Bootcamp / Win 7 Ultimate / MBA 2012 - WILL NOT INSTALL!

[Damn Dirty Ape]

Well, got my MBA 13.3 256gb where I want it mac-app-wise, thought I'd go ahead and add on my Win 7 Ultimate at this point.

I was able to run the bootcamp and download the driver package onto a flash drive as well as put my technet win7 ultimate on another flash drive.

Got the partitions done and Win 7 setup starts, I select 'custom', then as the instructions read, then selected the partition that was labeled 'bootcamp' in the win7 setup. The size was correct and then boom.

'Setup cannot install windows on this partition'

Not sure what I could have done wrong; it's pretty easy to follow those directions to at least that point; from there on it would be a standard install fro Win 7.

Any ideas? The nearest genius bar is 100 miles away and not sure that they would help me with this task anyway; same for Microsoft tech.

[halledise]

you have 90 days free phone support.
call Apple Tech support and they'll walk you through it.
alternatively, buy Parallels or VMWare Fusion for a simpler life.
(pricing is around $50-$80)

[ashobe]

Originally Posted by halledise

you have 90 days free phone support.
call Apple Tech support and they'll walk you through it.
alternatively, buy Parallels or VMWare Fusion for a simpler life.
(pricing is around $50-$80)

VMWare Fusion is much easier. No separate partition and easy

[aca11811]

Its been a while since Ive installed bootcamp, but if I recall correctly you need to select the created 'bootcamp' partition and format it. Once formatted you can then install to it.

[KPOM]

Originally Posted by Damn Dirty Ape

Got the partitions done and Win 7 setup starts, I select 'custom', then as the instructions read, then selected the partition that was labeled 'bootcamp' in the win7 setup. The size was correct and then boom.

'Setup cannot install windows on this partition'

Not sure what I could have done wrong; it's pretty easy to follow those directions to at least that point; from there on it would be a standard install fro Win 7.

Originally Posted by aca11811

Its been a while since Ive installed bootcamp, but if I recall correctly you need to select the created 'bootcamp' partition and format it. Once formatted you can then install to it.

Yes, you need to format it. From within Setup, select the drive, and then format it as NTFS. There should be 4 drives that show up. One is your Mac partition (obviously don't format that). Another is the restore partition (about 400MB) and there is a 200MB partition that is also for OS X. Usually it's the 4th partition that is the boot camp one (just remember what size it was).

It would be nice if Boot Camp Assistant formatted the partition, but I think it is because OS X can't write to NTFS partitions natively (and thus can't create an NTFS partition).