Help With My Mac/Loading Windows

Hello. I am not a member of any other forums except here obviously lol. I have a 2010 MacBook Pro and need help loading Windows 7 on it. The only problem is my disk drive does not work so I heard I could put the Windows cd in a desktop and from there save or copy it to a usb or hard drive. If any one has specific details on this I would really appreciate the help. Also the portable hard drive I have I use to backup my Mac's internal hard drive, if I were to load the Windows cd to this portable hard drive, would it delete any info on it or make it unusable to backup my mac's internal hard drive? Thanks again and if someone really goes into detail to help me I would gladly donate to a Paypal address. Thanks again. follow me @akaPAIN.

You could use a USB CD/DVD drive to install windows 7 on the bootcamp partition. I know nothing about macs, but I have used Linux before. I did the same thing to install Ubuntu on a portable drive (after taking out the hard disk drive) as a complete full install.

So you shouldn't have much of an issue. Don't sacrifice your data on the portable drive.

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Originally Posted by 4life99

Hello. I am not a member of any other forums except here obviously lol. I have a 2010 MacBook Pro and need help loading Windows 7 on it. The only problem is my disk drive does not work so I heard I could put the Windows cd in a desktop and from there save or copy it to a usb or hard drive. If any one has specific details on this I would really appreciate the help. Also the portable hard drive I have I use to backup my Mac's internal hard drive, if I were to load the Windows cd to this portable hard drive, would it delete any info on it or make it unusable to backup my mac's internal hard drive? Thanks again and if someone really goes into detail to help me I would gladly donate to a Paypal address. Thanks again. follow me @akaPAIN.

I agree with Rootbrian; if you want to use BootCamp to make a Windows partition, you need to get a USB CD drive. Your portable drive method won't work if you want to use BootCamp because the program specifically requires the CD to install Windows.

What you could do, if you wanted to, is use a virtual machine instead like VMware Fusion, Parallels, or VirtualBox. For these, you wouldn't need the CD, and a disk image of the CD would suffice. I've installed Windows XP on VMware Fusion using this method, but I'm sure it would work with the others as well. Using a virtual machine saves you some space too. Right now I'm using BootCamp to run Windows only because Snow Leopard has changed the timing of the USB ports such that I can't update my BB with a virtual machine anymore, and that's all I really need Windows for.

Originally Posted by lcambriz

I agree with Rootbrian; if you want to use BootCamp to make a Windows partition, you need to get a USB CD drive. Your portable drive method won't work if you want to use BootCamp because the program specifically requires the CD to install Windows.

What you could do, if you wanted to, is use a virtual machine instead like VMware Fusion, Parallels, or VirtualBox. For these, you wouldn't need the CD, and a disk image of the CD would suffice. I've installed Windows XP on VMware Fusion using this method, but I'm sure it would work with the others as well. Using a virtual machine saves you some space too. Right now I'm using BootCamp to run Windows only because Snow Leopard has changed the timing of the USB ports such that I can't update my BB with a virtual machine anymore, and that's all I really need Windows for.

yeah i heard about Parallels and they says it uses to much memory so i dont want to try that for now. So get a cd drive that connects via usb and it would be as if i did it thru the internal disk drive right?

Originally Posted by 4life99

yeah i heard about Parallels and they says it uses to much memory so i dont want to try that for now. So get a cd drive that connects via usb and it would be as if i did it thru the internal disk drive right?

Yeah, that should do it. You may have to install some drivers, depending on the drive. But I believe most USB devices are now simply plug-and-play.

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Originally Posted by lcambriz

Yeah, that should do it. You may have to install some drivers, depending on the drive. But I believe most USB devices are now simply plug-and-play.

