- Tuesday, 9 February 2010
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Many people lose their tempers merely from seeing you keep yours - Frank Moore Colby
Installing Windows 7 on your Intel Mac
WHEN APPLE ANNOUNCED in 2005 that all of its future desktop and laptop computers would soon make the transition to sporting Intel CPUs, the Macolyte community was split. One camp decided that the move would see poor little Apple bullied and cajoled by the biggest chip maker on the planet. The other camp realised that IBM's PowerPC chips were struggling to keep up with the rest of the world and something had to be done.
Intel's projected roadmap for future chips was way in advance of the competition and Apple boss Steve Jobs had an inkling that performance per watt was going to be the most important factor in the future of modern computing. The laptop revolution, as it soon turned out, was just a few months away.
Apple hammered the final nail into the coffin of the PowerPC line last month when it announced that its latest Snow Leopard operating system - Mac OSX 10.6.2 - could only be installed on boxes with Intel inside. As a secondary consequence of moving to Intel hardware, every modern Apple computer is capable of running Microsoft's Windows operating systems in a variety of flavours.
Boot Camp is an application that has been supplied free with all installs of OSX since 10.5 Leopard and which, according to the official documentation, allows easy installation of Windows XP (SP2) and 32-bit versions of Vista.
Why anyone would ever want to sully a perfectly good Apple computer with an ancient operating system is entirely beyond us. Don't get us wrong. We have nothing against XP. It's a very nice operating system. But it is about to start collecting its pension. Snow Leopard, on the other hand, is a cutting-edge OS with a fantastic reputation for usability, reliability, security and all round lickable Apple loveliness.
Five years ago you might have had good reason to want to run Windows XP on a Mac. Applications for OSX were pretty thin on the ground unless you worked in one of the creative industries. Designing magazines or editing video was no problem. But if you wanted play games, or design a building, or decompress commonly used binaries from the Internet, or use any one of thousands of less commercial, perhaps esoteric, software packages, your only recourse was to bite the bullet and get a Windows box. Many a Mac user guiltily hid a cheap Wintel machine under the desk in an effort to keep up with the rapidly changing face of software.
But since Apple finally bit the Intel bullet, things have changed. Porting most Windows applications to Mac OSX is now a much simpler affair and, as a result, it's much more difficult to find a Windows application that doesn't have at least one OSX equivalent. We're sure that our dear readers will bombard us with long lists of examples that we have failed to find, but it will be hard for even the most die-hard Windows fan to admit that the Apple cross-platform situation is far more equitable now than it was in the recent past.
Anyone who wanted to install Vista on a Mac, unless they were being held at gunpoint, was definitely in need of a check-up from the neck up in our opinion. Despite trying very hard to look like OSX, Vista was a bloated mess of an operating system.
But now there's a new kid on the block and some Mac users are looking at Windows 7 with curiosity, if not jealousy. The official Apple line is that Boot Camp does not yet support Microsoft's shiny new OS, but we wondered whether that was simply down to Cupertino control freakery rather than good old fashioned incompatibility.
Our step-by-step installation guide to getting Windows 7 up and running on your Intel Mac is far from comprehensive, being isolated to just one one flavour of Macintosh, but it does prove that running Windows 7 on Apple hardware is possible without waiting for permission from Mr Jobs and the Cupertino Cabal.
First Steps
The first thing you'll need to do is to realise that anything you do to your beloved Mac as a result of reading this guide is not our fault! As we have said, there is no official Apple support for what we are about to do, so if you brick your hardware, you are on your own.
Do not try to install Windows 7 on your main boot drive. That's just asking for trouble. Boot Camp must be installed on a fresh NTFS partition and footling with your main HD is not recommended. We used a recently-installed secondary internal drive simply so that if anything did go horribly wrong we could rip the thing out and bin it. It would also be a very good idea to back up absolutely everything at this stage, but we don't really need to tell you that.
Next you'll need to use Software Update to get everything up to date. We initially tried to install Windows 7 using OSX Snow Leopard 10.6.1 and there were some major issues. The installer failed to even recognise the 64-bit disk, and the 32-bit version had a whole host of graphics and driver issues that we won't go into here.
