Knowledge 知識 : Notes on Installing Windows 7 on a Macbook

Well, I now have the Windows 7 beta installed on my Macbook (model 4,1). It's been pretty neat to play around with. I followed the instructions on this page without too much trouble, but I did learn a few things in the process that I thought I'd share.

Of course, the first thing I did was to set up Time Machine to back up my data. Since I still use Windows and Linux at times, I have an external hard drive I keep formatted as FAT32 to use under any OS. (The fact that FAT32 is the only format option to use with all three OS's is a separate gripe of mine.) After I finished getting Time Machine set up to back up my laptop, I took a look at the options to get it to back up my external hard drive, and I found that it was put permanently on the Time Machine ignore list and I couldn't remove it. In the end, after some searching, I found the disappointing truth: while Time Machine can be used to back up external drives, it only works with the native Mac hard drive format, not with FAT32.

To deal with this, I've resorted to using JFileSync to create a mirror copy of my external hard drive on my Time Machine drive. Inelegant, but the only solution I have at the moment.

There's one point in the Windows 7 installation process, I think just after the first time that it needs to reboot itself, that it appears to get somewhat stuck, and I was a bit worried, wondering whether I should do a forced reboot. The last item in the list, "Completing installation" is highlighted, and the green completion bar at the bottom doesn't move, and only the periods after the words are animated. Fortunately, I just waited, for at least 15 minutes, and then it got moving again.

After getting through the installation, I got to the point where I put in the Macbook disc to run BootCamp and install all the proper drivers. Following the directions on the webpage, I allowed the auto-run setup.exe to run, only to get an error that the 64-bit setup wasn't allowed on my computer. D'oh! I had only installed the 64-bit version of Windows 7 on a whim (no real reason, since I only have 2GB of RAM anyway). I did some more searching, and eventually found out that there's a 64-bit version of BootCamp, helpfully titled BootCamp64, that can be found and run manually under Drivers/Apple. Running that did the trick, fixing among other things the sound, which hadn't been working (despite Windows 7 thinking it had the correct driver installed).

One last note, after installing Windows 7, setting up the drivers, and installing the free version of Avira AntiVir (which seems to work alright and not be too resource heavy), I've used up about 12GB on my Windows partition. Something to keep in mind when setting up the initial partition sizes with Boot Camp Assistant.