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About to Install Win 7 on MBP::Any Suggestions

S

Saladsamurai

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 8, 2009
152
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I have never installed Windows on a Mac before. I have updated all software/firmware. I printed out the Boot Camp Install guide. I have Backed up my computer. I also have another computer so I can Google things if necessary. I also have a blank CD (I don't know why, but thought I read that somewhere).

Any last suggestions? Things to look out for? I previewed the Boot Camp Installation guide and noticed that they give, in spots, different instructions for Windows XP and Vista; I am assuming when I come to those steps, I should follow the Vista options since I am using Win 7. Sound Good?

I will probably start in a few hours, so any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Casey
----------------------------------
I am running a 2008 MBP with Intel 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM and OS X Leopard (no snow).
 
While the current Vista drivers work great for Windows 7, if you aren't very technically inclined, it would be better to wait for official support from Apple which is coming before the end of this year. That way, if something goes wrong, you have a place where you can get support from.
 
Okay, I figured I would update this in case anyone else out there stumbles upon it. Perhaps I did not have the latest version of Boot Camp, but I am also such a newb that I don't don't even know how I would check that. I simply did a general software update and thought that BootCamp would be updated :eek:

I used the link that Nano2k provided (above) instead of the actual BootCamp Install guide. Since official support is not out for Win7, the link's guide suffers from a few gaps as well. That is, there are quite a few additional 'in-between' steps that they did not elaborate on. Unfortunately, I do not remember what they were are where they fell, but even I was able to figure them out, so perhaps that is why they were omitted.

Now as for 'hiccups,' I ran into 1 that really had me worried for a few minutes. After the second or third reboot, my MBP shutdown but never actually came back on. And to add to the confusion, the fans never shut off. So I was really unsure of what was going on. After about 10 minutes I said screw it and pressed the power button. The fans immediately turned off and the MBP was completely off. I then pressed the power button to turn it back on. This happened at least 2 or 3 times; it was like I was rebooting it 'manually.'

In the guide, it says at some point that you need to eject the Win7 DVD. Now maybe I should have foreseen this, but since you are now booted into Win7 mode, you lose the functionality of the 'eject' button on your keyboard. So you need to eject it via the DVD's icon on the Desktop (that is, click on then go to File-->Eject).

Finally, when you get to the step where you insert the Leopard DVD and use set.exe, there will be a Windows prompt that says something to the effect of "There are known compatibility issues with this....." I chose to ignore this the first time I saw it and just continue running it. Then it will start installing drivers. When it gets to the Intel Chipset driver, you will be prompted again with the same compatibility message. Now I chose to have Microsoft find a solution. I then followed the link to download the new Intel driver from the Intel site.

As far as I can remember, these were the only issues I had. I need to figure out how to change the BootCamp defaults since it now defaults to booting into Windows instead of OS X.
 
balamw said:
Look/Search for Boot Camp in Control Panel. Then find the Startup Disk and set it back to your Mac OS X partition.

B
Click to expand...

Thank you.

I am now having second thoughts about all of this. I am thinking I should have gone with XP. I have software that I think is only compatible with XP like MATLAB.

Also, for some reason, Windows doesn't know how to restart. When I click restart, it shuts down (but the fans don't shut down) and does not actually restart. I have to press power once to kill the fans and then again to startup :/
 
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