

- #Installing windows 7 on macbook pro for mac
- #Installing windows 7 on macbook pro mac os x
- #Installing windows 7 on macbook pro drivers
- #Installing windows 7 on macbook pro update
- #Installing windows 7 on macbook pro driver
On the whole, Windows 7 feels notably faster than Vista Home Premium on our MacBook, though both IE8 and Firefox got a bit crashy after installing Flash 10. A performance review is outside the scope of this piece, though we did note a few things while doing basic, everyday stuff. As usual, your mileage may vary.įrom there you should be set to run Windows 7 32-bit in Boot Camp.
#Installing windows 7 on macbook pro drivers
Some people recommend downloading the High Definition Audio drivers directly from Realtek's site, but that actually killed our audio, at least on this latest-generation unibody MacBook. Audio on MacBooks and MacBook Pros has a tendency to stutter under Vista and Windows 7, for example, so manually installing RealTekSetup.exe in that Drivers folder seemed to fix our problem.
#Installing windows 7 on macbook pro driver
Of course, we cannot account for every Mac configuration out there with this guide, but those driver folders are probably the best place to start if you have any other driver-less components or funky behavior. After restarting, your Device Manager should report a clean set of components and your WEI should be a bit more favorable-ours is now 4.4. As long as you have a RAR utility installed, like WINRar, extract the NVidiaChipset.exe to a location of your choice and run the Setup.exe in that folder. For our MacBook's two aforementioned components, we browsed to Boot CampDriversNVidia (hat tip to this MacRumors thread).
#Installing windows 7 on macbook pro mac os x
To fix any driver problems and get that WEI up to snuff, dig into your MacBook's Mac OS X install disc (right-click and choose "Open in New Window"). Our machine seemed to perform fine with typical tasks like installing Firefox and running WMP, but a Windows Experience Index (WEI) of 2.9 said otherwise. You can run Windows Update, but as of this writing, there are just a couple of small updates for Windows Media player and other random essentials available, nothing particularly crucial. Audio and two-finger right-clicking should work after restarting (but not control-clicking), though two components in Device Manager on our MacBook-Coprocessor and SM Bus Controller-should still be driver-less. To get started, toss in the Mac OS X install disc that came with your Mac (this is the preferred option over using a retail copy of Leopard) and run the Boot Camp installer. This is where Apple's Boot Camp drivers and a little elbow grease can help turn your Device Manager's frown upside down.
#Installing windows 7 on macbook pro update
Once you are in Windows, however, a number of components, including audio and right-clicking, may not work and Windows Update will probably be powerless to help. WiFi worked during setup, and we were able to connect to our AirPort Extreme 802.11n station running WPA2 Personal/AES encryption. We could even mouse with one finger, leave that finger on the pad, and use our thumb to click buttons. Notably, our MacBook's multi-touch trackpad that can cause trouble in Vista works surprisingly well during the Windows setup.

Either way, you can proceed with installing Windows 7 like any other version of Windows.
#Installing windows 7 on macbook pro for mac
Apple offers full hardware and video support for XP and Vista via prepackaged drivers, so we told both the 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 versions to drop and give us 20.įor those who are already rocking XP or Vista on a partition, like we are on our MacBook (or on a second drive for Mac Pro owners), simply booting from the Windows 7 DVD to install over that partition will work fine as well. It goes without saying that Boot Camp provides the best experience for running Windows on a Mac, so we started there. Ultimately, we found that Windows 7 is definitely doable-even usable-on a Mac under the right circumstances, but "beta" definitely means beta for now. We'll run through installation procedures and best practices, and share some general tips on what to look out for. Overall, things went well, but since this is a beta OS that is supported by exactly zero parties involved, there were naturally some drawbacks and a few dead-ends. We installed both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 natively in Boot Camp, then moved on to virtualization with VMware Fusion 2 and Parallels Desktop 4 just for good measure.

We covered all the major bases for our experiment, and just to keep things interesting, we worked on a unibody MacBook with those multi-touch trackpads that don't even play well with Vista yet. After all, it isn't every day that recent switchers and established users get to (legitimately) try out a copy of Windows for free, so we burned a couple of ISOs and got to work. Now that we all have our beta copies of Windows 7 to play with, Ars thought it was time to take Vista's successor for a spin on the Apple side of the street.
