Bootcamp 4.0 on Lion + Win 7

Question

Bootcamp 4.0 on Lion + Win 7

Hi All,

i dont know if anyone at Apple have realised but theres a HUGE booboo with Bootcamp 4.0 (BC).

Today I bought Windows 7 professional to install on my iMac (v 8,1). I've got 6gb RAM and lots of HDD space, but i didnt realise what a nightmare it would be just to install Win7.

Let me just dot point the issues so far:

OSX Lion only allows Bootcamping to Windows 7 (fair enough)
BootCamp 4.0 only partitions space using FAT32 format (okay, but Win7 requires NTFS)
BootCamp 4.0 allows minimum partition space of 20Gb (minimum install requirement for Win7 is 21.24Gb)

It took me approximately 2 hours to discover all these awesome issues.

First time i created a 20gb BC and when i allowed the MAC to restart for the installation, the Windows disc wouldnt begin. After Hard Rebooting the MAC I got the install to begin, only to find that the "disk 0 partition 3: BOOTCAMP" option wouldnt allow me to install as it was not NTFS. I cancelled the install, went back into MAC and re-did it, thinking that there must have been just an error or something i'd missed.

Second time, i received the same error. I went back to MAC, opened Safari and started googling the issue and found that some people had also noticed the FAT32 issue, and were using the FORMAT option within the Win7 installer (please note that the BootCamp Installation Guide advises NOT to do this as it may affect the OSX installation as well). After this i was warned that the minimum installation size was 21.24Gb. I cancelled the installation again and opened back into the MAC to (once again) remove the BootCamp and go through the process again. This time I would go for a larger size, 80Gb.

Third time lucky!! Im ready to try one last time to get Win7 on this MAC. To think that i thought how cool it would be to have the 'best of both worlds' but alas it has just been one headache after another.

Dear Apple staff, thankyou for allowing me to be your guinea pig on this whirlwind adventure. The next time you release a new OSX i will be very hesitant to use it until all the kinks are ironed out.

Kind regards

Kevin

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.1)

Posted on Aug 30, 2011 7:17 AM

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Answer 1

Csound1

Level 9

59,973 points

Aug 30, 2011 10:05 AM in response to kevin_VIC_AUS

XP & Vista were not supported on new Macs using Snow Leopard either.

BootCamp has always formatted to FAT, if your read the BootCamp documentation you'll see that it is mentioned and instructs on using the Windows installer to format the partition for NTFS, so no surprises there.

Minima are just that, Win 7 requires 50G to work properly.

You are not the Guinea pig, just need to refresh yourself by reading the instructions 🙂

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Answer 2

Sep 2, 2011 5:02 AM in response to Csound1

I have had a bunch of headaches with Lion & Win 7 on Bootcamp but I did know to read the system requirements for Windows 7. I read system requirements for every software I purchase to install. If that isn't a habit, then you might want to cultivate it, you could end up with a mess otherwise...as you have seen.

Like you, I was very disappointed to have to forgo my XP which I think is the best Windows OS...but I'm learning Windows 7 now, it ain't easy, but it probably will be worth it.

Good luck.

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