. Install windows on the same partition that you've booted from, there's no need to reformat that partition.


18. Once the installer is finished, find your Apple drivers and install all of that.


19. You can now delete the files from the windows ISO / DVD / USB key you put on the drive. If you don't, every time you boot you'll be asked which Windows to boot to, the installer or a working version of windows.