I want to get rid of Mac OS X Lion

CloudStrife · Apr 9, 2012

Just what the title says.
I have been a Windows user since I was around 6, and I recently became a Mac user half a year ago. Due to my preferences, I had installed Windows 7 on my Macbook Air Late 2011. I've been using the Windows partition so much, OS X Lion is useless to me. In order to free space, I want to get rid of the Mac partition on my MBA. So, how do I do it?

tom vilsack · Apr 10, 2012

maybe try this method?

http://derekhat.com/install-vista-on-a-macbook-without-bootcamp/

zeemeerman2 · Apr 10, 2012

No, that's not possible since the Macbook Air doesn't have a optical disc drive.

----------

Searching on Google, this came up:

Yes, attach a CDROM drive, boot from MacOS (hold down the C key while the device boots). When The install routine starts, select your language and go to disk utilities at the top of the screen.

Select the partition on the left, and erase it. Restart the computer with Win7 in the Rom drive. Install Win7 remembering to delete the largest partition on the disk (the old HFS+ partition created by OS X), and put a new NTFS one on it.

Complete the install of Win7. Congratulations, downgrade complete.

AdrianK · Apr 10, 2012

Deleting your OS X partition is easy and can be done from within Windows (Start > Right-click Computer > Management > Disk Management > select the partition > Format > Unpartitioned space). From the look of other windows install guides EFI will cope with that just fine, but I haven't tried it myself.

You can try growing the NTFS partition from there too, but I personally wouldn't expand a partition that you're booted from just to be safe. GParted is one alternative, although it's NTFS grow feature has never worked for me

Forsen · Apr 10, 2012

Be aware that by removing your OS X installation, you will no longer be able to get EFI firmware upgrades or other firmware upgrades.

Those upgrades will benefit you on windows as well as on OS X, so I would rather recommend to shrink the OS X partition as much as possible, and log into OS X once a month to check for updates.

Erik

lamboman · Apr 10, 2012

Forsen said:
Be aware that by removing your OS X installation, you will no longer be able to get EFI firmware upgrades or other firmware upgrades.

Those upgrades will benefit you on windows as well as on OS X, so I would rather recommend to shrink the OS X partition as much as possible, and log into OS X once a month to check for updates.

Erik

This.

It's just too much hassle to do away with the OS X install. Getting it back will likely be a PITA in comparison to just keeping it there.

Install Lion fresh, uninstall as much unnecessary stuff as you can to cut down its size, then resize the partition.

halledise · Apr 10, 2012

CloudStrife said:
Just what the title says.
I have been a Windows user since I was around 6, and I recently became a Mac user half a year ago. Due to my preferences, I had installed Windows 7 on my Macbook Air Late 2011. I've been using the Windows partition so much, OS X Lion is useless to me. In order to free space, I want to get rid of the Mac partition on my MBA. So, how do I do it?

sell your Mac and buy a PC.
why, you'll be so much better off and have spare $ in your pocket

LordVic · Apr 10, 2012

halledise said:
sell your Mac and buy a PC.
why, you'll be so much netter off and have spare $ in your pocket

typically I think of these answers as overly sarcastic and not helpful.

But I sort of agree. If you have no real desire for the use of the MBA, maybe consider selling it and getting one of the competing Ultra books that runs windows natively.

There are a few good reasons for this.
The MBA running under windows has a few glaring problems. The battery life is abysmal. Most of the competing ultra books in windows have much better battery performance.
The software and driver support from apple is behind and never really up to date. Competing ultra books, since are windows only will focus a lot more on making sure your experience in windows is nicer.
The touchpad in windows is terrible. Unless ive missed something, the drivers allow no fine tuning or real use of gestures.

