OS 10.6 - Bootcamp with Windows 7 Upgrade disc only ? - Page 2 - Mac-Forums.com

chscag · 10-18-2009, 12:25 AM

Quote:

I have also been listening to Windows Weekly with Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott. I have not listened to the latest podcast, but in all the previous ones they are not sure if you can do a clean install with the Windows 7 upgrade CD. Yesterday, I was thinking about canceling my order for the Windows 7 Professional upgrade. After reading your post, I changed my mind and will not cancel my order.

I'm still a little unclear on how you are going to install Windows 7 upgrade running Windows XP Pro in Apple's BC.

When you do the install can you write up some step by steps? A video would be cool, but I think I would be asking too much.:-)

Nice to know Leo is still around.

I sure miss their old TV show, it was one of my favorites!

As far as using the Win 7 upgrade DVD: One of two things I'll try:

1. Clean install first with the upgrade DVD. No activation. No specific settings.

2. Install it again over itself and hope that it "sees" itself as an eligible upgrade in the same manner as Vista Home Premium did. If it does, great. I'll activate it and do my settings.

If the above doesn't work......

1. Install my full copy of XP Home SP2.

2. While XP is running, insert Win 7 upgrade DVD and do an upgrade install.

I know this works because a good friend of mine who is a beta tester for MS and Apple says it works. The only problem here is that Win 7 will move all the XP files and data to a folder (Old Win or something like that) and install itself clean. But it will recognize the presence of XP and accept it as an eligible upgrade.

Either way, it should work. And, you are not violating the MS EULA as long as you do have a licensed copy of XP or Vista on hand and NOT installed on any other machine.

I'll keep the forum posted on how it went - sometime after October 22nd. Still have my regular work to do first.

Regards.

Calistoga · 10-21-2009, 10:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chscag

Nice to know Leo is still around.

I sure miss their old TV show, it was one of my favorites!

As far as using the Win 7 upgrade DVD: One of two things I'll try:

1. Clean install first with the upgrade DVD. No activation. No specific settings.

2. Install it again over itself and hope that it "sees" itself as an eligible upgrade in the same manner as Vista Home Premium did. If it does, great. I'll activate it and do my settings.

chscag: I will be waiting with great interest. I like Plan A, but I realize that one should always have a Plan B.

Leo has partnered with a company called MediaFly, where you will be able to watch live video streams of his shows on the Roku Player, iPhone, Popcorn Player, PalmPre, and other platforms or devices.

Good luck with the Windows 7 upgrade.

Keep us posted.

mcharley94 · 10-22-2009, 08:33 PM

Maybe I am being obtuse here, and if so I apologies, but I sure would apreciate it if someone could enlighten me.

I am running a licensed version of Vista (32 bit) using boot camp on my MBP and now wish to upgrade to Windows 7 (64 bit), which I just purchased today.

Of course the upgrade being 64 bit will not run from within a 32 bit OS, which I assume leaves me with booting from the Upgrade installation disc. Now I could accomplish this blindfolded on an IBM compatible, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to do this on my MBP and can't seem to find the answer by doing a Google search, hence my resorting to ask for help here, and rather than create a new thread I felt this thread seemed to be an appropriate place to do so.

Any help would be appreciated.

TY

cwa107 · 10-22-2009, 08:50 PM

Turn the machine off, turn it back on again and immediately hold the Option key. Once you start seeing the list of bootable partitions, pop the disc in and it too should appear. Double-click on it and away you go.

mcharley94 · 10-22-2009, 09:20 PM

See, now I just learned something new, and falling just short of thinking to insert the disc AFTER the option to choose which OS I wanted to boot was on the screen this is exactly how I thought it would work. I instead just assumed that the MBP would recognize that there was a bootable disc in the DVD drive already. I would have never thought to insert it when needed

TY cwa107, Windows 7 is installing as we speak, and just to be safe, because I had just recently utilized boot camp having installed Vista not even a month ago and had not installed all that many other programs yet I decided to perform a complete reformat of the bootcamp drive and do a fresh install of the new OS. I sure hope that was a wise decision.....We shall see.

TY again, I was hoping that there was a simple resolution to my question

cwa107 · 10-22-2009, 09:26 PM

No problem.

Another option is to pop the disc in immediately and then hold the 'C' key. But I find the process outlined above to be more reliable.

Calistoga · 10-22-2009, 09:27 PM

The Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor may be of some help. I was surprised to learn that I cannot run Windows Aero on my Intel iMac. At least everything is compatible with Windows XP Mode.

butters149 · 10-23-2009, 01:39 PM

so what are the steps I need to do if I have windows vista ultimate 64 bit and i have the win 7 professional upgrade 64 bit?

Calistoga · 10-26-2009, 09:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by butters149

so what are the steps I need to do if I have windows vista ultimate 64 bit and i have the win 7 professional upgrade 64 bit?

