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DrDaveT

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 4, 2010
6
0
I'm hoping someone will be able to recognize what is failing in my efforts to install Win 7 on my MBP (~2008: 2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo) using Bootcamp, and then pulling that installation into Mac using a Parallels 5 virtual machine. It's being done by others, but for some reason I am struggling with just getting the bootcamp installation to be successful. I will give as much detail as I can think of, because the "mistakes" are probably in there somewhere...

I have upgraded to a 500 Gb HD, formatted the HD into one partition (after being prevented from continuing in Bootcamp Assistant because it was in more than one partition), and have formatted the partition using the GUID option (after finding out the Master Boot Record also kept Bootcamp Assistant from continuing). With each partition attempt I copied my cloned Mac Drive to the new Mac partition (about 2 hours a shot), using Carbon Copy Clone.

Having finally gotten to that point, I thought it would be clear sailing, because I was finally allowed to continue in Bootcamp Assistant (2.0) and create a 200 Gb partition for a Win 7 installation (the remainder left for Mac). I have a student copy of Win 7 Pro, which won't allow me to have a valid installation unless XP is present during installation. So I installed XP as Bootcamp Assistant continued. I used the XP installation menu to change the FAT 32 to a NTFS format (200Gb partition), and installed XP, then installed Win 7 on top of XP. I did the Apple update somewhere in there, and am confused about getting the 3.1 upgrade for Bootcamp to install. I think I have to have 3.0 present, but can't seem to find it. Now when I hold down the option key on bootup, the Mac partition is listed as "EFI". I have seen something that says that occurred because my clone I copied back came from a smaller volume (which it did, much smaller). Also, the installed bootcamp in Win 7 only lists the Win 7 partition, not the Mac.

When I go to attempt to install the Bootcamped Win 7 into a virtual machine in Mac using Parallels 5, it didn't seem to matter what folder I pointed to in the Win 7 partition, it would not create/save a VM.

That's where this stands. I have not seen this detailed on the forums, so I hope this level of detail serves as an aid for those struggling later after the answers come "flooding" in. It looks to be a great 3 way configuration for the MBP.

Thanks in advance...:D

Dave
 
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