I have a mid-2011 iMac and I'm trying to install Windows via Boot Camp. Using the app worked well. It created the USB boot drive with a Windows 7 ISO. The problems started when Boot Camp restarted the iMac, and it couldn't detect the USB drive. I tried troubleshooting by restarting the iMac whilst holding down Option to show the startup disks. The USB drive didn't show up despite being on and lit up. The drive shows up in the Finder and Disk Utility, just not when I try to boot from it. The most annoying thing is I tried using the drive on my mid-2015 MacBook Air and managed to boot up with it. Quickbooks for mac differences. If you have started up your Mac in Windows using Boot Camp, you can use the Boot Camp system tray to switch your startup disk default back to OS X. Indeed the drive shows up when booting with Option held down. Why does it show up on one computer and not the other? Why does it show up in the Finder, but not amongst the startup disks? 2011 model iMacs and MacBook Pros do not support booting Windows from USB. The only operating system that will boot from USB on these models is the MacOS. 2011 model Mac computers all had optical drives, and the only supported method of installing Windows on them is from a Windows DVD. In fact, if you run the Boot Camp Assistant on the iMac, you will see that it does not give you the option of creating a bootable USB drive at all like it does on the 2015 MacBook Air. This is a firmware issue on these older model computers. One possible workaround is to use a a 3rd-party EFI boot manager like rEFInd that can boot non-Apple operating systems from many kinds of media. There might be other methods as well, but none are natively supported by Apple. @DavidAnderson; At this point, the discussion is rather pedantic. The OP is asking why his Windows USB boot stick won't work on his 2011 iMac, and the answer is because it's a 2011 iMac. If you think that's wrong, you should post an answer explaining how it can be done. Your first example (which you wote) involves injecting 3rd party code into the hard drive's EFI partition (so not booting from USB anymore as far as the firmware is concerned). And the 2nd link you gave specifically mentions a 2013 model, where Apple's firmware does allow booting Windows from USB. – Dec 26 '17 at 20:23. I will try a simple answer followed by a more complex answer. The Simple answer When Apple decide to allow Windows installation Macs, Microsoft needed to change its software and Apple had to change the firmware in the Mac logic boards. Microsoft put the necessary changes in Service Pack 2 for the XP operating system. Apple offered firmware downloads up update the logic boards. So to install Windows, you need a XP installation DVD with Service Pack 2 already installed. There was no option to use a USB flash drive installer. This DVD method of installation was the only way to install Windows through the release of Windows 7. Starting in the 2012 model year, Apple started producing Macs without internal DVD drives. The necessary changes were made to the firmware on these Macs to allow Windows to be installed from USB flash drives. Apple decided not to issue firmware updates for the older Mac that had internal DVD drives. Meanwhile, Microsoft modified their method for booting windows installers from flash drives. These modifications brought the method closer to the UEFI standard. Neat scanner driver for mac sierra. Apple also starting including logic board firmware updates with the other updates downloaded to your Mac. So the following statement can be made. USB flash drive installers, made from the current release of the Windows 10 iso, are now compatible with the firmware on many of the older Macs with internal DVD drives. So when someone informs you that you can not install Windows 7 from flash drive on your mid-2011 iMac, they are not necessary wrong. They are just unaware of current developments. The simple answer: The firmware, on the logic board of your mid-2011 iMac, does have the ability to detect or boot from the USB Windows 7 installer you created. The Complex Answer A USB flash drive Windows installer can be created that will allow you to install Windows 7 on your mid-2011 Mac. If fact, this installer can also be used to install Windows 10 on your Mac, even though Windows 10 installations on mid-2011 Macs are not officially supported by Apple. ![]() I suppose the above statement needs to be backed up by a written procedure. This is given below for installing Windows 7 on your mid-2011 Mac. • Create the USB installer. • Create a FAT formatted partition on the internal drive. • EFI boot from the Window 10 installer.
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