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PurpleCliff

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 23, 2009
160
0
Australia
I've looked around for a while and can't find a definite answer on this ... if I try to make a Windows 7 partition on my Mac now will it work and be as easy as it was with XP?

Thanks.
 
Okay, thanks. So when I do this I'll need my Snow Leopard disc? Because it's currently on the other side of the country ... :(

You'll legally need the Snow Leopard Disk. However, If you have the Leopard disk or Disk 1 of the Restore Disk set, you can try to install with Boot Camp 2.0/2.1. It shouldn't be any different since in 3.0, you're using the Vista drivers anyways.
 
OK, I'm somewhat confused. I thought Apple was still in the process of updating Boot Camp for Win 7 but it appears that people are installing 7 through Snow Leopard, which I have. Is that correct?

I've been holding off on installing my copy of Win 7 on my 24" iMac while waiting on the BC update. Should I just go ahead?
 
Just found a major problem w/Win 7 and OS X!

I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit edition on a 1TB drive in my Mac Pro today, and after installing the Boot Camp 3.0 drivers off the Snow Leopard disc, it was able to see my other hard drives with OS X file system partitions on them.

Only thing is, they didn't show up in Win 7 in the order I expected. (I have a drive called "Data 1" and another called "Data 2", but Windows 7 decided to assign the "Data 2" drive as letter F: and the "Data 1" as G:)

So, knowing how Windows is with its drive letters, I went to the Disk Management program under Administrative Tools, and reassigned the drive letters so they were in the order I wanted. Worked great, UNTIL I rebooted into OS X. That's when I discovered Windows 7 clobbered those partitions. OS X doesn't recognize the drives as having valid partitions on them anymore!

Only way I can see the data on them now is to boot back into Windows 7, where it happily views it all!

Tried running Disk Utility in OS X to fix the drives but it refused to even try, reporting I needed to try to back up any data possible and reformat!?!

This appears to just be a matter of Win 7 modifying an identifier of some sort in the directory table. Anyone know a way to fix this?
 
I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit edition on a 1TB drive in my Mac Pro today, and after installing the Boot Camp 3.0 drivers off the Snow Leopard disc, it was able to see my other hard drives with OS X file system partitions on them.

Only thing is, they didn't show up in Win 7 in the order I expected. (I have a drive called "Data 1" and another called "Data 2", but Windows 7 decided to assign the "Data 2" drive as letter F: and the "Data 1" as G:)

So, knowing how Windows is with its drive letters, I went to the Disk Management program under Administrative Tools, and reassigned the drive letters so they were in the order I wanted. Worked great, UNTIL I rebooted into OS X. That's when I discovered Windows 7 clobbered those partitions. OS X doesn't recognize the drives as having valid partitions on them anymore!

Only way I can see the data on them now is to boot back into Windows 7, where it happily views it all!

Tried running Disk Utility in OS X to fix the drives but it refused to even try, reporting I needed to try to back up any data possible and reformat!?!

This appears to just be a matter of Win 7 modifying an identifier of some sort in the directory table. Anyone know a way to fix this?

Very Interesting. I noticed the Mac drives were available in Windows but it never occurred to me to try and write to them. I've copied data from but never tried changing the Mac drive. I can see where this could be a major problem.

Have you reported this to Apple? Bootcamp should prohibit anything that might cause OS X issues. Perhaps that's why they say Windows 7 is not supported yet. I am very curious about this. I will need to test Vista and XP with BC3 to see if the problem extends beyond Win7.

Thanks for bring this up. Might even warrant a separate warning post. Checking Apple support forums to see if this is a known issue... Standby...

Cheers,
 
I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit edition on a 1TB drive in my Mac Pro today, and after installing the Boot Camp 3.0 drivers off the Snow Leopard disc, it was able to see my other hard drives with OS X file system partitions on them.

Only thing is, they didn't show up in Win 7 in the order I expected. (I have a drive called "Data 1" and another called "Data 2", but Windows 7 decided to assign the "Data 2" drive as letter F: and the "Data 1" as G:)

So, knowing how Windows is with its drive letters, I went to the Disk Management program under Administrative Tools, and reassigned the drive letters so they were in the order I wanted. Worked great, UNTIL I rebooted into OS X. That's when I discovered Windows 7 clobbered those partitions. OS X doesn't recognize the drives as having valid partitions on them anymore!

Only way I can see the data on them now is to boot back into Windows 7, where it happily views it all!

Tried running Disk Utility in OS X to fix the drives but it refused to even try, reporting I needed to try to back up any data possible and reformat!?!

This appears to just be a matter of Win 7 modifying an identifier of some sort in the directory table. Anyone know a way to fix this?

It's not a major problem, it's an user error. Windows will assign Drive letters to the hard drives in your Mac Pro. This is because there is "Read Only" HFS support in the newest Boot Camp Drivers. However, if you were to change the Drive Letters, it actually alters the drive information, screwing up on the OSX side.