I like windows myself better than OSx. But I do find that the MBA performs much better (on most aspects, not all) than windows.

yanksrock100 · Apr 10, 2012

I agree with the few users above....sell it, and get a windows ultra book. MacBook air is great on lion, and windows too, but it would be a better experience with a windows ultra book if you don't like osx

halledise · Apr 10, 2012

LordVic said:
typically I think of these answers as overly sarcastic and not helpful.

no sarcasm intended - just stating the obvious given the OP's statement of fact.
(with which you then agreed)
perhaps I should've left out the roll eyes

Windows, in all of it's glorious manifestations, runs best on a PC - which are historically cheaper than a Mac - until it comes time to purchase software that is.
ergo, the OP is in the great position of returning to his first love and pocketing some $ - thus it was not a wasted experiment

Dangerous Theory · Apr 10, 2012

halledise said:
sell your Mac and buy a PC.
why, you'll be so much netter off and have spare $ in your pocket

First time I've seen this forum up vote a post suggesting to buy a PC instead :O

I do agree though, you clearly aren't interested in the real benefits that Macs have to offer.

blesscheese · Apr 10, 2012

Dangerous Theory said:
First time I've seen this forum up vote a post suggesting to buy a PC instead :O

I do agree though, you clearly aren't interested in the real benefits that Macs have to offer.

Not to be contrarian, but I disagree...

I love my MBA. I also used a Hackintosh before buying it, and I am presently using an Asus G73 to do my Skyrim-ing, and I have to say that, in general, the keyboards on PC's suck, and the trackpads are *abysmal*.

The keyboard on the MBA is fantastic, and the trackpad is superb, although, I run Win XP and it is sometimes flaky with that; hopefully with Win 7 it is better. Looking at the Ultra-books coming out, nothing would make me want to sell my MBA to buy one, and battery life looks crap too.

For reasons to obscure for me to go into, I too find that I want to maximize my Windows partition on my MBA. My solution (still working it out) is to have a small 20gb MacOS partition with Snow Leopard on it, and keep a large external hard-drive with my main OS X partition on it. I think it would probably be easier to back up my Windows partition with WinClone than it would be using any other tools. I think keeping a Mac OS partition on the start-up drive is definitely a good idea. Just my $0.02.

RedCroissant · Apr 10, 2012

Sell the Air

If you're running Windows more often then you have more than one reason to buy a Windows-based computer. The Macbook Air(along with the other devices) is not optimized for Windows and you'll go from a an ultra-portable device to one that you'll have to plug in every 4 hours at the most. The trackpad won't work the way it does for OS X when you use it in Windows. You can also get other ultra-portable laptops with more expandability than the MBA.

Good luck with your future sale/repartitioning/partition deletion.

Flipadelphia · Apr 10, 2012

How do you resize partitions? My windows partition is way too small. I only made it 20GB. I'd like to kick it up to 50 just to be safe.

oneMadRssn · Apr 10, 2012

Flipadelphia said:
How do you resize partitions? My windows partition is way too small. I only made it 20GB. I'd like to kick it up to 50 just to be safe.

There are several guides on how to do this online, and a few utilities which do it pretty easily. I'm not going to google it for you, 95% of what you'll need will be on the first page.

However, I will warn you that I've done this a few times before with different OSes and hard drive partition formats, and most of the time the results are less than desirable.

Resizing an NTFS partition is easy and works well if you're growing it into "unused" space. However, if you're moving the entire partition to a different part of the hard drive (and increasing it's size while doing it), odds are there will be some funkiness.

Last time I did it, I shrunk the HFS+ partition and grew the NTFS partition "to the left". Meaning, I moved the NTFS partition over and then grew it to take up the unused space. After this, all sorts of boot problems occurred. A few files were corrupt, it's a mess. I did fix it all, but in the end I wasn't satisfied with the messy solution and ended up just reinstalling Windows.

So... just do that. Reinstall instead. In the end, it'll cost you less time and net a better result.

Flipadelphia · Apr 10, 2012

oneMadRssn said:
There are several guides on how to do this online, and a few utilities which do it pretty easily. I'm not going to google it for you, 95% of what you'll need will be on the first page.

