Hello,
When I try to open Boot Camp Assistant a pop-up shows up reading:
"Boot Camp Assistant cannot be used"
followed by:
"You must update your system software before this setup assistant."
Here is the confusion: I am running Snow Leopard (10.6.8) and the version of BCA I have on my computer is version 3.
Boot Camp version 3 is snow leopard compatible.
What is going on? How can I fix my bootcamp?
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
Are you saying Boot Camp Assistant is showing 3.0 or are you just using the 3 as an example? It should be up to 3.3 or 3.4 now. You don't say if you have used the Apple Software Updater? Do you have the latest EFI firmware update?
Usually those errors are next to meaningless.
Repair your hard drive and zap the pram, you don't need anything.
I did use the software update, but it said that nothing needed to be updated.
I don't even know what EFI filmware is, but when I used apple software updater, no new updates were found.
Do as @The hatter mentioned and boot from your MacOS installer disk and in Disk Utility, "Repair Disk".
Here's a link for a possible fix.
Look hereand see if your model/year is listed. If you download and run it or it show's a white circle over it then you already have it installed. Some of the computers need to update the "firmware" on their computers for bug fixes and to take advantage of extra feaures. I don't remember if it alerts you when it's avaliable or you have to look for it.
As I said, the error message is useless, meaningless, not to be taken seriously - at all.
You aren't doing anything wrong; nothing needs to be updated (there are rare times when something about firmware (EFI or SMC or for graphic device) might be "requested."
Whoever WROTE THE ERROR MESSAGE it is not looking at or identifying a real flag or issue or anything meaningful.
And even if there was firmware updates, they really would have at today's date, be of little value.
Cases where they might:
A bug in SSD and SATA 3 chip controller's firmware.
An OS can patch a bug, in kernel. So can a driver. If it affected an SSD or writing to a disk device and could result in lost data that would be bad. Or add support for an SSD. 2011 was full of stories about SSD support, SSD firmware updates. Something along those lines.
Yes the warnings are generic in nature but doesn't help the OP if he can't use the bugger.😕
Tell the people who own these it's of "little value". It's there for a reason, if the OP doesn't need it now he MAY need it later if not finds a fix for an already existing separate issue. Or someone else reading this may find a fix in it?
With not knowing his model/year or not knowing what they've tried it's hard to just tell them the minimum he needs to know.
You may. You may want to wait a week or two. But regardless, those can't and don't affect installing Windows.
There actually was one in 2007 "to improve compatibilty with booting Windows" on MacPro1,1. Thanks to that my boot time increased on Vista by a full minute when I would use the Option key to select "Windows." That was fun. What I wanted was EFI64 which sadly it didn't and couldn't deliver.
Every time someone here gets those error messages installing Windows, there ARE not and have not been because they failed to or were not current though. Ever. Not once.
I can't open bootcamp assistant
