Somewhat similar to the Using Boot Camp to install Vista on your Mac walkthrough, this tutorial will take you every step of the way through installing Microsoft Windows 7 on your Intel Mac (running 10.5 or later), using Boot Camp.
Note: if you’d rather not dual boot OS X and Windows 7, you can always install Windows 7 in a virtual environment using Parallels Desktop.
To install Windows 7 on your Mac using Boot Camp you will need the following:
- All firmware updates installed on your Mac (use Apple Button -> Software Update… to check)
- A Windows 7 installation DVD
- Your OS X Leopard installation DVD
- At least 10GB of empty hard drive space on your Mac (you can probably get away with less but you’ll have almost no room to install anything other than the OS)
- An hour if all goes well, up to 5 hours if not
- Though not absolutely required, it’s a VERY good idea to have a complete and up to date Time Machine backup of OS X – it really came in handy for me. Because part of the process involves partitioning your drive, there’s always the distinct chance something will go wrong and everything will be wiped out.
- Patience, possibly a great deal of it. Having a book handy will also help kill time during the partitioning, installing etc).
Installing Windows 7 via Boot Camp
- Here goes. First thing – close absolutely every open program you can. That includes those things running in the Apple Menu that you always forget about. Don’t worry about killing the Dock or Dashboard – having those running is fine.
- Now open a Finder and navigate to Applications -> Utilities and double-click Boot Camp Assistant.
- Click Continue on the initial Introduction screen. Ignore the fact that it doesn’t mention Windows 7 as a possible OS to install.
- Now you have to decide how much space you want to allocate to Windows 7. You might be able to get away with going as low as 6GB, but I would highly advise against it. You’ll have almost no space left over to install software, and your page file in Windows might cause frequent crashes. I opted for 20GB, which left me with just a bit over 16GB to use after installing Windows 7.
To change the amount of space to dedicate to Windows 7, click the small divider between Mac OS X and Windows, and drag it to the left.
- Once you’ve determined how much space you want to allocate to Windows 7, click the Partition button.
- The partitioning itself doesn’t take particularly long. If you receive an error, proceed to step 10 of the “How to install Vista with Boot Camp” tutorial. It provides all the troubleshooting info you need to resolve partitioning issues. Once you’ve cleared up any problems, or if everything just goes smoothly, proceed with the next step in this tutorial.
- Once completed you’ll notice a new BOOTCAMP drive on your desktop.
- Now insert your Windows 7 DVD and click the Start Installation button.
- Your Mac will restart, and Windows 7 will boot. You’ll be prompted with a window asking you which partition you want to install Windows on. Select the one with BOOTCAMP in the Name column. Selecting anything else may wipe out OS X or cause serious problems. Then select the Drive options (advanced) link.
- With the BOOTCAMP volume still selected, click the Format link.
- Click OK.
- And Windows 7 will begin to install. It’s a fairly boring process, so you may want to grab yourself a cup of coffee or your beverage of choice. But don’t go too far away, because when your system reboots, you’ll need to remove the Windows 7 DVD.
- With the Windows 7 DVD removed, your Mac will automatically boot back into Windows 7, and the installation will complete. You’ll be prompted to select your language, keyboard layout etc. The rest of the Windows 7 installation process is very straight forward.
- Once the installation has completed and your Mac has restarted again, you’ll be able to use Windows 7. WiFi will work immediately (no drivers to install) so connect to the Internet. Windows 7 will then begin to download updates, including the proper video card driver. Let it do its thing.
- Once completed, you’ll be prompted to reboot yet again. Do so.
- Once Windows 7 boots back up again, you’ll notice the resolution is much better, and you can enable the advanced graphics features.
- But if you check for sound, you’ll notice there are no sound drivers installed.
- Insert your OS X Leopard DVD. When prompted, select Run setup.exe.
- The Boot Camp installer will launch. Click Next to begin.
- Select I accept the terms in the license agreement and then click Next again.
- Make sure that Apple Software Update for Windows is checked, and click Install.
- The Boot Camp installer will do its thing, and install all the required drivers.
- Notifications will pop up with each driver that gets installed.
- Once completed, click Finish.
- And yet again you’ll be prompted to reboot. Remove your OS X Leopard DVD from the drive, and click Yes to restart.
- If you still have problems with sound not working, you’ll need to install the Realtek drivers. This tutorial will explain what to do.
- That’s it, you’re done! When your Mac boots, hold down the Option key to select which Operating System you want to boot into.
yep that was the prob seems to be installing now
32 bit not 64 bit
Mac Newbee here.