Upgrading to the latest Snow Leopard 10.6.2 iteration of Mac OSX, which conveniently appeared in the middle of preparing for this guide, made things a whole lot easier, so we recommend you do the same.
Please also make sure you have stopped every single program apart from the finder and the dock from running. We wasted quite a few hours twiddling our thumbs waiting for installations to happen because a rogue copy of Mail was running hidden in the background, which was most annoying.
The first thing you'll notice on starting Boot Camp Assistant is the lack of any mention of Windows 7 in the splash screen. We warned you. As with most things, If Apple hasn't approved it, it doesn't exist. You should take note of the advice on backing up and power adaptors for laptops, however.
Boot Camp will next ask you if you want to create or remove a Windows partition. If you started with a fresh disk as we suggested, you'll need to create a new partition. This will cut your hard drive into two separate chunks, effectively creating two logical hard drives on one piece of hardware. Again, please don't try to partition your main hard drive. You are looking into a world of pain if you do that and if you don't know what you are doing things will go wrong. This is why Apple wants you to wait for the official method to be ready, some time before the end of the year. Those with less patience should plunge in and partition the drive.
If you have more than one available hard drive, as we have on our Mac Pro, you'll have to identify which you want to sacrifice to Windows. In our case it was the freshly backed-up Drive 2 which is located in Bay two. Bay one usually contains the default hard drive for your startup disk. If you don't know which drive contains your startup disk you should stop right now, because what is coming next is not for you. You can choose to either erase the entire disk and create a single partition just for Windows, or partition the disk making it part Windows and part OSX. Just to be awkward we chose the latter, because that is what you would have to do if you were fiddling with a single drive. Which, of course, is something you are not about to do… right?
The default partition size is set at 5GB which might be OK for an XP install but won't leave you much room for anything other than the system files for either Vista of Windows 7. We chose a healthy yet arbitrary 150GB chunk of our 500GB drive to dedicate to Windows 7 and hit the partition button. For reasons that will become clear later, it might be worth using an easily identifiable number like 123GB.
Depending upon the state of your hard drive and the level of fragmentation of any existing files, this shouldn't take more than a few minutes, but we have heard reports of some drives taking an unexpectedly long time to partition, so be patient.
When the partition is sorted, you'll be sent back to the previous screen, which asks you if you'd like to begin the Windows installation process, and that is, of course, what we're here for. At this point you'll be locked out of you machine to all intents and purposes so it might be time to have a nice cup of tea or six. Which also neatly explains why we'll now be switching to live photos of the screen rather than nice neat screen grabs.
What we're showing you here is the installation process for Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, which we figured that, as the biggest and most complex install, would probably be the most difficult to get up and running properly. We have also tried the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate with identical results. You'll go through a couple of obligatory registration and licensing screens, but there's nothing to see here. Move along.
The installer next asks you where you would like to install Windows, and this is where it gets a bit complicated. Not only are your hard drives not identified by their OSX names, you may also notice a number of partitions you didn't been know were there. Ignore them. You are looking for the BOOTCAMP partition created earlier.
Worryingly, the installer reports that Windows cannot be installed on this particular partition, but if you click on "show details" you will be informed that Windows 7 can only be installed on an NTFS partition. Click on "Drive options (advanced)" and you will be able to reformat the partition as NTFS. We can only assume that the Boot Camp Assistant formats the partition as FAT32, presuming you are trying to install XP.
After a minute or so of disk gnashing and wailing of hard drives, the installer will kick in and, from here on in it's pretty much a hands free ride. A couple of automated reboots and about 40 minutes later, and Windows 7 is a live and well and living on your Mac.
More tea and a light snack later, and we have to admit that our expectations were rather low for finding a useable operating system with all the connectivity we expect from our Mac Pro. Would the keyboard and mouse work without fiddling? We had already heard reports that there were audio problems with earlier attempts. And what would W7 make of our triple monitor set-up running from two ATi Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics cards?
Well, in the end it turned out that after a few minor tweaks everything worked astonishingly well. The three monitors were in the wrong positions and were set to painfully low resolutions, but a quick visit to the Displays Control Panel soon sorted that.
All of our internal sound interfaces were working fine, and even an attached USB audio mixing desk performed admirably without having to install drivers.