I have C Drive for Windows HD, D Drive for Macintosh HD, then E Drive for external DVD+/-RW drive and F for Daemon tools. I don't dare mess with D drive whatsoever.
 
It's not a major problem, it's an user error. Windows will assign Drive letters to the hard drives in your Mac Pro. This is because there is "Read Only" HFS support in the newest Boot Camp Drivers. However, if you were to change the Drive Letters, it actually alters the drive information, screwing up on the OSX side.

I have C Drive for Windows HD, D Drive for Macintosh HD, then E Drive for external DVD+/-RW drive and F for Daemon tools. I don't dare mess with D drive whatsoever.

Wrong. While the user should not have made the drive letter change; one of the first things we tell the programmers is to (within reason) make sure users can't do what they shouldn't.

I don't think it is unreasonable to expect a few people to try this and Apple should make certain they cannot. Adding functionality that creates the potential for data loss is unacceptable, period!

Cheers,
 
Wrong. While the user should not have made the drive letter change; one of the first things we tell the programmers is to (within reason) make sure users can't do what they shouldn't.

I don't think it is unreasonable to expect a few people to try this and Apple should make certain they cannot. Adding functionality that creates the potential for data loss is unacceptable, period!

Couldn't agree more.

And to answer the OP's question, yes, in a way (for now). The Vista drivers that come with Boot Camp 3 work fine on Windows 7 (most Vista drivers work fine under 7 though). And Apple has officially stated that they plan to release Windows 7 drivers later this year which, seeing as it's December already, should be pretty soon.
 
This appears to just be a matter of Win 7 modifying an identifier of some sort in the directory table. Anyone know a way to fix this?

Yeah, this isn't a major "problem" with Win7 and OS X: You modified the partition table! big no no!

Anyhow, Disk Warrior can probable manage to fix those drives, but if not, you should use an extra external to copy that Data 1 files to. So, connect the external to your computer while booted into OS X and partition it, then boot into Windows and copy the files over. Then boot into OS X and repartition and reformat the original drive and copy all the files back. Voila!
 
Just confirming/summing up the thread: So if I attempt to install Windows 7 on my iMac now - using the old Instruction Manual and Leopard discs (not Snow Leopard), everything should be simple and work fine?
 
Wrong. While the user should not have made the drive letter change; one of the first things we tell the programmers is to (within reason) make sure users can't do what they shouldn't.

I don't think it is unreasonable to expect a few people to try this and Apple should make certain they cannot. Adding functionality that creates the potential for data loss is unacceptable, period!

Cheers,

Apple programmers designed the HFS to be "Read Only" They didn't screw up here, thats why I said it was an User Error. The Partition itself is read only and cannot be altered. However, the Partition Table, that's not specific to the actual partition but the entire drive. Windows and OSX and Linux have different ways of reading/writing the Partition Table. Normally they don't really matter but here, the Drive Letter is altering the Actual Partition Table (It's something specific to Windows). Here, Apple has no control over it because it's a Windows based issue.

Just confirming/summing up the thread: So if I attempt to install Windows 7 on my iMac now - using the old Instruction Manual and Leopard discs (not Snow Leopard), everything should be simple and work fine?

It should... I don't think there should be any problems with reinstalling.
 
i'm running win 7 x64 without problems on bootcamp on snow leopard.

you might get an error with the bootcamp driver when you try to install the x64 drivers (x86 version works fine). You have to then search for the x64 driver install on the CD.
 
Just confirming/summing up the thread: So if I attempt to install Windows 7 on my iMac now - using the old Instruction Manual and Leopard discs (not Snow Leopard), everything should be simple and work fine?

As everyone else said already, yes, you should be fine. The Boot Camp installer might not pop up when you insert the Snow Leopard DVD though (this has been an issue for years). If this happens, just browse the DVD and open the folder called "Boot Camp" and in there should be a BootCampInstall64.exe or something along those lines.
 
Vista and 7 share the same driver model (Windows Driver Model 1.7). In theory, a device driver written for Vista should work in 7.

However, this often isn't the case, since many drivers are poorly engineered, or rely on the minutiae of Vista that don't apply in 7.

If you have a recent Mac, you'd see this pretty quickly trying to get by with Boot Camp 3.0 and 64-bit Windows 7 :)

So, Apple IS going to update Boot Camp for 7 support, and they originally claimed it would be before the end of the year. Time's running out on that promise though.
 
Vista and 7 share the same driver model (Windows Driver Model 1.7). In theory, a device driver written for Vista should work in 7.

However, this often isn't the case, since many drivers are poorly engineered, or rely on the minutiae of Vista that don't apply in 7.

If you have a recent Mac, you'd see this pretty quickly trying to get by with Boot Camp 3.0 and 64-bit Windows 7 :)

So, Apple IS going to update Boot Camp for 7 support, and they originally claimed it would be before the end of the year. Time's running out on that promise though.

Do the Leopard (2.1) and Snow Leopard (3.0) discs have the same Drivers?
 
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