I’m running an iMac 24, 3.06, 4gb, 500hd with Leopard (fully updated).
i’be been trying to install windows 7 via boot camp but get the same message everytime when I restart – “No bootable device – insert boot disk and press any key”. Have tried a number of times but it still doesn’t pick up the disk. I have tried the disk on a mates macbook pro + also my PC, there doesn’t seem to be a problem with the disk. Any suggestions guys? cheers
Hi I have just bought a new mac mini 2.0Gh with 2GB ram and 120GB HD will it run windows 7 32 bit fine or will there be problems with drivers for the monitor?
Hey I just want to thank you, I just followed step by the step of this walkthrough and everything worked perfectly. The Windows 7, 64 bit , is really fast and neat. The only thing i would say is uping the Recommended GB amount for the windows. I have the 64 bit and its a 10 GBs, i put about 44GB which left me with about 33 and change for games and movies. thanks again couldn’t have done it without this site.
I have Windows 7 RC x64 installed on my PC. I am trying to get it installed on my new MacBook Pro 17 with Bootcamp. My OS X is all up to date and running Leopard. I am using the same DVD that I used to update my Vista x64 Ultimate to Windows 7. Yet, Bootcamp insists it can not find the installer on the DVD. Yet it is there setup.exe. Any ideas?
I have a 2008 iMac (2.8 Ghz C2D and HD2600) and tried to install Windows XP in bootcamp. The partitioning in the Bootcamp utility works fine, so I set it to 32GB, put in the XP disc (Wich is 32bit + SP2) and click “Start Installation”. Now my iMac is going to reboot, and a black screen with a with blinking underscore (_ <that one) appears. The disc spins a bit and than… nothing. After a few reboots, the install proces finaly starts and everything is going fine untill the reboot after the format (NTFS). Than the nice error; “disc error. press any key to coninue” appears, and I can start it all over again. I tried it over 10 times now, and it still doesnt work.
So I thought, maybe my fresh burned Windows 7 copy would do the trick, but this one doesnt even make into the install process. The screen remains black with the blinking underscore, and that’s that.
Am I doing something wrong, or are my Windows discs just screwed? They do all work perfectly on a ‘real’ PC afterall…
Mike, sounds to be exactly the same problem I have. (although don’t get excited as I don’t no the cure either). I don’t think it’s a disk problem as i’ve tried numerous disks also.
I keep getting the “disk error. press any key to continue screen to continue” + sometimes also the blank screen with blinking underscore.
Has anyone out there got a solution to our problems?
Well. Now my iMac won’t start the install process at ALL. Both Windows 7 and XP won’t start the Install. Does this stupid Bootcamp thing ACTUALY work?
just wondered: is it possible to use for example “poweriso”?
how much space do you need on your CD/DVD to burn the W7 ISO image?
Worked great! Thanks for the walkthrough!
I had a Gateway 505GR that recently died of mother board failure, but I removed all the usable parts, like the main drive, DVD burner etc. I use a Mac Pro and was wondering if when I upgrade to Leopard OS X, would it be possible to make the PC drive a USB external, and use boot camp to use the drive with all the PC info and system software as the PC Partition? Instead of partitioning my Mac Drives?
Troubleshooting Guide To Boot Camp 2.1
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With a Mac Book Pro Os X Leopard and Windows XP Pro. I am providing this guide because I spent literally days fixing various problems most related to bad drivers. If I can save you the Nightmare I had it will be worth my time to write this guide for you!
Install Windows XP on FAT32
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While using Mac if you ONLY want to be able to read XP files (NTFS or FAT32) then skip this section because OS X Leopard is able to correctly detect NTFS and FAT32 disks in READ ONLY mode.
However if you want to be able to read & write XP files (NTFS or FAT32) in Mac then you would install a program like Paragon NTFS or NTFS-3G. However once you do this you will experience this Problem:
Windows partition missing from Mac ’startup disk’ menu when using NTFS-3G or Paragon NTFS in Mac (Bootcamp 2.1 fails to fails to show windows disk in startup menu after installing NTFS-3G or Paragon NTFS)
It is unclear who is to blame for this bug. Both Paragon and NTFS-3G DO NOT KNOW HOW TO FIX the problem so the finger is pointed at this being an Apple Boot Camp bug! Don’t hold your breath for a bug fix from Apple because I saw people have been having this problem for several years. It would be nice if the Apple cared a bit more about the Windows people they are trying to win over but anyway we are greatful for Boot Camp (even if it is as buggy as hell).