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just got back from best buy, (a $400 trip) an got everything i need but i tried to partition the internal hard drive, make some of it go to windows and its saying this Attachment 83135 do u kno what needs to be done? i dont understand that

Originally Posted by 4life99

just got back from best buy, (a $400 trip) an got everything i need but i tried to partition the internal hard drive, make some of it go to windows and its saying this Attachment 83135 do u kno what needs to be done? i dont understand that

Hmmm that's pretty strange. Have you ever switched hard drives on your Mac before? Because by default, it should be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Try going to Disk Utility, and click on your hard drive. It should say at the bottom what the format is. If it is journaled, run a disk verification (click on Verify Disk).

Originally Posted by lcambriz

Hmmm that's pretty strange. Have you ever switched hard drives on your Mac before? Because by default, it should be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Try going to Disk Utility, and click on your hard drive. It should say at the bottom what the format is. If it is journaled, run a disk verification (click on Verify Disk).

alright i clicked on verify disk and this came up
Attachment 83138 as well as this Attachment 83137

Originally Posted by 4life99

alright i clicked on verify disk and this came up
Attachment 83138 as well as this Attachment 83137

This could be the source of your problem. What you need to do is insert your OS CD in your CD drive, and restart your computer from it. Once you've restarted, select you language but DO NOT proceed with an installation. Select Disk Utility from the top menu and click on Repair Disk. Once that's done, exit the Mac OS installer, choose to restart from your hard drive, and try partitioning again.

Originally Posted by lcambriz

This could be the source of your problem. What you need to do is insert your OS CD in your CD drive, and restart your computer from it. Once you've restarted, select you language but DO NOT proceed with an installation. Select Disk Utility from the top menu and click on Repair Disk. Once that's done, exit the Mac OS installer, choose to restart from your hard drive, and try partitioning again.

i do not have the os cd. my mac came with the os installed. do i need to buy one?

Originally Posted by 4life99

i do not have the os cd. my mac came with the os installed. do i need to buy one?

Was your Mac store bought? If it was, then it did come with an OS CD. It's a light grey color, and probably says something to the effect of "Install Disc."

Also, did you see this at the bottom of your Disk Utility when you ran the verification?

Originally Posted by lcambriz

Was your Mac store bought? If it was, then it did come with an OS CD. It's a light grey color, and probably says something to the effect of "Install Disc."

Also, did you see this at the bottom of your Disk Utility when you ran the verification?

yes. found the cd. let me do what u said b back in a bit

Originally Posted by lcambriz

What you need to do is insert your OS CD in your CD drive, and restart your computer from it.

what do u mean by this??

When you restart your computer, press and hold the "option" key BEFORE you hear the start up chime. You should see your hard drive and the CD come up for selection, and pick the CD to boot from it.

Originally Posted by lcambriz

When you restart your computer, press and hold the "option" key BEFORE you hear the start up chime. You should see your hard drive and the CD come up for selection, and pick the CD to boot from it.

alright looks like it partitioned succesfully. now what cd do i instal windows 7 32 or 64 bit. its asking for 32 but whats the difference?

Originally Posted by 4life99

alright looks like it partitioned succesfully. now what cd do i instal windows 7 32 or 64 bit. its asking for 32 but whats the difference?

64-bit systems handle large amounts of information better than 32-bit. My MacBook is from the first generation and is only capable of running 32-bit systems, so I can't say how much better a 64-bit system is. If BootCamp is making a recommendation, I'd go with whatever it asks for. I'm running Vista on 32-bit, and it works just fine.

Originally Posted by lcambriz

64-bit systems handle large amounts of information better than 32-bit. My MacBook is from the first generation and is only capable of running 32-bit systems, so I can't say how much better a 64-bit system is. If BootCamp is making a recommendation, I'd go with whatever it asks for. I'm running Vista on 32-bit, and it works just fine.

ok. im downloading the latest version of boot camp that support windows 7. let me do this and il get back to u on how everything went.

How'd everything go? Did Windows load up correctly?

By the way, if you're looking into getting your CD drive fixed, I highly recommend that you DON'T go to Apple for that. They will charge you an arm and a leg to do a fix that costs $50-$80 for the part, and an hour at most to replace. My drive went out on me about two years ago, and they wanted $450 to repair. An eBay search, googled repair guide, and $50 later, I was replacing the drive myself and she's been working beautifully ever since.

