Problems with installing Win 7 on 10.11 Hackintosh

[josh.jennings]

I'm having quite a bit of difficulty with booting to the installer USB with Windows 7 in a dual-boot setup with my hackintosh 10.11.2.

My hardware/software setup is:

• Gigabyte GA-Z97-HD3 (Legacy and UEFI modes both enabled)
• i5-4690
• 120GB SATA SSD with Mac already installed
• 250GB SATA HDD that will house Win 7
• Clover installed with 10.11.2 about 2 days ago
• Windows 10 *was* installed on the HDD, but the problem now rests with overwriting with Win 7. I have since reformatted the HDD to GPM OS X Extended.

The problem I run into now is that I can't figure out how to boot to the Win 7 USB stick. I have tried two things:

1.) Running from the Clover boot screen. I see the option to boot to mgrboot or cdboot. Both of which are sourced from my Win 7 USB stick (WININSTALL). There are also options to boot to Legacy HD2 and Legacy HD3, but those are there regardless of whether or not the drive is plugged in (I'm going to disregard these. I've already tried using them and I don't think it's going to be a fruitful lead).​

• When I select mgrboot, I get to a black screen that just hangs on black. My USB drive goes into what I assume is a sleep state based on the way it slowly pulses.
• When I select cdboot, I get the, "Please insert CD or other bootable drive..." (paraphrased) instruction.
• <EDIT 1/3/16 1:40PM CST> I have one additional option. I can "Boot WINDOWS from WININSTALL." I fully suspect this is what I need to be running. Unfortunately, when I run it I only see the Windows logo pop up for about half a second and then it locks on a black screen. <END EDIT>

2.) Running from logic board's boot options. I don't get the mgrboot nor cdboot options. I only get the drive's name, "SanDisk <insert model number>." Selecting that gives me a black screen just like selecting mgrboot from above. <EDIT 1/3/16 1:50PM CST> Sorry, one more edit and I'm done. There is an additional option labeled same above, except it is prefixed with "UEFI: " so it looks like, "UEFI: SanDisk <model number>." When I boot to that option, I get kicked right back to the Clover boot screen. <END EDIT>​

The bootable flash drive was made using Boot Camp and an official Windows 7 ISO file. Interesting thing that I've noticed is that I see a file called bootmgr.efi on the Window 7 flash drive, yet I've heard numerous times that Windows 7 and prior OSes are all Legacy. Windows 8 and after are all EFI. So this is one area where I, admittedly, am a little confused. (To be perfectly honest, I don't fully understand EFI/Legacy in the first place.)

I already did a quick scan to look for other threads on this. Nothing jumped out at me specifically covering Windows 7 not booting from a flash drive. If I missed something, please feel free to point me in the right direction.

Help! I've never had this much trouble booting to a stupid flash drive.

 

[Going Bald]

It is possible that Bootcamp created USB installer will fail in UEFI mode installation.
First of all, disconnect all drives other than the Win7 to be drive.
Insert the USB and boot, hitting Function hotkey that allows you to select the boot device.
Select the UEFI: Your USB Name and hit enter
At the installation screen for Windows, select each partition on the hard drive and delete it until you have nothing but free space left. Continue to next step. Windows installer will create its own partitions.

 

[josh.jennings]

Thanks for the reply, GB!

I have already been following the steps you provided.

I tried using sudo dd as an alternate method to create the bootable drive, and now I only get a black screen when selecting the drive from the MOBO's drive selection screen. Clover doesn't even see the drive.

I agree that Boot Camp could be using the ISO in an incompatible way, but it seems to be the most promising route yet. Either way, I'm still up for trying out that theory. Is there another ISO program besides Boot Camp and dd that someone can recommend? Preferably Mac compatible.

 

[Going Bald]

Thanks for the reply, GB!

I have already been following the steps you provided.

I tried using sudo dd as an alternate method to create the bootable drive, and now I only get a black screen when selecting the drive from the MOBO's drive selection screen. Clover doesn't even see the drive.

I agree that Boot Camp could be using the ISO in an incompatible way, but it seems to be the most promising route yet. Either way, I'm still up for trying out that theory. Is there another ISO program besides Boot Camp and ddthat someone can recommend? Preferably Mac compatible.

The method with the best success is http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/windows-usb-dvd-download-tool but it requires Windows. There is a guide somewhere on this forum that gives directions to download the .ISO file and dd if= dd of= the iso to the USB if you want to try it that way - can be done from OS X or Linux - I would suggest Linux as the better option.

 

[josh.jennings]

Hmm, well I used Rufus, booted to the MOBO's boot options, (accidentally) selected one of my hard drives, and it worked. Win 7 booted. I have no idea why selecting one of my internal drives made it work all of a sudden.

New problem: Clover disappeared. The only way to get back to my Mac OS X SSD is to plug in my Clover-ized flash drive which was made by Unibeast and select the Mac drive. When I got back into my Mac system, I tried re-running Multibeast, but Clover never came back up after rebooting. I rebooted and selected every possible boot drive. The only drive that would boot to anything was my Win 7 HDD drive.

I see that the root of my Mac drive has an EFI folder, and my flash drive has an EFI-backup folder. Should I be doing something with those? Can I simply drag the EFI-backup to the drive's root, rename to EFI, and it work? I would have tried these out already, but you know. Job.

 

[Going Bald]

Hmm, well I used Rufus, booted to the MOBO's boot options, (accidentally) selected one of my hard drives, and it worked. Win 7 booted. I have no idea why selecting one of my internal drives made it work all of a sudden.

Not good. Windows probably installed Legacy mode. Did you make the mistake of leaving other drives connected when installing Windows? The you probably have Windows boot files on a HDD other than the one you installed on.

Installing Windows, connect only the drive you intend to use for Windows.
Boot, hit the hot key to select a boot device and select the UEFI:Your Windows USB and hit enter.
Install Windows.
When you have completed all of the updates available, then you can connect the other drives and boot to UEFI/BIOS to set the OS X drive as first in BBS boot order.

 

[josh.jennings]

Not good. Windows probably installed Legacy mode. Did you make the mistake of leaving other drives connected when installing Windows? The you probably have Windows boot files on a HDD other than the one you installed on.

After it booted to the flash drive, I stopped the installation process, shut down, removed all non-pertinent drives, and then began the installation process using the select-internal-drive method. Windows 7 can't be installed on any drive except the desired 250GB HDD. And even if it did install in Legacy mode that shouldn't be an issue since my board supports UEFI and Legacy concurrently (Gigabyte GA-Z97-HD3), right? That's what I suspect, but I'm more than willing to accept a different answer.

The only issue I seem to have at the moment is missing Clover on boot. I can boot to my Mac drive only if I boot to my Unibeast flash drive and select the Mac drive from the list of drives in Clover on the flash drive. I already attempted Multibeast to re-set up Clover on my Mac 120GB SSD, but nothing changed on the following reboot.

There are obviously gaps in my understanding, and I hope there is enough info to decipher where I'm going wrong.

 

[Going Bald]

Yes, board supports booting both Legacy and UEFI. Unfortunately, if you install Windows Legacy mode, you must also install Clover bootloader Legacy mode. CSM must be enabled in UEFI to allow Legacy compatibility support to be active.

For UEFI boards, best method is to install Windows UEFI, allowing you to install Clover UEFI and be able to boot both Windows and OS X UEFI mode. CSM can be disabled as you do not need it.