First my personal experience, I had it working perfectly before and after loading NTFS-3G onto my Macbook. I also had it working perfectly with Paragon NTFS. Then after a few months I reinstalled XP. Suddenly it no longer worked! Very fustrating when you KNOW it can work perfectly. It took me several days to figure out that this due to the fact that I had first installed XP and formated as FAT32 but the second time had installed XP and formated as NTFS!!
ONLY KNOWN Solution for this problem :
Format XP using FAT32. Apple understands FAT32 and everything will work as normal!
Do not format using NTFS as Apple does not understand it and XP will be missing from the ’startup disk’ menu!
NTFS users can use this work around solution :
Install Paragon NTFS and use Paragon to set your boot partition and then reboot.
The least desirable solution :
Hold the ALT key down while booting and choose XP.
Install Boot Camp version 2.1
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Using the the disc that comes with your Apple Mac Book Pro.
After Installation update the following drivers to these versions or newer :
Broadcom 802.11 Wireless (5.10.91.8) (4321AG) (*)
Realtek HD Audio R2.27 (5.10.0.5874) (2009-06-16)
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT v185.85 (07.05.2009) (v6.14.11.8585)
Note (*)
———
Broadcom 802.11 Wireless drivers must be force installed to 4321AG. You can do this after installation by using the device manager and updating the driver to 4321AG. These drivers are ‘borrowed’ from another Broadcom 802.11 Wireless device since an update for the BCM 4328 drivers are not available from Apple or Broadcom.
Unresolved Issue
—————–
Back lighting of keyboard is not working in XP. Apple Bug?
Problems Fixed By Doing These Updates
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Bootcamp KbdMgr.exe Latency Problems Slowing Your XP
—————————————————–
I could not fix this problem but found an easy work around.
First check if your latency is being affected by the ‘KbdMgr.exe’ driver. Use ‘DPC Latency Checker’. If the latency is green then you are OK! Skip Adead. If your latency is red then kill the ‘KbdMgr.exe’ in the task manager and check the latency. If it drops then this work around applies to you.
Open the Boot Camp directory in your Program Files directory. The real ‘KbdMgr.exe’ is renamed to something else like ‘Boot Camp.exe’ so that you can use it to boot back to Mac when you want to. Create a shortcut to the new name from from your desktop.
Then create an empty text file and give it the name ‘KbdMgr.exe’. This will allow your PC to boot normally and run normally but will prevent Boot Camp loading automatically.
Wireless Problems
——————
The Broadcom 802.11 Wireless drivers for the (BCM 4328) are unstable and often loose connection or freeze or stop working for no reason. The driver that causes this problem is version 4.170.25.12 (20/09/2007) BCMWL5.SYS
Sound Problems
—————
The Broadcom 802.11 Wireless drivers (BCM 4328) drivers cause sound problems. Music or sound stutters or slows on playback. The driver that causes this problem is version 4.170.25.12 (20/09/2007) BCMWL5.SYS.
Apple Touch Pad Problems
————————-
The drivers supplied on the Boot Camp disc from Apple work but do not install correctly for some unknown reason but the drivers do work once you get them installed. The driver install files are :
AppleMultiTouchTrackPad.exe
AppleTrackpad.exe
Your Apple Touch Pad Drivers are working when Device Manager shows :
Apple MultiTouch
Apple Multitouch Mouse
And you can do a right click by holding two fingers on the touch pad and doing a click
You can scroll up and down using two fingers. Adjust the wheel scrolling speed to one line at a time under mouse properties in the control panel.
——————————————————————–
To install the drivers correctly use the Device Manager and look under Human Interface Devices. You should find two Apple ‘Touchpad’ drivers listed with a (Yellow !) change these drivers to use the ‘USB Human Interface Device’ driver. Then install both ‘Apple MultiTouch TrackPad’ and ‘Apple Trackpad’. This should automatically update the ‘USB Human Interface Devices’ to the correct working Apple drivers. This worked for me. However if you are still having problems you can try the General Driver Installation Tips.
——————————————————————–
General Driver Installation Tips
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Uninstall all devices drivers that are failing and reboot.
——————————————————————–
Make sure all non-Apple drivers are working properly. If not try and fix them first. I had a Logitech Mouse driver that was not working and suddenly when I fixed that at least half my Apple drivers started working. There was probably a resource conflict or some other relationship between the Logitech driver and the Apple Drivers.
——————————————————————–
If any driver is giving errors delete the physical driver file and reinstall! This is very useful when nothing you seem to do works. Sometimes you must physically delete the old driver file so that windows will correctly install the new one. I don’t know the technical reasons for this only I found that this worked for me when I had to replace a Logitech Mouse driver after hours of fustration.
