If you can find an Apple Superdrive, we can install W7. EFI Boot of W7 is very problematic, especially on Macs. It also requires a legacy MBR and a DU FAT32 partition to be created manually. When BCA no longer allows W7, instead of using a USB-based installer, burn your W7 ISO (or a commercial 64-bit DVD of W7) which will work. On your model, an external Apple SuperDrive can also be used to install Windows. You can read more about bless at man8/bless.8.html. It uses OS X bless command with a legacydrivehint qualifier. For example on MacPro machines, you can dedicate a MBR-only (non-GPT) disk which is bootable. The EFI part is bootable because Apple Bootmanager will look for a. OS X will recognize it, but Apple Bootmanager will refuse it.Ģ. You do not want the USB2 to be a GPT with a slice being FAT32. It is where I planned to install Windows 7.ġ. The 'MACINTOSH H' drive you see is a FAT partition that I used Disk Utility to make. Unfortunately, while it recognized it as an 'EFI Drive' it did not lead to anything except a black screen. The bootable USB Yosemite installer I have is a GUID partition. I read that Intel Macs only recognize GUID partitioned bootable USB drives so that is why I used Rufus and a Windows 7 ISO to make the GPT partitioned bootable USB drive. Here is the contents of the USB bootable disk made by Bootcamp using a Windows 7 ISO on a 2011 macbook pro: Here is a picture of the drive after I used my friends 2011 macbook pro and Bootcamp to make the USB bootable drive: Here is a picture showing is is a USB2 drive when I had it as a GPT (GUID) bootable disk using Rufus and a Windows 7 ISO:

I waited about ten minutes and finally hit a key and then it auto-booted back to the Mac OS. When I used the GUID partition and used OPTION key at startup it did recognize the USB thumb drive as an 'EFI Drive.' When I selected it though it booted to a black screen (but I could still hear the fans running). However, when I used Rufus on my Parallels trial of Windows I made a bootable Windows 7 and specified for it to use a GUID partition with FAT32. I also have found that when you use the OPTION key during start-up that the MBR with FAT32 is not recognized.

I verified that it is USB2 (I will attach a picture to show as well). I read some of your other posts helping people with USB thumb drive installations.

Windows 7 on macbook pro retina 2015