Comments on: How to Install Windows 7 on a Mac

By: Tyleragan44

Tyleragan44 — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 01:59:00 +0000

I installed win 7 successfully and now have an issue. How do I eject the install disc? The eject butonon my macbook pro will not work.

By: Craig

Craig — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 10:00:00 +0000

once installed can i change the size of the partition? or do i have to reinstall? thanks, Craig

By: Bob O

Bob O — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 23:32:00 +0000

I’m not sure if this is the correct place to ask, but I was wondering if you could explain why this is happening during my install:

I have four hard drives, three that are 2TB. 2 of which are full of my osx docs – the third I bought specifically for Windows 7 64bit home premium on my MacPro 2009. I formatted the 4th in disc utilities, then again in bootcamp – when it came to the screen where I have to pick the hard drive on which to install windows 7 there was no bootcamp partition label, no bootcamp label on anything, anywhere… and with 4 hard drives, 3 of which are the same size… it was a bit nerve wracking. I restarted osx and reformatted the hard drive again as above, redid the install process for Windows 7 – and the same things happened. So by the process of careful elimination I chose a drive (mainly that the 3rd drive (as windows seems to start numbering drives at 0) was the correct one since it was the only one a formatting error didn’t pop up on) and am now installing… here’s hoping that was the right thing to do. Any ideas on why this happened? I’ve googled around and have yet to find a similar issue.

Thanks.

By: Junrall

Junrall — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 01:44:00 +0000

Wow! Great writeup! I may be doing this same Windows 7 set up on my wife’s Mac. She is using Windows XP with Boot Camp
However, she almost never uses the Mac OS as all her favorite software is on the Windows OS.
Is it easy to do a complete install of Windows 7 without the Mac OS? She has Mac Book Pro running Leopard 10.5
I have a lot of experience with PCs, but zero with Macs… Could someone post a step-by-step for a Windows 7 only install?
And believe me I tried the “If you want widows get a PC, if you want Mac OS keep the Mac, if yo want both then keep Boot Camp”… but, she is having nothing to do with that… ‘sigh’.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks!!

By: Franco

Franco — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 23:22:19 +0000

This is the clearest explanation I have found – anywhere – on how to install Windows 7 on a Mac, but I still can’t get it to work. The problem I am having is that the DVD drive doesn’t seem able to read the Windows 7 install disc. Is it because my version of Windows 7 is an OEM System Builder Pack?

I have a Mac Pro 2 x 2.8 Quad-Core Intel Xeon. Mac ID: MacPro 3,1. Boot ROM version, MP31.006C.B05

By: Skuli

Skuli — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 23:41:09 +0000

Thank you, great tutorial!

By: Bilal

Bilal — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:48:00 +0000

I had the same black screen problem with Win 7 DVD stuck and could not get back to Mac OSX. Apple support told me to: 1) Turn off iMac, 2) press these 4 keys all at the same time (P, R, Control, Option,) and hold them. The iMac will make its power up sound twice. When you see apple logo then release all the 4 keys. Now you are back to iMac OSX.
Hope this helps

By: Fausto

Fausto — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 13:00:40 +0000

Hi, i have a issue

When windows 7 is installing on my imac at certain time my screen goes black and it stays that way, i can’t do anything
When i restart it i have to eject the disc so i can go back on Mac OS X
i’ve tried this over 3 times could you or someone help me with this please??

Thnx

By: Boot Camp Error

Boot Camp Error — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:02:18 +0000

After reading some of the peoples comments I must say that Boot Camp and Windows doesn’t match very well. I had major problems myself trying to install XP using Boot Camp. I hope Win 7 makes the process easier..

By: Terry G

Terry G — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:04:33 +0000

Reading all this, what do i do if my new macbook pro (direct from apple) has no osx install disk? I take it they no longer come with them as everything is pre installed??

By: n0nuf

n0nuf — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 04:14:11 +0000

Also… To install the BootCamp 3.x (Snow Leopard) tools into Win 7 – 64 bit do this:

1. Insert Snow Leopard disc when 7 install completed.
2. Use Windows Explorer (flag key + E) on the 7 disc and drill down to the DVD directory I think under Bootcamp/drivers/win64 … You will see a MSI file called BootCamp64.msi.

3. Open a command prompt (Flag key + R for run and type CMD and press enter)
4. Copy the path from explorer (or retype it manually). Type the drive letter of your DVD drive, E: or whatever and press enter. You’re now on E: drive. Type CD and a space and then right click after it and choose paste (to paste that path to the command line) and if all looks right (including spaces) press enter.
You should now be in the right DVD directory.

5. Type the following command at the command prompt:

msiexec /i BootCamp64.msi

This will make the installer work where it failed before. When it is done, your tools are installed.

Again, have fun!

By: n0nuf

n0nuf — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 04:05:34 +0000

Well… I have tried many ways to install 7 Ult on a Mac. You can totally skip the GUID/Bootcamp stuff and use the option key to select your windows disk at boot time by doing this on a MAC PRO …

1. Turn off system power.
2. Open the case.
3. MAC PRO has 4 drive bays. Partially remove the drive(s) (multiple example would be a RAID array) with OS X on them leaving ONLY the blank / NTFS disks inserted. Boot the Windows 7 DVD.
4. Use the Win 7 installer and pick your disk / partition.
5. Hold OPTION (alt on PC KB) while booting and when you see the drive list, select the Win 7 disk.
6. DONE!

Ok, I have had problems when installing Vista or 7 64 bit using any method. When I boot to the Win 7 DVD, I get the native command-line window with only the text saying select disc 1 or 2: … I have found no way around this. Seems to only happen with 64 bits.

Solution: Install one of the disks with Vista or 7 – 32bit prior and then boot into that OS and THEN insert the Win 7 – 64bit DVD and install from the old OS. This will of course create the Windows.old directory and create a fresh install. Just save any data files from Windows.old necessary and delete the directory.

By the way, this procedure works on a first-gen Intel Mac Pro with quad Xeon 3.0GHz processors. This was a quickie so please forgive omissions.

post spam/flames/comments to this thread and I will reply if necessary.

Thanks and happy computing!

By: Ata

Ata — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:19:54 +0000

Hi everybody
A nice tutorial. thanks.

Still I have a question:
I just bought a macbook pro, with snow leopard (10.6) and boot camp 3.0 installed on it. I would like to have win 7 64-bit also installed along with it. Boot camp 3.0 says it does not support win 7 nor 64 bit os. I did download the boot camp 3.1 (64-bit) update but I dont know how should i update boot camp in order to start the windows installation?
when i double click on downloaded boot camp 3.1 update patch in mac, it is opened with text editor?!!!
I tried unzipping it in another computer and running the content within it in mac but again no luck.

how should I update boot camp program in my mac os?
or, should I simply use boot camp 3.0 to install win 7 64 bit, ignore the message that it does not support win7 64bit, and finally update the boot camp only in windows?

thanks for your reply

By: Oral

Oral — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 05:09:54 +0000

Excellent post! Instructions worked like a charm.

By: Erik K

Erik K — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:12:20 +0000

Just wanted to say thanks. I upgraded my black Macbook with a new HD and more memory and did a clean Snow Leopard and Windows 7 64 install and the bootcamp64 thing popped up. Followed the instructions and all is well. Thanks for guide Tom!