——————————————————————–
If you are busy in Device Manager and working with ‘Human Interface Devices’ and accidentally uninstall one of these drivers which are related to your mouse driver your mouse will stop working. Don’t reboot, just unplug your mouse and plug it in again and Windows will autodetect a new mouse driver for you.
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If you have been messing around and installing many drivers and your drivers still fail then try roll back the drivers until you can’t anymore and then try one of the above methods again.
——————————————————————–
Nice guide! Thanks!
But you should mention that Windows 7 takes 14,5Gb on your drive, not as you say “You might be able to get away with going as low as 6GB”
I installed Windows 7 ultimate, and was left with only 5,2 Gb of free space on my 20GB partition.
The sound issue….I already have the latest Realtek drivers isntalled, but the sound still doesn’t work. I tried inserting the bootcamp CD and doing it through there, but windows tells me “Boot Camp x64 is not supported on this compute model” which is BS because I just used it on my Mac Software on the same computer. SO I just found the “RealtekSetup.exe” file on the OS X LEopard CD and ran that, but it’d just “updated” my sound driver to the one I currently have already. And the Realtek site is broken, you can’t download the drivers manually there. I think I’m screwed?
Worked great! Awesome job! But when I went to install the drivers, it says that “boot camp x64 is not supported on this computer model”, what do I do?
Hi,
We are trying to install W7 on my Macbook, but with no success. We have manage to create a big enough partition for W7 via Boot Camp, but it does not want to read the exe file to start the W7 installation. It shows the files on the disk, but if you click the file, nothing happens.
Any ideas?
Wanda, BootCamp will ask you to stick the Bootable Windows Install disk in the drive. After you confirm you did that, it will reboot the machine and your instillation process will begin. You can NOT run the .exe in Mac OS.
Hi, good walk-though thanks,
I had the same problem as a few of you regarding the BSOD on the 24″ white iMac. I managed to get around it by doing the following (this is from memory so forgive me if i miss a step)
After the BSOD allow the iMac to restart with the Win7 install DVD in
You will get a message saying press any key to boot from CD, do this and you will go back in to the Win7 Installer.
Select you county and click next but don’t click the “install now” button
Instead click Repair My Computer
You will be presented with a list (after some time) of windows installs on the iMac select the one you just did (as I’ve only got os x and win7 I only had one I don’t know if older os’s show up)
From the Repair options presented select command prompt
navigate to the c:\windows\system32\drivers folder by typing
c:
cd windows
cd system32
cd drivers
now you rename the broken driver file by typing
ren nvlddmkm.sys nvlddmkm.old
close the command prompt and restart the computer
you should be able to continue with the setup
Will see how i get on with drivers but so far so good.
After installing Windows 7 (64-bit) on my unibody MacBook, at step #18, I ran into the error message “Boot camp x64 is not supported on this computer model”.
To get around this, explore the OSX disc while you are in Windows 7. Navigate to Boot Camp -> Drivers -> Apple. Then open “BootCamp64″ and it will install all the drivers (I assume if you are using the 32-bit version you should open “BootCamp” instead of “BootCamp64″). All the drivers installed in a few moments!
Hope this helps.
Hey, I’ve read through the comments but I couldn’t really find an answer to the problem with the Boot Drive error and the USB Keyboards not working. There was a solution to upgrading from vista or XP but not from booting from the disc and using bootcamp.
The computer I have is a 24″ iMac running 10.5.8; 2.4 GHz Duo
As said earlier in the comment thread, a black screen comes up saying
1.
2.
Then asks for aCD-Rom Boot option but the keyboard doesn’t work.
Okay, I found a solution to the Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse/Keyboard issue:
Quote “http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2001613&tstart=0″
1 – Load the ‘Add a device’ dialog for bluetooth
2 – Wait until your device is listed and just select it (highlight only)
3 – Right-click (or press ‘Alt+Enter’) the highlighted item and select ‘Properties’
4 – Go to the ‘Services’ tab and wait until it lists a ‘Drivers’ check box
5 – Place a check mark in the box and click ‘Apply’
6 – Click on the notification balloon that pops up on the right end of the taskbar to watch the progress of installation (it will probably say something like ‘Windows Update..’
7 – When done, your device should disappear from the list and should now have functionality (although from my experience not exactly perfectly consistent pairing).
Try and see if it works, folks. It works on my Macbook (Late 2008).
I would like to take this time and thank you for this tutorial….it takes alot of time to create a tutorial of what you did and you have pictures for almost everything. Great stuff keep it up!!!!!!!1
Well, I have the disc but every time I try to install windows 7 through bootcamp it always says that it cannot find the windows installer. I’ll be able to get another disc tomorrow but I don’t know if the disc is the problem.