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Originally Posted by lcambriz

How'd everything go? Did Windows load up correctly?

By the way, if you're looking into getting your CD drive fixed, I highly recommend that you DON'T go to Apple for that. They will charge you an arm and a leg to do a fix that costs $50-$80 for the part, and an hour at most to replace. My drive went out on me about two years ago, and they wanted $450 to repair. An eBay search, googled repair guide, and $50 later, I was replacing the drive myself and she's been working beautifully ever since.

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hey what had happened is i purchased windows 7 upgrade for vista, the one they had told me to get at best buy. so the product key code was not working. so i went and they accepted a return and i got the full version of 7 and finally got it to work. it looks beautiful man. i have been wanting to get windows to be able to upgrade my bold to os6 finally so i got my computer up and running and my phone looks awesome.

so if i purchase an internal cd drive, is it hard to take the bottom apart? i am somewhat good at taking things apart. took my blackberry apart so i know a little. i had dropped my mac so do u think the bottom plate has to be straight and all to work out or it might just be the disk drive? by the way u got a paypal address? 1 more question. if im in mac os n want to go to windows, do i go to boot camp and click somewhere there to load windows or do i have to turn off the computer and hold the "option" key down?, because i set my computer to load mac when i turn it on.. or is there an easier way of switching to windows when i need to? i found out how to switch from windows to mac so i got that covered.

Originally Posted by 4life99

hey what had happened is i purchased windows 7 upgrade for vista, the one they had told me to get at best buy. so the product key code was not working. so i went and they accepted a return and i got the full version of 7 and finally got it to work. it looks beautiful man. i have been wanting to get windows to be able to upgrade my bold to os6 finally so i got my computer up and running and my phone looks awesome.

so if i purchase an internal cd drive, is it hard to take the bottom apart? i am somewhat good at taking things apart. took my blackberry apart so i know a little. i had dropped my mac so do u think the bottom plate has to be straight and all to work out or it might just be the disk drive? by the way u got a paypal address? 1 more question. if im in mac os n want to go to windows, do i go to boot camp and click somewhere there to load windows or do i have to turn off the computer and hold the "option" key down?, because i set my computer to load mac when i turn it on.. or is there an easier way of switching to windows when i need to? i found out how to switch from windows to mac so i got that covered.

Glad to hear things worked out so well for you. It is pretty nice to be able to have both OSes on one computer, since we Mac users are still a minority when it comes to availability of big software. One more tip I'd like to point out in case you haven't done so yet, is to insert your Mac OS disk while using Windows, and run the BootCamp program that is prompted. It will make some changes to Windows so that it will run much better on your Mac by "adapting" it to your MacBook hardware such as the keyboard, your speakers, video/audio drivers, etc.

As for your other questions, it is pretty straightforward to take apart your MacBook. I've dropped my MacBook before but I don't think that was the cause of the disk drive going bad, as it still worked for at least a year before it went down. The only thing you need to remove in order to access your CD drive is your keyboard topcase, which is held in place by quite a few screws. Here's where I got my instructions from:

iFixit: The free repair manual

I'm pretty good at working with electronics, so it was easy for me. Just follow the directions carefully, take your time, keep track of what screws go where, and do only what it says to do, and replacement is a piece of cake. Make sure you get the right model CD drive for your MacBook though, as those are very model-specific. iFixit sells parts, as does FastMac, for prices significantly lower than Apple. But your best bet to get a cheap part is eBay. Mine was used, but works like a dream.

If you want to switch to Windows when you're in OS X, you have to restart and hold down the option key. That's the only way. A little inconvenient, as on the Windows side, you are given a small button by the clock that allows you to restart in OS X. And I do have a PayPal address, I'll PM it to you but don't feel obligated to give anything. I'm more than happy to help fellow CB members.