However, I will warn you that I've done this a few times before with different OSes and hard drive partition formats, and most of the time the results are less than desirable.

Resizing an NTFS partition is easy and works well if you're growing it into "unused" space. However, if you're moving the entire partition to a different part of the hard drive (and increasing it's size while doing it), odds are there will be some funkiness.

Last time I did it, I shrunk the HFS+ partition and grew the NTFS partition "to the left". Meaning, I moved the NTFS partition over and then grew it to take up the unused space. After this, all sorts of boot problems occurred. A few files were corrupt, it's a mess. I did fix it all, but in the end I wasn't satisfied with the messy solution and ended up just reinstalling Windows.

So... just do that. Reinstall instead. In the end, it'll cost you less time and net a better result.

My IT department is going to hate me.

I was given this mac to help create ibooks out of our training materials. So I am one of the only people with a mac and they are not thrilled they have to support it.

blesscheese · Apr 11, 2012

Winclone might be your answer

Flipadelphia said:
How do you resize partitions? My windows partition is way too small. I only made it 20GB. I'd like to kick it up to 50 just to be safe.

If all you need to do is re-size your Windows partition, and you have plenty of room on your Mac side, then you should look at Winclone (google it).

It will back up your Windows partition by creating an image of it. You then get rid of your Bootcamp partition, pick a larger size, have the Mac create it, and then you restore the Winclone image to the new larger partition. Your Windows is up and running, and you don't have to re-activate or anything silly like that, you just roll.

I haven't used the new version yet, I used the old version with 10.5, and it worked like a charm.

gentlefury · Apr 11, 2012

CloudStrife said:
Just what the title says.
I have been a Windows user since I was around 6, and I recently became a Mac user half a year ago. Due to my preferences, I had installed Windows 7 on my Macbook Air Late 2011. I've been using the Windows partition so much, OS X Lion is useless to me. In order to free space, I want to get rid of the Mac partition on my MBA. So, how do I do it?

Even if you get thru the arduous process of switch to Snow Leopard, and even if you can get the drivers into the OS to get everything to work....whats the point? Lion is the future of Mac OSX...if you don't like it, maybe its time to go back to windows. No reason to fight apple....once Mountain Lion comes out Snow Leopard will be EOL and no longer supported.

falterego · Apr 11, 2012

Flipadelphia said:
My IT department is going to hate me.

I was given this mac to help create ibooks out of our training materials. So I am one of the only people with a mac and they are not thrilled they have to support it.

Not to be a hijack the thread, but reading that makes me irritated. It sounds like your IT department needs some work themselves. If you're developing iBooks from training materials, your company is obviously interested in or planing to work with the iOS devices and/or Mac devices.

I support a company of 400 and a second company of about 150. In both environments I support a mix of Windows and Apple without any problems. Any IT department that is afraid of supporting an Apple device should be more afraid of their job going bye bye.

turbotoes · Apr 12, 2012

gentlefury said:
Even if you get thru the arduous process of switch to Snow Leopard, and even if you can get the drivers into the OS to get everything to work....whats the point? Lion is the future of Mac OSX...if you don't like it, maybe its time to go back to windows. No reason to fight apple....once Mountain Lion comes out Snow Leopard will be EOL and no longer supported.

Err, did you read the post? OP doesn't want snow leopard, he wants to get rid of lion!

To the OP, I would agree with the others who have suggested minimising the lion partition but leaving it in place.

bogatyr · Apr 12, 2012

falterego said:
I support a company of 400 and a second company of about 150. In both environments I support a mix of Windows and Apple without any problems. Any IT department that is afraid of supporting an Apple device should be more afraid of their job going bye bye.

Or they are overworked and don't have time to learn a system they don't know. Supporting a new OS half assed could cause issues which would jeopardize their job too. Dropping in a system with no one to support it isn't a great idea. Just a thought.

I want to get rid of Mac OS X Lion

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