The Apple mouse and keyboard both operated perfectly aside from one small failing: the numeric keypad currently is not supported, nor is the rodent's fourth shoulder button (which everyone we know disables anyway) but these are minor niggles indeed.
Our ethernet Internet connection worked without having to do a thing, and our Logitech webcam was smart enough to go off and download and install its own driver. Internet Explorer worked out of the box and downloading and installing a working version of the Google Chrome web browser was achieved in a matter of minutes.
We even grabbed a copy of the Crysis demo, which when left to its own devices set pretty much everything to medium and worked surprisingly well. Cranking everything up to maximum had the poor Mac groaning and creaking, but only the snappiest of dedicated gamers' PCs can cope with that kind of pressure.
Your average Mac user is a pretty dedicated soul, never happy to step outside the confines of Apple's warm embrace. The folks at Cupertino take their time releasing products because they want to get them as right as possible before they bestow them upon their adoring public.
The fact that the company is not yet willing to give its blessing to Redmond's latest - and some would have it greatest - operating system is probably more about protecting its punters than its market share. But there must be a certain amount of fear in the Apple campus.
Windows 7 is without a doubt the closest Microsoft has ever come to catching up with OSX in terms of good looks and user friendliness. The constrictions of this article obviously don't allow us to provide you with a full and comprehensive overview of the whole Windows-7-on-Mac experience, but we will say that anyone who is forced, for whatever reason, to run a Microsoft OS on Macintosh hardware will be in for a pleasant surprise. µ
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"…Porting most Windows applications to Mac OSX is now a much simpler affair…"
Unless they are 64bit ones.
"Anyone who wanted to install Vista on a Mac, unless they were being held at gunpoint, was definitely in need of a check-up from the neck up in our opinion."
I loved it, LOL
Apple has said they will have bootcamp ready for 7 by the end of this year, last time I looked there is about 5 weeks left. You will need Snow Leopard, Leopard will not officially be support bootcamp for 7.
Snafu whats the problem with porting 64bit apps to Mac OS.
Its a fully 64bit OS and 90% of the default apps are 64bit and multi threaded.
The only ones having trouble with making 64bit apps for OSX are the ones that have very large applications written in Carbon which has no 64Bit binary's so them(Adobe and Microsoft) are rewriting there applications using Cocoa which will result in faster applications that take advantage of more OS level features such as GPU acceleration and multi threading.
do you think before you write???
there are several reasons to run windows on a mac.
1 - games
2 - there are some applications you can't run on osx (science, engineering, design...)
i have a mac, some friends of mine have macs and for some reason or the other we have installed xp or vista so we can take the full potential of our machines.
Me thinks we should wait for Windows 8 (Copenhagen). Win7 still locks up processes, (CNTL+ALT+DEL or TaskManager) don't work.
The icons are 2D, or Windows 3.1 ish.
Still slow on my 2GB Core 2 Duo 2.8GHz.
Have to download Windows Live to get Calendar, Movie, Picture Viewer and so on.
Control Panel. Enough said. Too many icons.
Staying with OSX/XP combo for now.
@Regulas,
it's not officially supported, no, but it works fine.
I've got Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit installed on a MacBook Pro 15", running Leopard. Works great, been playing Dragon Age: Origins on it fine (although the fans get loud).
I've got snow leopard and had no problems installing Win 7 Pro 64bit.
I didn't even to use a secondary partition, partitioned my main boot drive using Boot Camp in OSX, inserted the Win7 64bit disk and it instantly picked it up.
The install process was perfect. No probs at all.
The only difference is that my hard drive runs on IDE mode, instead of SATA AHCI (probably due to boot camp not official windows 7 yet?).
However, the remaining Windows hardware drivers installed perfectly off the Mac Disk, the keyboard lights, buttons, etc all work OK.
I've got a 2.8 17" Macbook Pro with the 500GB HDD. The mobile video drivers from Nvidia also work perfectly.
Once I read this;
"Intel's projected roadmap for future chips was way in advance of the competition and Apple boss Steve Jobs had an inkling that performance per watt was going to be the most important factor in the future of modern computing."
Isn't it obvious what Job's had his inkling about?