I have done a number of Google searches on this topic and have not found anything that explains how to install Windows 7 Upgrade on a Mac running BC. This article is well done, but it is for the full version of Windows 7, not the Upgrade. I have some compatibility issues with Windows 7, and I will not be doing the upgrade until this gets resolved.

mcharley94 · 10-26-2009, 10:30 PM

What I did, as cwa107 suggested, was hold the option key down until I was greeted with OS X and Windows, I then inserted the upgrade disc. This gave me a third option to boot from the DVD, which I did.

From there rather than choosing UPGRADE I chose CUSTOM (Advanced), formatted the BootCamp drive and installed from scratch. Everything went smoothly and it never asked for any other activation key other than the one for Windows 7.

(Note, just in case I set BC to boot windows first instead of OS X. Also, be sure to remove any USB devices from the system before beginning. For whatever reason the first time I tried to install Win 7 it froze up when trying to complete installation and after doing a Google search discovered it was because I had a wireless mouse attached via USB. I removed the mouse and the second attempt went smoothly).

I will add that there are a few glitches with BC/MBP and Windows 7 thus far, which I hope Apple sorts out soon, namely the touchpad / scroll option, iSight showing an exclamation mark in the device manager even though it shows elsewhere that it is installed, and as I have posted elsewhere here on the forum (to which I have received no answer as of yet) the screensaver and monitor sleep does not work. It will go to sleep though via a sleep key on my external keyboard.

chscag · 10-27-2009, 02:12 AM

To Calistoga:

Finally got some time this afternoon (Monday is my day off) to install Win 7.

I can confirm to you and anyone else listening in that the Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade will in fact install using Boot Camp without having another version (qualifying upgrade) of Windows present.

Before anyone gets excited.... I have 4 eligible fully licensed copies of Windows XP here at home. Two of them unused.

Follow the instructions on the links that I previous posted in this forum. In case you missed it. Here are the links again:

1. Computer World Link

2. Win Supersite Link

Regards.

Calistoga · 10-27-2009, 09:09 PM

chscag:

Thanks for the links, and informing us of your results with installing Windows 7 in Apples BC. Did you have to do the registry hack in order to get Windows 7 to work? I have been listening to Thurrott at least once a week for the past three years. I think this guy can install Windows 7, blindfolded. :-) I am more interested in your write up/results (or others) when it comes to installing Windows 7 upgrade in Apple's Boot Camp.

Thanks!

chscag · 10-27-2009, 11:51 PM

Hi again:

Let's see if I can do a shortened step by step without taking up too much space.

Boot Camp creation of the partition for Win 7 is fairly straight forward. You'll need a minimum of around 20 GB for the 64 Bit version and 16 GB for the 32 Bit version. Actual space will be a lot less but Win 7 creates an enormous page file and hibernate file which you can adjust down later on.

The only hitch I'll warn everyone about is when the Win 7 DVD first boots into the preliminary install screen. The option to format the Boot Camp partition is not obvious. I overlooked it and just pressed on assuming the partition was formatted. The installer warned me that I couldn't install to the Boot Camp partition. What the heck? Then I saw the option to prepare the partition down in the corner. Clicking on that and choosing NTFS (no other choice) got me going again.

Total install time from that point on was around 30 minutes. Note of caution here... when Win 7 asks for your Product Activation Code, do not enter it at this time. Just press continue and let it boot to the desktop.

Once the desktop loads, select the "search" function at the bottom of the Start menu and enter "regedit.exe". When the registry editor loads, follow the directions given in the link. Close the registry editor and go back to the Start menu. This time find the command prompt and do a right click on it. Select "Run as Administrator". Now follow the instructions in the other link.

Once you're finished, reboot Windows 7. After it boots to the desktop, find the activation wizard and execute it. Put in your Product Activation Code and let it send it out to the MS activation server. It'll respond in about 30 seconds or so and tell you that activation was successful and that you're running "Genuine Windows". (Passed genuine Windows validation)

Hey, that's it. After that it's make adjustments, install programs and whatever.

One recommendation: Go to the MS website and download\install the "Microsoft Security Essentials" program. It includes a malware - spyware detector\remover and also an AV program. All free and has gotten good reviews from PC Mag and ComputerWorld.

Have fun.

Regards.

Calistoga · 10-28-2009, 08:57 PM

Chscag:

Thanks for taking the time to write up your experience with installing Windows 7 upgrade. It is not really clear from mcharley94 reply if registry hack was used to install Windows 7 (see post 25).

This has been a very helpful thread!

mcharley94 · 10-29-2009, 03:25 AM

I did not use any hacks when I did a clean install. I obtained my version of Win 7 64x upgrade for $30 using my edu email address as I am a student, (any student who is currently enrolled at a registered university can do the same as I understood it), and it activated just fine.

Another question I have is, When I had initially installed Vista on my MBP there was a Bootcamp configuration icon present down by the clock, as well as in the start menu, which allowed me to update BC as well as choose which OS I wanted to start as default upon boot, among other things, but since installing Win 7 this option is gone. Any idea why and how I can get it back?