Hi,
im looking for someone to come to my house and remove one the HDD, install a bigger ssd, and put back in my optical drive into my mid 2011 imac 27 inch i5.

OR

if someone knows how the heck to load bootcamp onto my imac from a USB that would be just as good, as everything ive tried on line, etc, ain't working.

help i want bootcamp and think i need to reinstall my optical drive.

thanks so much

Michael

I'm not sure but bootcamp shouldn't require the optical drive... As for the home service call, check your local apple authorized repair places... While there are some techs on here you don't mention where you are and I'm pretty sure you aren't planning to fly someone in from across the country...

darn it... That info would help.
Im in Toronto, mid town-ish.

Where are the ads for sevice types?

As far as I can tell, you can't boot an imac off a USB, is that right?

mk

What you need the optical drive for in Bootcamp is for the Windows DVD

To get the Windows installed from a USB memory stick, you need to first have a machine with a DVD drive that can create an ISO file of your installer disk.
Macbook Air – Install Windows 7 with Boot Camp without an External DVD Drive | a Tech-Recipes Tutorial (http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/9136/macbook-air-install-windows-7-with-boot-camp-without-an-external-dvd-drive/)
So its a bit chicken-and-egg if the only machine you have doesn't have an optical drive and/or you haven't purchased the downloadable Windows installer from Microsoft.

From the Apple Bootcamp instructions:

"You may be able to install Windows 7 with a USB flash drive that contains a Windows 7 ISO image downloaded from Microsoft. To check whether you can do so, open Boot Camp Assistant, click Continue, and see if the option “Create a Windows 7 install disk” is available.
To install Windows 7 with a USB flash drive, you need the following:
- An ISO image of Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate downloaded from Microsoft.
- A USB flash drive with 4 GB or more.
Boot Camp Assistant erases the flash drive, and copies to it the Windows 7 ISO
image and software drivers that let Windows work with your Mac hardware
To see how much free space you need on your disk for Windows, refer to the
documentation that came with Windows."


Your other option is to get an external USB DVD drive for $30 to $60

i think my problem may be that i already have a windows 7 virtual machine installed? This is driving me crazy!!!
I may have to start from scratch.

So, can someone elaborate to me how to have both fusion AND bootcamp?

don't know about fusion, but i know for sure with parallels you can simply point parallels to your boot camp partition when you install it, assuming you have a pre-existing BC partition

an existing fusion VM shouldn't bother boot camp at all...boot camp doesn't know anything about your VMs its completely seperate