Plus the simple fact they are the most powerful desktop and laptop based cpus they would have basically not been able to make a Mac with any strength behind it.
But I still stand by the reason, why do you need to pay both Apple tax(cost of the expensive hardware) and Microsoft tax when just one of these can do everything you need (games, engineering, design) when you spend the money you saved on the 1 tax and buy proper hardware.
Guess which...
@4TR3X,
I often wonder why this argument about cost only seems to apply to Apple products.
I drive an Audi. I could have bought a Ford for less, but I prefer Audis. Fords will get me there fine, have all the nice gadgets, good engine, but I still bought an Audi.
Why no outcry over folk who buy nice cars?
Wondering if 4TR3X is an acronym of Nick Farrell...
"...lickable Apple loveliness."
I was like, "Wait a minute. Who's writing this???"
If Nick sniffs your article, I suggest checking your brake lines, before driving home.
Ah, the old "More money for better quality argument". If your Audi had the exact same engine, transmission and suspension as the Ford would you still pay the premium? Macs run on the same components as PCs in a prettier case. You aren't paying for quality as in your car example, just the illusion of it.
@Joinville
I can build a custom PC with an exotic Case and setup with top quality parts I KNOW the brand of and it will cost less then a Mac and run faster.
You may drive that Audi, I will drive that custom built Porsche 911.
"Apple's new Core i7-based iMac might be a performance monster, but it looks like the whole family's having some problems getting out of the gate: in addition to the previously-noted performance issues with the Core 2 Duo models, a quick glance across Apple's support forums and on other Mac boards around the web reveals that some machines are showing up DOA and / or with cracked screens. We're a little more familiar with the DOA issue, since the new i7 we just bought doesn't boot at all, but the cracked screen issue seems to be equally common and mostly affecting the bottom left corner, from what we can tell."
-ENGADGET.COM-
I will stick to my custom made 'Porsche'
you can keep that 'Audi'
@libtard,
peronally, I find the build quality on the MacBook Pro to be better than any PC laptop I have seen. The unibody is excellent, and looks great.
I suppose the newer, luxury laptops released recently may have a similar build quality (I've not seen them), but they do lack OSX.
This makes a big difference.
Aye right.
Anyway, I give up. Too many Nicks on here, too much spleen, too little reason.
Then I'd have to taint my computer with OSX. No thanks. But good for you Mac folks. You finally get to use what we already enjoy.
Why pay the "Apple Tax" and the "Microsoft Tax" in the first place? Overpriced hardware + overpriced software = zero bank account balance.
Just run your old copy of XP in a VM like VirtualBox, in a host Linux OS. More secure than having Apple or Microsoft's bungled attempts at security holding the reins (and also free, so you don't have to explain to your kids why you are putting them on a diet to pay the Apple/Microsoft Taxmen).
Win7 (RC, mind you) on my 2007-era Mac Mini works fairly well, unless I do a lot of clicking around the Control Panel. That's when explorer bites the dust and has to relaunch. Hopefully the forthcoming Boot Camp update will correct the minor glitchiness.
Came here for a guide about installing Windows 7. Got a bloated wall of high school essay trying to hit a word count. Shut up about the operating system wars, it's so childish. I want to run both and don't care which is 'better'.
Why choose Linux over the more versatile Unix Certified Mac OS or Solaris or if like free FreeBSD.
I think Apple people like to do stuff, and don't especially want or need to care what hardware and software makes that possible.
PC people also like to do stuff, but many of us like to tinker, or even assemble our own systems. Apple's business model is not friendly to tinkering with hardware, while the IBM-PC model is. The PC model has hardware component standards, from ATX to JEDEC, to PCIe. Standards allow manufacturers to make, price, and brand their widgets competitively. Reasonable tinkerers can read the manufacturers' hardware specs, match the hardware at the pricing we can afford, and go to it.
We get satisfaction in successfully assembling a working PC. Of course we then get to do our work or play on it. A bonus for us is that when we have a problem, we can probably diagnose and solve it.
Just some thoughts...........not shooting across anyone's bow.
I notice that with limited "real estate" you spend eleven paragraphs explaining how Windows XP is about to be relegated to the trash bin! Windows XP, apart from being one of the best operating systems ever from Microsoft, is nowhere near "dead and gone" yet. I wonder how you would compare the average Linux distro with Apple products?