What am I doing wrong? What version of bootcamp am I supposed to have?
Forgot to say that I’m using Leopard 10.5.8
Michael, could be that you burned the ISO file to the disk instead of burning the disk using the ISO image.
Well, to be honest, I’m not sure which one I did because I don’t know the difference…
So, could you please explain how I can burn the disk using the ISO image? At the moment I think I just burned the ISO file because all I did was copy+paste the file onto the disk and then burn it onto the disk…
So, thanks in advance for telling me how to burn the disk using the ISO image.
The type of file that I burned onto the disk was an ISO Disk Image…
If it makes any difference to you, on my PC the installer starts up right away when I put the disk in…yet on my mac it says boot camp cant find the installer disc…
Is there something else I need to burn onto the disk besides the windows 7 things?
What exactly did you burn onto your disk?
Michael,
Burning a disk image in Mac OS: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=mac+os+burn+iso
I don’t know how your PC starts the installer when you put the disk in. Maybe what I think the problem really isn’t.
Aha, I see…I was using .iso file and it needed to be .dmg
So, you were right…It’s the wrong file type
Everyone give it up for Ed Hayes the miracle worker! =P Thanks man, I really appreciate all the help.
Thanks Michael! Glad I could help, and I hope its working!
great guide, very thanks, all is work’s now, saved in favorites!!!
used your guide whiling installing windows 7 64 bit on new MBP 13in 2.53 GHz. Sound works right off the bet. One big PROBLEM: microphone not recognized in any win 7 programs (ex. Skype). Did an exhaustive google search. Found the same discussion on Apple site. Can’t find any solutions. Am I missing something
Great Walkthrough, only had my mac for 2 days and managed to get it done first time.
Biggest problem for me was finding out which key was the option key
Great help. I appreciate it.
if i dont care about having sound drivers while in windows can i skip the step of the installation the loads drivers off the os x install dvd?
how all you people have windows 7 already… it hasn’t come out yet…
Thanks for the guide!
I got Windows 7 installed just fine on my Macbook Pro. I’m at the step where I insert the Mac OSX 10.5 DVD to install the sound drivers and such. But the computer doesn’t seem to be aware that the DVD is in the drive. The Computer folder just shows the DVD drive as empty. I do not have this problem with any other discs, nor do I have this problem when I insert the Mac DVD while running Mac.
hey,
i just successfully installed windows 7 32 bit, and whenever i go to start up windows 7 it just shows a black screen with a white line blinking. it just sits there and doesnt start. any help?
thanks
Thanks for all the work. Appreciate it.
Thanks for the manual:) It’s great!!!
Fantastic guide! Thanks!
Hey will the old mac osx tiger cd work for the drivers cause i have leopard and all but i lost the cd and i only have tiger cd
Hey all, Been trying to install Windows 7 on my imac – 2 years old. recently installed Snow Leopard. Using Boot Camp – Go through the process – it instals to a point where I get a black screen with choices to restart in safe mode etc. Have not yet been asked for magic numbers Can not get past this window to finish installation. Help please! It driving me nuts.
Thanks – fantastic guide – I had the same problem as Robbie when installing the 64-bit version “BootCamp x64 is not supported on this computer”, and followed Jay’s instructions… but Windows wouldn’t run the installer as it didn’t have the right privileges – but I found a fix at http://blog.andersonshatch.com/2009/01/11/windows-7-x64-on-a-macbook-pro-guide/ – although it does involve invoking the CMD prompt and typing in some DOS commands. Its just like being back in my old Windows 3.1 days, when installing programs always involves this kind of techno-jiggery-pokery.
question: I currently have a bootcamp install of windows xp. So dual boot os MAC and XP 32bit. I want to install windows 7 64 bit to make use of my 4 gigs ram. Could i boot from the cd and install from there? Or would I have to these steps to repartition and such?
To make it so starting into these systems is more streamlined, you should install “rEFIt”
Just google it and you should find it. This will make it so you can select which system to start upon boot, and will default into OS X after 15 seconds.
I do not have any version of Windows on my 2.6 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo Powerbook running OSX 10.5.8. Would it make sense to buy a cheap version of Windows XP on eBay or Craig’s List, install that, and then buy the Windows 7 upgrade?
Hi I am trying to instal windows 7 on imac. no luck so far. i get almost to the end of the installation, and my imac reboots, and then the screen goes blank as if the whole machine has stalled. the only thing to do is to turn the machine off and on again. this takes me to a screen ehich gives me the option of running windows in safe mode or normal mode. whichever one i choose, i get back to a blank secreen again. please help me or i think i might put a sledgehammer thru my imac screen !!