How can I install Windows 7 via Boot Camp?

[Tarek]

I have a 2015 MacBook Pro running MacOS High Sierra 10.13.4 and I am trying to install Windows 7 via BootCamp. I have had Windows 10 for a long time and I absolutely hate it and don't know what to do. I have the Windows 7 x64 ISO but of course whenever I try to use Boot Camp Assistant it says that I need a newer version of Windows.

I used Disk Utility in order to create another partition (FAT32) and it worked.

I then tried using my PC to make a bootable USB flash drive of Windows 7 (Windows USB/DVD Download Tool) but my Mac doesn't detect the drive on startup. I then tried using unetbootin on Mac but same issue.

Does anyone have any idea how to do this? I know it's probably sounds silly to some people that I am trying to install an old operating system but I truly prefer Windows 7 over 10 by far, which is why I am using it on my PC as well.

Any information is appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[SoCalReviews]

I'm not sure if the 2015 MBP is Bootcamp compatible with Windows 7. I believe mid-2014 MBP was the last model that supported Windows 7 Bootcamp but you can double check the Apple support site just to make sure...

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205016

IMO using a virtual machine such as Parallels (my preference) or VMWare Fusion for Mac is better option anyway. They usually run better, you can run them at the same time as your Mac without having to reboot your machine, you can run all the versions of Windows you want... XP, 7, 8.1, 10, etc.. , you can make separate clone file copies of your VMs and store them internally or externally as on a drive, they update the drivers to keep it current and compatible with your MBP hardware and you can have your regular MacOS backups do the virtual machine as well as opposed to having Windows in a separate partition on your disk drive. 8GB RAM is the usual minimum requirement for VMs but if you have 16GB RAM that helps even more running VMs since they do take up more system RAM.

The main drawback is that if you update to newer versions of MacOS every year or two you might be required to update to the latest version of the virtual machine software to remain compatible. They usually offer special upgrade pricing though.

 

[Cordorb]

You may need to check but Windows 10 may be needed if installed on the default disk.

No MBP here but on the Mac Mini I use an older OS that supports Windows 7 and use external SSD via USB3 or Thunderbolt to run all the other mac OS versions including Mojave.

boot camp for windows 7 will add extra partitions to your disk that may trip you up later if you ever want to re-size them.

 

[Tarek]

@Cordorb It does seem like installing Windows 10 is the only way to go at this point because I cannot even get the startup screen to read the Windows 7 flash drive. I might just go the Parallels Desktop way even though I am not a fan of virtual machines since I feel like their performance is usually bad.

@SoCalReviews Thank you for your input. I decided to use Parallels Desktop since I already had it but wasn't a big fan of it. It does make life easier since you can install just about any OS you can think of, even Ubuntu and Android Emulators, which is pretty neat. I am quite disappointed that Apple is basically forcing me to use Windows 10 even though there are Boot Camp drivers on their website that actually are compatible with my laptop and Windows 7.

 

[davidmartindale]

I have a 2015 MacBook Pro running MacOS High Sierra 10.13.4 and I am trying to install Windows 7 via BootCamp. I have had Windows 10 for a long time and I absolutely hate it and don't know what to do. I have the Windows 7 x64 ISO but of course whenever I try to use Boot Camp Assistant it says that I need a newer version of Windows.

I used Disk Utility in order to create another partition (FAT32) and it worked.

I then tried using my PC to make a bootable USB flash drive of Windows 7 (Windows USB/DVD Download Tool) but my Mac doesn't detect the drive on startup. I then tried using unetbootin on Mac but same issue.

Does anyone have any idea how to do this? I know it's probably sounds silly to some people that I am trying to install an old operating system but I truly prefer Windows 7 over 10 by far, which is why I am using it on my PC as well.

Any information is appreciated.

Thank you.

Does your PC detect the USB drive as a bootable installer?
Maybe try a DVD installer and use a USB DVD drive?
Does the Mac detect the USB installer once in the OS, like in Disk Utility?

 

[SoCalReviews]

@Cordorb It does seem like installing Windows 10 is the only way to go at this point because I cannot even get the startup screen to read the Windows 7 flash drive. I might just go the Parallels Desktop way even though I am not a fan of virtual machines since I feel like their performance is usually bad.

@SoCalReviews Thank you for your input. I decided to use Parallels Desktop since I already had it but wasn't a big fan of it. It does make life easier since you can install just about any OS you can think of, even Ubuntu and Android Emulators, which is pretty neat. I am quite disappointed that Apple is basically forcing me to use Windows 10 even though there are Boot Camp drivers on their website that actually are compatible with my laptop and Windows 7.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with running Parallels VMs but here are some of my favorite features...

Under the Parallels configuration and settings for each specific virtual machine that you install you can allocate more RAM to the VM and you can specify how many CPU cores you want to use. I'm not sure about the specs for your particular MBP but if it is a dual core (four total thread cores) you should be able to specify up to two thread cores for the VM and that leaves two thread cores for the MacOS. If you have a quad core (eight thread cores) then you may want to go with up to four thread cores (of the eight total) for your Windows VM. Generally I like to leave at least two thread cores for MacOS base system but you can experiment for whatever works best for you.

You can allocate more video RAM beyond the default for the VM if you choose. The amount you choose depends on your VM graphics requirements. Under configuration for each VM If you need to use Windows VM on a trusted local network you can configure the network card of that VM to use the Default network adapter or a shared adapter. It depends if you want that VM to show up on your local network or not.

There is some decrease in performance using VM software but it's not as bad as you think since the newer VM software utilizes the Intel CPU multi-core hardware in a way that it was designed to be used for VMs. It's a big advantage of having these newer Intel CPUs with MS Hyper-V x86-64 support as opposed to relying only on the old software emulation methods.

Other features I like about using VMs for Windows... cut and pasting across from Windows to Mac, file sharing, launching your Windows apps right from the Mac desktop, running multiple VMs at once, etc.. You might begin to wonder why you ever bothered with Bootcamp in the first place.

 

[Tarek]

@davidmartindale Unfortunately, the OS does not detect the flash drive as a bootable Windows installer and of course the bootup screen doesn't detect it at all. I do not have access to a USB DVD drive, otherwise I would have probably taken that route. I have an older 2010 MacBook Pro which I always used my Windows 7 DVD on to install via Boot Camp, but of course it has an optical drive which made things a lot easier.

@SoCalReviews I must say I am really liking Windows 7 via Parallels Desktop so far whereas Windows 10 was absolutely awful. And yes, the extra benefits and features that you listed are definitely awesome, especially because I like to copy and paste links and such between both OSes a lot.