Audi, Ford and Prosche.(I too drive an Audi)
All 3 will get you from A to B. Porsche's look great(hardware design), have great engines which are tweaked(by the manufacturer) to get the best performance. Audis have great engines, stability, design and luxury features. Fords are....utilitarian, wont cost you much and you can tinker to your hearts content without worrying too much about ruining your investment.
-Ford=PC(hardware and software, cheep generally decent looking,loose hardware-software coupling for mid-range performance per Mhz)
-HotRod that you build in your garage = performance PC(performance heavy, ugly, next-to-no luxury and expensive + time consuming) Usually people with nothing better to do with their time(like travelling, beach, sports, etc) woukld choose this option.
-Audi = MacBook/iMac (decent hardware, with a great performance/finetunes OS that can take the best advantage of it, with some nice luxury options and a beautiful case)
-Porsche = MacPro/MacBookPro. Awesome performance hardware, great design(system and aesthetic), tweaked to the max(an OS that is best suited to take advantage of the "engine" and use it in ways that are best suited to power users (not gamers...real power users)...and look good at doing it, along with every luxury option and the best service.
@Roger... you own the hotrod, not the Porsche. You might have "better hardware" but the software on your system is...crap, and thus your system is worse(not efficient, no luxury, uglier,etc) than either a Porsche or an Audi.
When you understand that your computer system is not JUST HARDWARE, then maybe then you will end up with a better SYSTEM. WinTel fanboys like yourself buy hardware. Apple users like myself, buy a system.
And as far as the mythical "Apple Tax".... there is enough different between a MacOSX machine and a Windows based PC...
-hardware(backlit keyboards, multi-touch, gigabit ethernet(from 5-6 years ago), thinner, lighter, sturdier, magnetic latches and power chords, etc)
-software (better functioning, better looking, safer, more reliable & stable, user friendlier OS, iLife, etc)
-services(MobileMe, iTunes Music Store, App Store, etc)
-support(Applecare, geniusbar, etc) all under a single roof(company)
To justfiy the difference(if any) in price. While Ballmer(and his minions) might trumpet the "Apple Tax", he seems to forget how much he carges just for his latest service pack....which is based on decade-old technology.
As a person who actually uses computers as opposed to wasting time "tinkering" with it until it's usable.... iLife is reason enough to use a Mac imo. And as a developer it's great to be on a *NIX platform, where i can tinker to my hearts delight(IF I WANT).
It seems like Microsoft makes a crap OS just so those of you, who have nothing better to do, can tinker with it till they get it to work right and that fills you with a sence of acomplishment. Apparently you credit Microsoft for making you feel like you achieved something lol. Get a life, get a real System, which just works and focus on real issues in your life, instead of wasting time and money on inefficient-ugly-old technology.
So your "Apple tax" argument falls apart when you realize that a mac is more than just hardware, like your bargain-basement PCs.
This article is a useless piece of tosh - do some research next time! I thought this was actually going to be useful, but no, it's tripe, with no useful fixes...
Why there are all the warnings about installing to the same partition as Mac OS X? I've done this with the beta, RC, Windows Server 2008 and the final x64 product on 3 different macs.
Clue: when you create the partition on your HD for boot camp in the assistant, remember the size. When you get to the list of partitions in the Windows 7 installer - it's the last partition on the hard disk. every time. If you want to be doubly sure - get this - it's the same size as the one you created in the boot camp assistant...
If you are installing x64 on an NVidia 9xxx based macbook/pro, then when you put the Snow Leopard install CD in after windows has installed, it will fail saying something like "x64 is not supported on this machine". You have to look on the disk, find the bootcamp 64 bit installer, run it as administrator, and set the compatibility mode to Windows Vista (in the properties selection when you right click on the bootcamp setup.exe file).
Then, go to the NVidia website, and get the latest Geforce 9400 mobile drivers - they make the card work really nicely - you get much better performance than with the bootcamp 3.0 (snow leopard) drivers.
OSX is based on BSD unix? Which was developed in the 70s? wouldnt that make OSX the older OS?