I finally got around to installing Win7 via bootcamp on my 2011 Mini server this weekend. The process was not as smooth as I had expected it to be or as I had experienced in the past when doing this on a MBP.
I followed the usual steps in bootcamp, but initially I did not create a USB installer. I have an external LG BR drive so I figured I would this use this. Makes sense, right? I got bootcamp to create a DVD with all of the drivers and then created a 60 GB partition via BC.
When the computer restarted I was greeted with a blank screen. Simply put, the windows installer would not run off the external drive, no matter what I tried. I searched the internet for similar issues and it looked as though the way to solve it would be to create a Windows install USB stick. Luckily I had one lying around. Great, but now I also needed an ISO image of the windows 7 installation.
It is not immediately obvious, but disk utility can create an ISO from an optical disk. It will be saved as a dmg file, but you can just rename the extension to iso and it will work.
Ok, so then I got bootcamp to create the install USB stick and restarted again . Same blank screen. Now I am getting annoyed. More searching the internet and trying various things - getting nowhere. I then found a post on some forum that suggested disconnecting all other usb drives and especially the external BR/DVD drive. I disconnected the LG and this time windows installer started up and I managed to complete the installation perfectly. Finally!
I then ran the setup for all of the drivers and everything was great, except things looked laggy, especially on the GUI front. Now most people love to bash the Intel HD3000, but, seriously, it's good enough to drive a 2D GUI smoothly. I started to check out the settings and I found the culprit. Since the mini uses mobile parts, Windows thinks it's a laptop! And it assigns it the "Balanced" power profile. This means that the CPU and GPU (and wifi and other things) run in a reduced mode. Make sure that you use the "max performance" power profile - no more lag when dragging windows around.
Before all of this I did try VMWare fusion as well. The install was painless, especially if you use the unattended express option. For occasional use a windows VM is ok, but I prefer the performance of running windows natively if you're going to be doing anything more taxing than working with documents.
I followed the usual steps in bootcamp, but initially I did not create a USB installer. I have an external LG BR drive so I figured I would this use this. Makes sense, right? I got bootcamp to create a DVD with all of the drivers and then created a 60 GB partition via BC.
When the computer restarted I was greeted with a blank screen. Simply put, the windows installer would not run off the external drive, no matter what I tried. I searched the internet for similar issues and it looked as though the way to solve it would be to create a Windows install USB stick. Luckily I had one lying around. Great, but now I also needed an ISO image of the windows 7 installation.
It is not immediately obvious, but disk utility can create an ISO from an optical disk. It will be saved as a dmg file, but you can just rename the extension to iso and it will work.
Ok, so then I got bootcamp to create the install USB stick and restarted again . Same blank screen.
Now I am getting annoyed. More searching the internet and trying various things - getting nowhere. I then found a post on some forum that suggested disconnecting all other usb drives and especially the external BR/DVD drive. I disconnected the LG and this time windows installer started up and I managed to complete the installation perfectly. Finally!I then ran the setup for all of the drivers and everything was great, except things looked laggy, especially on the GUI front. Now most people love to bash the Intel HD3000, but, seriously, it's good enough to drive a 2D GUI smoothly. I started to check out the settings and I found the culprit. Since the mini uses mobile parts, Windows thinks it's a laptop! And it assigns it the "Balanced" power profile. This means that the CPU and GPU (and wifi and other things) run in a reduced mode. Make sure that you use the "max performance" power profile - no more lag when dragging windows around.
Before all of this I did try VMWare fusion as well. The install was painless, especially if you use the unattended express option. For occasional use a windows VM is ok, but I prefer the performance of running windows natively if you're going to be doing anything more taxing than working with documents.