[NOTE: 2/2/09 – This is an updated version of the original post from Sunday.]
I am writing this for those of you who may be daring enough to attempt an install of Windows 7 on your Macs. Yes, it may be blasphemy, but even us Macheads are a little curious sometimes, right?
Anyway (to me) the install was quite painless. What you want to do is open up your Applications, then select Utilities. Open up Boot Camp Assistant and Follow the instructions. Even though it asks for a XP or Vista disk, the Windows 7 disc will work.
Just make sure you select the partition labeled BOOTCAMP! Any other one could wipe your Mac OS clean.
The install went without a hitch, but I ran into serious problems in getting any drivers installed. All the instructions I’ve seen (here and here) seem to suggest the Boot Camp installer on the Leopard disk works fine.
Not for me, I got this:
That doesn’t seem to be happening with other folks, however. The instructions don’t provide for this. I’m wondering whether or not the version of my disk (10.5.1) may have something to do with it: the Boot Camp Installer is different as its an earlier version.
There is a way to fix this however if Boot Camp is failing. It involves taking the following steps:
1) Create a folder on the hard drive. For the sake of convenience, I placed it on my desktop for easy access. Name it “BootCamp” or whatever you’d like.
2) Open up the CD’s contents. For you Mac folks, this process in Windows 7 is Computer > right click on DVD drive > Open.
3) Copy the entire contents to that folder you have just created.
4) Download this file: Bootcamp.msi.
5) Place that downloaded file in the Apple directory of the copied version of the DVD, it should overwrite the previous one.
6) Run the setup.exe file. Boot Camp should install properly.
In some cases, there has been reports that this has not worked. Let us know if it doesn’t for you. But it should for most.
So far all features appear to work normally, including sound. I have also noticed the residual benefit of a much quicker load time coming into Windows.