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I can't boot into Windows after installing Windows 7 on my iMac. I need help troubleshooting.

Background: I have an iMac11,1 (27 inch, late 2009, 2,8 Ghz i7, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB FireCura drive). The optical drive is broken so I have been unsuccessful in using Boot Camp. I've tried some alternate approaches to install Windows 7:

1) Modifying the .plist in Boot Camp Assistant allows me to create a USB, partition and reboot but I get stuck on a black screen listing "No bootable CD/DVD".

2) Same approach as 1 but on reboot pressing ALT and choosing my USB boot media. This gives me an error that I can't install on an MBR disk via EFI.

3) Partitioning the drive with Disk Utility, creating a 250 GB FAT32 partition. Launching the installer in the same way as 2. Installer launches, on the disk screen I need to reformat the BOOTCAMP partition to NTFS andafter that all is smooth until reboot where I'm stuck on a grey screen. Holding down ALT I can choose to boot into the USB or MacOS with no problems. After installing there is an additional option of EFIBoot with a regular hard drive icon but if I choose that everything freezes. (Which I guess is the same thing that happens after the installer reboots).

I tried approach 3 with Windows 10 which workes fine but I couldn't find working drivers for everything with Windows 10 so I have since removed Windows 10, partitioned and reformatted the drive. I have tried both with 64 bit versions of Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate with the same result.

I would like advice on how to troubleshoot my current situation or tips on alternative approaches to install Windows 7 on my computer.

Morgan
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  • Welcome to Ask Different! :) I hope you come to find this site has a lot to offer! In the meantime, can I ask you to edit your post to clarify what you're actually asking? – Monomeeth Sep 26 '19 at 05:30
  • Installing Windows 7 in EFI mode is problematic. If you want Windows 7 without using Boot Camp Assistant it would be best to manually create hybrid member using gdisk and install in bios mode. – lx07 Sep 26 '19 at 10:51
  • I've tried clarifying my question as per your request. – Morgan Sep 27 '19 at 13:02
  • I've read through the linked forum post on EFI. Since Windows 10 works that would mean Windows 10 has better EFI support? How would I go about installing in BIOS mode. If I'm not mistaken that's what I tried in 1. The computer won't detect the install USB and my optical drive is broken. – Morgan Sep 27 '19 at 13:09
  • Got it to work using the technique listed at this guide. Not an easy solution but the only thing that worked so far. – Morgan Sep 27 '19 at 20:29

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