Last night I was about as frustrated as I will ever be using a Mac. I bought parallels 5 and Windows 7 mainly for Quicken and Word Processing. I still wanted to install through a bootcamp partition so I could run games in a native Windows environment.....
..... I thought it would be easy. I had to do quite a bit of searching on the forums and eventually found all the solutions. I want to share and aid anyone with the same headaches.
Problem:
1. Blinking cursor in top left corner after partitioning hard drive through boot camp assisstant.
I partitioned my drive to 100 GB, inserted my Windows 7 DVD, and restarted my computer..... It didn't work.
Instead of booting into Mac OSX I got a blinking cursor in the top left corner of the screen.... I waited and waited and waited.... nothing happened.
I restarted and held down control to boot into my OS X partition. I searched and searched for an answer but couldn't find one that work... some suggested to simply unplug the machine for 30 sec's to reset something.... This didn't work. I was about to give up when I discovered the
Solution:
Boot Camp Assistant formats the drive to FAT32... What the assistant did not tell me (was I supposed to already know?!?) is that this partition needs to be smaller then 32 gigabytes... So i reformatted the drive to 32, restarted with the CD in and VOILA... the installer booted.
Problem:
2. Finally installs but the mouse doesn't work! Now I'm stuck.
I got this bad boy installed only to find that my bluetooth mouse didn't work. I cursed the thing and restarted a few times. No luck. I was about to give up completely when I realized that the drivers needed to be installed... I put in my OSX CD and waited for autoplay... Instead of the boot camp install I got some BS about the macbook air.... which I don't have.
I was just going to wait until the next day to get a windows mouse from work when my buddy offered this
Solution:
USE THE KEYBOARD! It was archaic but I navigated to the computer section, explored the OS CD, and managed to install the drivers and restart the computer.
Problem:
3. After installing the drivers I got that blinking cursor again!
At this point I was pissed. I mean really pissed. I turned off my computer, rebooted into OS, and searched for a solution. I could not find one. So I reformatted, reinstalled, restarted, and got that damn blinking cursor again!!!! I restarted back into OS, and repeated... third time was the charm.
Well... maybe... I installed the drivers, restarted, and got that cursor again. I was pissed and tired of hearing that restart chime when I stumbled upon this
Solution:
I got a beer. Instead of restarting the computer after waiting for 30 seconds I went down stairs and cracked a cold one. It tasted really really good and I enjoyed it for about five minutes. I went back upstairs and VOILA, Windows 7 had loaded!
It turns out, as my wife explained at least, that I am not a very patient person.
After this I have had no problems at all. I installed the partition into the parallels VM and am good to go! It only took five hours!
..... I thought it would be easy. I had to do quite a bit of searching on the forums and eventually found all the solutions. I want to share and aid anyone with the same headaches.
Problem:
1. Blinking cursor in top left corner after partitioning hard drive through boot camp assisstant.
I partitioned my drive to 100 GB, inserted my Windows 7 DVD, and restarted my computer..... It didn't work.
Instead of booting into Mac OSX I got a blinking cursor in the top left corner of the screen.... I waited and waited and waited.... nothing happened.
I restarted and held down control to boot into my OS X partition. I searched and searched for an answer but couldn't find one that work... some suggested to simply unplug the machine for 30 sec's to reset something.... This didn't work. I was about to give up when I discovered the
Solution:
Boot Camp Assistant formats the drive to FAT32... What the assistant did not tell me (was I supposed to already know?!?) is that this partition needs to be smaller then 32 gigabytes... So i reformatted the drive to 32, restarted with the CD in and VOILA... the installer booted.
Problem:
2. Finally installs but the mouse doesn't work! Now I'm stuck.
I got this bad boy installed only to find that my bluetooth mouse didn't work. I cursed the thing and restarted a few times. No luck. I was about to give up completely when I realized that the drivers needed to be installed... I put in my OSX CD and waited for autoplay... Instead of the boot camp install I got some BS about the macbook air.... which I don't have.
I was just going to wait until the next day to get a windows mouse from work when my buddy offered this
Solution:
USE THE KEYBOARD! It was archaic but I navigated to the computer section, explored the OS CD, and managed to install the drivers and restart the computer.
Problem:
3. After installing the drivers I got that blinking cursor again!
At this point I was pissed. I mean really pissed. I turned off my computer, rebooted into OS, and searched for a solution. I could not find one. So I reformatted, reinstalled, restarted, and got that damn blinking cursor again!!!! I restarted back into OS, and repeated... third time was the charm.
Well... maybe... I installed the drivers, restarted, and got that cursor again. I was pissed and tired of hearing that restart chime when I stumbled upon this
Solution:
I got a beer. Instead of restarting the computer after waiting for 30 seconds I went down stairs and cracked a cold one. It tasted really really good and I enjoyed it for about five minutes. I went back upstairs and VOILA, Windows 7 had loaded!
It turns out, as my wife explained at least, that I am not a very patient person.
After this I have had no problems at all. I installed the partition into the parallels VM and am good to go! It only took five hours!
