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October 23, 2009 9:52 AM PDT

Windows 7 and Boot Camp

by Topher Kessler
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The official release of Windows 7 yesterday no doubt has a number of Boot Camp users wondering about whether or not to upgrade their Windows installations to the new operating system. Microsoft has made some luring refinements to the operating system and cleaned out a large number of the problems and annoyances that have plagued Vista, but where do Boot Camp users stand?

The folks over at Gizmodo have a small tutorial on installing Windows 7 on your Mac with Boot Camp, and as far as the installation goes everything seems to work just fine. However, while this and other reports of successful installs may tempt you to upgrade your Boot Camp installation to Windows 7, for now it has not been fully tested and there may be unforeseen problems.

Apple needs to upgrade their Boot Camp drivers and other Windows system software to be compatible with Windows 7 and ensure you will be able to flawlessly switch between OS X and Windows, as well as use Apple hardware such as multitouch trackpads. Because of it's status as being currently unsupported, despite success stories we recommend you hold off on using it for Boot Camp at the present moment. If you are absolutely itching to run Windows 7, the safest way is to install it on a virtual machine by using VMWare Fusion, Parallels Desktop, or Sun's VirtualBox.

An additional consideration is what Mac hardware will eventually be supported to run Windows 7. According to this Apple knowledgebase article, the following Mac models will not be able to run Windows 7 using Boot Camp.

  • iMac (17-inch, Early 2006)
  • iMac (17-inch, Late 2006)
  • iMac (20-inch, Early 2006)
  • iMac (20-inch, Late 2006)
  • MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2006)
  • MacBook Pro (17-inch, Late 2006)
  • MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2006)
  • MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2006)
  • Mac Pro (Mid 2006, Intel Xeon Dual-core 2.66GHz or 3GHz)

I assume this may be solely due to limitations in the Boot Camp drivers, but there technically should be no reason why the hardware will not run Windows 7. As such, while the software may install on these machines if you try, you may not be able to run Apple's updated drivers when they're released and be stuck with potential bugs and incompatibilities.


Questions? Comments? Post them below or email us!
Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.

Topher has been an avid Mac user for the past 15 years, and has been a contributing author to MacFixIt since Spring 2008. One of his passions is troubleshooting Mac problems and making the best use of Macs and Apple hardware at home and in the workplace.
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by drmusic45 October 23, 2009 5:44 PM PDT
I've got Windows 7 Professional 64-bit to work great on a MacBook Pro 17" Unibody (ver. 5,2, 2.66 GHz). All of the Boot Camp drivers installed with no incident. Windows prompted me to reinstall the chipset drivers, and I installed updated nVidia drivers for the video card. No problems to report.

E.A.W.
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by bornonjuly4 October 23, 2009 9:10 PM PDT
I have been running Windows 7 in Boot Camp for the last 6 months. Never had any issues. Windows 7 even got the latest graphics drivers from NVidia's site. I just had to install the default boot camp drivers for keyboard, trackpad, webcam, Bluetooth etc from the Leopard DVD.

Gotta say I am booting more into Windows 7 than Snow Leopard which seems to heat up 2 year old Macbook Pro more.
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by jase2009 October 25, 2009 3:45 AM PDT
i have a mac book pro 17" 2.4GHz, 2 years old now. I just installed win 7 via bootcamp, however when i added my snow leapord install disc it did not find any bootcamp drivers. I reverted back to the original OSX leopard install disc and installed bootcamp drivers from there. After all this, the resolution would not go higher than 1024x768 and it certainly did not support my 30" cinema display. any comments or help would be much appreciated.
by wfolta October 24, 2009 5:05 AM PDT
If you don't want to play Windows games, why not get Virtualbox (free) and install Windows 7 under that? I got Windows 7 free through my university and it seems to run well under Virtualbox, and I don't have to reboot to use it. (Or Windows Vista, Windows XP, or Ubuntu, either.)
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by aqnguyen87 October 27, 2009 10:42 AM PDT
I'm running windows 7 ultimate on my aluminum macbook, bootcamp drivers worked just fine. The OS, office pro 03, and antivirus with updates only took me 2 hours. Runs nicely, the only thing that doesn't work is the touch click on the trackpad (cant find the option to change that, don't know if there is one), I have to physically push the button to select something, other then that, everything works swimmingly.
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by November 6, 2009 1:03 PM PST
Go to Computer Setting, there's a boot camp option, you can enable tap click from there
by goalieseph888 October 29, 2009 10:46 PM PDT
ok so i run boot camp and everything seems to install fine it restarts like 3 times like it is supposed to and then completes the install. But when it restarts for the last time it goes to a black screen and thats it cant get anything else ive tried many times. i have the new imac that just came out and i figured it should work anyone have any ideas for me?
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by jstlawrence November 24, 2009 10:44 PM PST
Using a new iMac? I had this happen, and it looks like there's an issue with Win 7 not having the video driver, resulting in a blank screen. There's word of a possible fix coming.

http://www.macwindows.com/bootcamp3.html#102609c
by Pergin1335 December 3, 2009 4:39 PM PST
I also have a new imac and have had some problems installing windows 7. I had the same problem with the screen going black when the computer tried to restart. One time it restarted ok but the next time it just left me with a black screen. After getting totally frustrated I gave up and left it for a while. When I went back to the computer I decided to shut the computer down to clean boot it before trying again, but for some reason instead of completely shutting it down I just did a restart, and guess what it would not restart. Didn't dawn on me until the next morning and I tried to restart it again and it would not. Called support , they couldn't believe it would not restart, made appt to return it to the apple store, they tried to restart it and it would not. Replaced the computer, installed windows 7 without any problems. The only problem I notice now is the mouse will stop and jump and just plane aggravates me. Sometimes it stops and won't move for about 2 or 3 minutes then it works fine for a while and it will do it again. I'm hoping an update to boot camp will help this problem, but that is the only problem I have noticed. I use it because I use Quickbooks for my business and I print payroll with it. Quickbooks for Mac was going to be more cumbersome to do payroll with.
by goalieseph888 October 29, 2009 10:48 PM PDT
oh and its a 32 version of windows 7 home premium. but i have the 64 version too
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