MacBook Pro (Early 2011) HDD + SSD = Boot camp madness

[Wizi]

Hi there! Sorry if there is already a thread about this problem but I couldn't find one....

 

So here's the deal: a new MacBook Pro 15" from early 2011 has received a nice SSD upgrade but since I didn't want to loose disk space I've moved the original HDD where the optical drive was. Everything works just fine until I tried to install Windows 7 via Boot camp on the HDD. The assistant has offered me to split the drive into two partitions and asked me to put in the original W7 DVD which I did using external CD-ROM drive. Nothing unusual in here as well. Unfortunately the Windows setup won't even start - I'm stuck at a black screen with absolutely nothing more happening.

 

From what I read so far the problem is that the Mac is trying to find the optical drive the the right place and so if it doesn't everything stops. It some how prevent installing from external optical drive.

 

I was wondering if I clone a working Windows 7 partition from another similar MacBook Pro to my already created Boot camp partition that could solve my problem as well.

 

Any ideas at all?

 

Thanks in advance!

[Rick Arabian]

I have done this exact thing and got it working. Here is the general process I went through. If you want more detail let me know.

 

1. Make a partition using BC assistant (I actually used diskutil but same difference).

2. Create a raw device pointer for VMware using vmware-rawdiskCreate

3. Installed windows 7 in VMware using the bootcamp partition. At this point you have a working vm but no bootcamp.

4. Backup the BC disc using winclone, then immediately restore it onto the same disc. I think all this does is fix the windows boot sequence but I read it somewhere else and it works.

5. Boot back into your vm and sysprep it via this command: c:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep /oobe /generalize /shutdown

6. Once the vm shuts down, shutdown your Mac and try going into bootcamp via refit or holding down option.

7. Windows will boot, customized itself, reboot, then be good to go.

 

Enjoy!

 

--Rick