There are 2 ways you can do this.

Put the cd in and restart your computer and hold down the Alt(option) key. This will give you the option of which disk to boot in, pick windows or you should see the cd pop up. Once windows is picked wait for the "Press Any key to boot from cd" dialogue to come up and go from there.

or like AngusLee said, click on the search at the top right and just type in bootcamp assistant and you will see it

For some reason it won't read the SP3 disk I burned last night. It was an SP2 service pack to begin with when my Mac was first installed with bootcamp. Currently downloading an SP2 iso from windows. My keyboard is wireless, so maybe that's why f8 wouldn't bring it to safe mode. I tried pressing the option key with the windows disk inserted but I still only get the option of booting in Mac/Windows. Pressing windows leads to the black screen w/ cursor. I am hoping that by using bootcamp assistant I can perform a restore option without a clean reformat. I've heard there is an option called "restore to last working condition" or something like that?

How did you burn your cd? If you just burned it as a normal data cd it wont work. It would have to be burned as an image for the computer to detect it as a bootable option.

I burned it using disk utility on Mac, and another time I did it on my laptop. I downloaded the ISO since that's what I heard would work :(.

hmm that is weird. If the computer wont read the disc then you havent burned it correctly. Try waiting for a bit after you put the cd in, usuallly on boot it takes sometime to read the cd

When I put in the disk I can see windows sp2.iso or something like that. When I open the cd contents there's an autorun portion, but I can't understand why my computer won't recognize the disk. Do I have to rename it as Windows_SP2_ or something?

It sounds to me like it wasn't burned properly. It should be showing up when you hold Option at bootup. Do you hear the disk drive spinning up? You can also try holding C before the Apple logo shows up at boot to boot from CD/DVD. Not sure if that's reliable or works at all with wireless keyboards though, and I don't think it works if you have a firmware password set.

EDIT: Wait - when you insert the CD on the iMac, and view the CD's contents, are you seeing the .iso file? If you are then that means you burned the ISO itself as a file onto the CD. You should have burned the ISO image to the CD so that the CD contains the filestructure in the ISO, not so that it contains the ISO itself.

Originally Posted by Andrew A

It sounds to me like it wasn't burned properly. It should be showing up when you hold Option at bootup. Do you hear the disk drive spinning up? You can also try holding C before the Apple logo shows up at boot to boot from CD/DVD. Not sure if that's reliable or works at all with wireless keyboards though, and I don't think it works if you have a firmware password set.

EDIT: Wait - when you insert the CD on the iMac, and view the CD's contents, are you seeing the .iso file? If you are then that means you burned the ISO itself as a file onto the CD. You should have burned the ISO image to the CD so that the CD contains the filestructure in the ISO, not so that it contains the ISO itself.

I feel really silly for asking this but do you have a set of instructions online for how to burn it properly? I only see the .iso file on the cd when I load it. I've been without my bootcamp for a few days now and this laptop is pissing me the hell off LOL.

Yea, so that means you put the ISO file onto the CD, rather than using it as a disk image. Open Disk Utility and put in a new blank CD. Click on your CD drive in the left pane and then click Burn at the top. Find the .iso. Then you wait.

That's pretty much what I did. I've tried a few times and on one of the cds I get some options like...autorun.inf, cdlaunch, readmesp.htm, srsp2.cmd, support, windowsserver2003-kb914961-...86.enu.exe. BUt the CD name is Cr0SP2_EN. Will I have to rename the CD or something for bootcamp to recognize it? I tried to rename it but it wouldn't really respond!

No, the name of the disk doesn't matter. Did you actually do what I outlined, or just "pretty much" did that? "Pretty much" doesn't mean you did it right... and if you did it right, you wouldn't be seeing a .iso file on the disk when you view its contents.

The disk I just burned doesn't show .iso anymore, but instead contains all of the things I listed in the previous post. Done following your instructions. I'm not sure why Mac won't recognize the disk when I try and open it with bootcamp assistant.

Boot Camp Assistant is used for creating/formatting disk partitions and for helping you to install the Windows drivers from Apple. I don't think that Boot Camp Assistant is ever supposed to try to access your Windows disk - creating and formatting the partition is something OS X can do on its own, and the drivers for Windows come from an OS X install DVD, not the Windows disk.

Ohh. Well right now I'm not sure why the Mac isn't recognizing the burned windows disk when I boot it up.

Again, can you hear the disk drive in the iMac spinning up? Have you tried holding C while booting up rather than alt/option? Finally, try inserting the disk and going to System Preferences > Startup Disk and select the Windows CD/DVD, then press "Restart..."