Installing W7x64 on 2010MBP... help?

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Ashton

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Nov 13, 2004
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Ok, first off, let me say that I've spent hours hacking together a solution... I have a 2010 mbp (core i5, 4gb ram, 500gb HDD, dedicated graphics) with a busted superdrive.

I installed rEFIt, and I hacked my bootcamp assistant to allow full functionality despite the presence of a CD drive.

I created a bootable USB stick from my Windows7 x64 install DVD

I repartitioned my MacintoshHD to make room for windows.

...and I hit a brick wall...

when I use the USB it tells me it's unsupported, when I copy over my install files to the new "drive" and tell it to boot from the bootcamp partition I again get "unsupported" and when I did my research (yes I actually look this problem up before posting!) It said that EFI booting does not support 64-bit operating systems...

So, my question is... how to I get my 64-bit Windows 7 install working on my mac? Is there a way or will I have to go find a 32-bit and make due with half the available thoughroughput?
 
I never could get x64 Win 7 to work on an older MBP. I always had to use the x32 version; same for Office.

My current MBP Retina runs x64 versions of both Win 7 and 8 just fine, however. In fact, it won't even install a non-x64 version of Windows.
 
Tyler-Durden said:
I never could get x64 Win 7 to work on an older MBP. I always had to use the x32 version; same for Office.

My current MBP Retina runs x64 versions of both Win 7 and 8 just fine, however. In fact, it won't even install a non-x64 version of Windows.
Click to expand...

I'm saving and waiting for the new models to roll out later this year, at that point I'll probably jump to a Retina.

In the meantime, If anyone knows a workaround (I have read something about using a VM with raw disc access to install from within OSX --- but I'm guessing if jsut the setup program wont run from rEFIt, then there's no hope of getting W7x64 to launch even if I did install it that way...
 
Bootcamp does not work out of the box without an optical drive.

I did hack bootcamp by editing the plist.info to allow usb boot creation

opon trying to boot, it gave me an error either about an unsupported EFI or a non-systems disk (I forget which) basically this computer does NOT support booting from USB (and online it says so much)

I did get it a step further, I mounted my windows partition (created by bootcamp) using Virtual Box and installed Windows 7 x64... but every time I tried to boot it normally (holding down OPTION when booting and choosing "BOOTCAMP" or from in rEFIt choosing "Boot windows on partition 4") it would give me the error "Windows cannot start because of a hardware or software change"

Basically unless I missed something, if the optical drive is broken there is no way in HELL to install windows 7 on a 2010 MBP...
 
Ashton said:
Basically unless I missed something, if the optical drive is broken there is no way in HELL to install windows 7 on a 2010 MBP...
Click to expand...
SuperSubZero suggested using a USB optical drive
 
On my 2012 MBP, I added an SSD in the main bay and pulled out the optical drive to use for the HDD. Tried installing boot camp, and it just wouldn't go. It would hang part way through and just die when using an external USB superdrive.

So, I threw the optical drive back in, and lo and behold it worked. I thought it was the weirdest thing ever, but that was how I ended up doing it.
 
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