Bootcamp Apple Drivers, Windows 7, and 10.6.2

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Level 2

164 points

Bootcamp Apple Drivers, Windows 7, and 10.6.2

I've been using 10.6.2 with Bootcamp/Win 7 with no problems on a MBP, so I upgraded a 2008 Intel iMac to Snow Leopard/Bootcamp/Win 7 and swapped the internal for a bigger drive.

The iMac has been fine on Leopard/Bootcamp/Win7, but now on Snow Leopard, Safari nor any of the Apple apps will run in BootCamp, and some searching had led me to discover missing Apple Drivers (normally hidden in BOOTCAMP/Users/me/AppData/Local/Apple/Apple Software Update/).

The missing filenames are: AppleApplicationSupport.msi, AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi, iTunes.msi, MobileMe.msi, QuickTime.msi, SetupAdmin.exe.

My MBP has these in the right place, but on the iMac the equivalent folder is empty. How?

No idea.

Mac Book Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Nov 26, 2009 4:18 PM

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Answer 1

Jonathan Dear Author

Level 2

164 points

Nov 27, 2009 3:24 AM in response to Jonathan Dear

The thing that drew this to my attention was when Safari (on the iMac in BC/Win7) wouldn't launch, with an error message, about "cfnetwork", but now can't find copies of this. So I've replaced the old iMac internal, booted BootCamp, and Apple apps all run fine. Those missing invisible files aren't there, but that isn't causing the problem. So maybe winclone caused a problem when I created the image in the first place. Twocanoes is back up now, and I see he's dropped winclone due to time and Win 7 probs, and the forum has some problems reported, but nothing matching my experience. Is there any other app which will copy and restore a BootCamp partition? I have iPartition which does a good job of resizing BC partitions, but I looked briefly at Deploy Studio and can't understand if it does the job.

Anyone tried it on a single Mac? I guess I'll just have to start again from scratch and reload all the Win 7 apps manually.

Anyone know how to get Win 7 to run CHKDSK? I can never get it to show "repair disk", supposed to be the first option after restart in BC and hold down F8. But I only get safe mode and various network variations of that. No repair disk option. Winclone does say run CHKDSK /f twice, but I've never been able to get it to run, so that may be in part a cause.

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Answer 2

The hatter

Level 9

60,980 points

Nov 27, 2009 4:50 AM in response to Jonathan Dear

Take a look and ask Paragon asbout their Drive Backup Pro
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-professional/

I don't know if Acronis works, it didn't two years ago due to lack of support for GPT. Norton Ghost 15 is another possibility.

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Answer 3

Jonathan Dear Author

Level 2

164 points

Nov 27, 2009 8:28 AM in response to The hatter

Thanks, Hatter, I've mailed Paragon, as their website is indecipherable, although there is one small mention of:
"Drive Backup 9.0 Professional - NEW! Apple Boot Camp configuration support Compatible with Apple Boot Camp configuration. Create a backup image of your Mac hard disk or separate partition with ability of bare metal restore in case of software or hardware malfunction."

Norton Ghost looks like it doesn't do Bootcamp,
"The problem is that the Mac's EFI is mounting the disk prior to Windows booting up and the hard drive is running in a MBR compatibility mode over an emulated BIOS. I have yet to find a native Windows imaging program that will run under these conditions, so good luck. Yes, the machine is running Windows, and running it very well -- but the way it is able to do so requires a bunch of technical trickery that makes it a non-standard setup. Using a virtualized machine such as Parallels or Fusion is in fact easier to use programs such as Ghost because the virtual environment is actually loading a BIOS, not an emulated BIOS layer running on top of EFI."

But CopyCatX from SubRosaSoft.com looks promising: "Duplicate Windows – CopyCatX has the ability to duplicate a single Windows volume, which can then be mounted and restored back at a later date. This is exceedingly useful for BootCamp users on Intel-based Macintosh systems."

Without trying any yet, I know which one I'm betting on, and I've emailed SubRosaSoft.

Will get back to you, thanks.

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Answer 4

The hatter

Level 9

60,980 points

Nov 27, 2009 9:04 AM in response to Jonathan Dear

I just heard someone say that Windows 7 was being dropped from WinClone.

Looking at Acronis forum, they are in hot water; and my attempt to use Ghost 15 - on a PC no less - was very disappointing. Windows 7 changed how almost anything low level is handled of course, so AV like Kaspersky is also having to figure out what changed to work properly.

Does this mean CopyCatX supports NTFS?

On my Mac Pro, all the internal drives are just MBR, no EFI or GPT and that works fine, too. My Mac OS runs off ports that are of course bootable but can't be seen from Windows (and can be switched off). Windows boot volume, NTFS data drive, backup drive, all internal on Mac Pro.

But I also caved in and built custom PC to run Windows 7, no tricks, no "we don't official support 64-bit Vista or Windows 7" to worry about or deal with - fans and thermal sensor control was totally lacking with Mac Pro shamefully.

Well, learn by trying, and seems the UEFI Group and support members (Intel, Apple, Sun, IBM and Microsoft among others) doesn't have Paragon and Acronis attention yet.

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