Dual Boot Windows 7/ Mac OS on a SSD - MacBookPro early 2011 - BootCamp no CD Drive

Question

I am currently trying to fresh up my old MacBookPro early 2011, which is currently running High Sierra (10.13.6) on a SSD. I removed the original, broken optical CD/DVD drive with this SSD. The original, intern SATA physical drive currently serves as extra storage.

About this Mac - My MacBookPro

I tried out several ways recommended throughout the internet and will compare the different methods as going along the way to show where the problems are, since I really hope to understand the fundamentals with your help now and find a solid, updated solution for this problem. Since MacBookPros before 2012 won't be able to upgrade to the next OS Mojave natively, I think this solution will then be a good point for the future and other users.

My goal:

Since days I am trying to restore the setup I once had: MacOS and Windows 7 via bootcamp, but this time on the SSD instead of using the original drive. My MacOS is already running on the SSD

The big hangup is the missing optical drive, which Bootcamp needs for its Installation of Windows ( specific MacBookPro early 2011 Problem, other models as the MacBookAir allow USB installation).

This leads into two main Problems:

1) Bootcamp denies the SetUp which includes a wizard for partitioning the Drive ( solved but still wonder )

2)After the partitioning Bootcamp restarts the Mac and looks for the bootable device, which again won't be found and the Mac will get stuck on a black Screen with a white blinking cursor. ( not solved, stuck in virtual machine approaches )

So 1. goal: correct partitioning of the SSD with BootCamp

The plan at is to first use BootCamp ONLY for partitioning the SSD

1.1 Fool Bootcamp to find a CD / ISO

1.1.1 one way described in the internet recommends using Deamon Tools or Roxie Toast to mount an ISO of the Windows CD and make BootCamp think it is inserted in the optical drive this way.

XX This does not work on my machine, I used Roxie Toast, mounted the ISO but BootCamp still asks for the CD and won't go further

1.1.2 edit /Applications/Utilities/Boot Camp Assistant.app/Contents/info.plist

XX change different string values according to different tutorials like: make bootcamp accept usb installation

this and similar approaches won't work on my setup with bootcamp 6.1 since certain strings like DARequiredROMVersions are not included at all in my info.plist, other strings like USBBootSupportedModels are named PreUSBBootSupportedModels in my file, so versions differ here to the tutorials I found, and again without detailed information about how things are connected here I can't skip or change other values based on similar names or other guesses. Additionally editing the info.plist file is always denied, even when using sudo nano through the terminal, might be fixable though

1.1.3 use an external drive with a windows 7 cd

√√ this worked, bootcamp introduced me to the next step of the installation, and gave me the option to choose a drive for the bootcamp partition, I chose my Mac OS container on my SSD. BootCamp began to do its work and rebooted my Computer, then as expected, got stuck on a black screen with white blinking cursor. This is fine, since the first goal was only the partitioning of the drive via bootcamp. But yet the result is surprising me since all blogs about this problem that I read make clear that the bootcamp partition should be in ntfs format. On my machine the result from the Bootcamp Setup was a fat32 partition:

Partition Info

I am not sure if this is okay, or if Bootcamp planed to change the format after rebooting. I need more details here.

So 2. goal: using the partition to somehow get windows 7 installed

** 2.1 proceed with DVD**

2.1.1 proceed with external cd/dvd drive

XX My external DVD drive gets recognized when I press alt/opt.key on startup:

It shows my mac OS as a drive icon, and it shows 2 CD icons, one labeled windows 7, the other labeled efi. Whatever I select, it hangs up. I guess it internally want to go back reading from my internal optical drive which is removed.

** 2.2proceed with USB **

2.2.1 use a bootable usb stick with win 7

XX If you think you can use some usb stick prepared with rufus or the windows dvd/download tool, you will get stuck when rebooting, no matter if you use an external CD/DVD drive, a bootable USB Stick or similar.

As far as I read, The reason is somehow that bootable USB sticks with windows 7 use the efi bootloader and this interferes with the way macs work upon booting. I found some information here that it is something about legacay mode Article about the boot set up

but honestly they physically remove the SSD to do this step on a windows machine, not an option for me since I am really not into Hardware and would certainly destroy things.

** 2.3 use virtual machine**

2.3.1 use fusion 5 to then copy the win 7 onto the partition

XX So an other idea I followed was using VM ware fusion to create a virtual machine, use vmware-rawdiskcreator to created a virtual disk which points to the adresses of the bootcamp partition on my SSD, following this tutorial:

Using vmware fusion to link to the partition addresses

this fails since vmware fusion 5 is not able to run under mac os high sierra

2.3.2 use fusion 11 to then copy the win 7 onto the partition

XX so i used fusion 11 and edited the myvirtualmachine.vmx file to link to the vmdk files which again link to adresses of my bootcamp partition. No idea how to use fusion afterwards to install windows 7 into this, since even a newly created vm starts/breaks in error about some core module and initializing monitors

vmmon could not be opened... intítalizing monitor failed

just in case things are better then I feel this is my .vmx file:

c.encoding = "UTF-8"
config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "16"
mks.enable3d = "TRUE"
pciBridge0.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge4.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge4.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge4.functions = "8"
pciBridge5.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge5.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge5.functions = "8"
pciBridge6.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge6.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge6.functions = "8"
pciBridge7.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge7.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge7.functions = "8"
vmci0.present = "TRUE"
hpet0.present = "TRUE"
usb.vbluetooth.startConnected = "TRUE"
firmware = "efi"
displayName = "Windows 7 x64"
guestOS = "windows7-64"
nvram = "Windows 7 x64.nvram"
virtualHW.productCompatibility = "hosted"
powerType.powerOff = "soft"
powerType.powerOn = "soft"
powerType.suspend = "soft"
powerType.reset = "soft"
tools.syncTime = "TRUE"
tools.upgrade.policy = "upgradeAtPowerCycle"
sound.autoDetect = "TRUE"
sound.virtualDev = "hdaudio"
sound.fileName = "-1"
sound.present = "TRUE"
memsize = "1024"
mem.hotadd = "TRUE"
scsi0.virtualDev = "lsisas1068"
scsi0.present = "TRUE"
sata0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0:0.fileName = "Virtuelle.vmdk"
scsi0:0.present = "TRUE"
sata0:1.autodetect = "TRUE"
sata0:1.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"
sata0:1.fileName = "auto detect"
sata0:1.startConnected = "FALSE"
sata0:1.present = "TRUE"
usb.present = "TRUE"
ehci.present = "TRUE"
svga.graphicsMemoryKB = "1048576"
ethernet0.connectionType = "nat"
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
ethernet0.linkStatePropagation.enable = "TRUE"
serial0.fileType = "thinprint"
serial0.fileName = "thinprint"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
serial0.present = "TRUE"
extendedConfigFile = "Windows 7 x64.vmxf"
ehci:0.parent = "-1"
ehci:0.port = "0"
ehci:0.deviceType = "video"
ehci:0.present = "TRUE"
bios.bootOrder = "HDD"
bios.hddOrder = "scsi0:0"
floppy0.present = "FALSE"

but if you followed me this far you will see that the identifiers in my vmx file differ from the attributes in the tutorial, this is because i use a newer version of fusion. other tutorials also changed lines like this:

scsi0.virtualDev = "lsisas1068"

but I stopped this approach then, since things really get mixed up by now. and again a different version problem, where I don't know if the solution that once worked broke through the updates.

Still I think that the approach with a virtual machine is a good direction, but I am really trying to understand what mac os is trying to find or how it works upon booting to find a solid approach What is needed on my mac or can anyone give me some good ideas where to go next?

Thank you for your time!