Windows 7 Beta on a Black Macbook
posted by pylorns
That’s right, I downloaded the beta version of Windows 7 today and successfully loaded it on my macbook. Driver installation is interesting though because Apple has not created a bootcamp version of drivers. In fact if you try to load bootcamp disk from your Leopard disk you’ll get a message that says it is not compatible. But never fear you can browse the DVD and install the drivers manually (most of them).
I had trouble with the 64bit version, and I had downloaded from newsgroups instead of directly from Microsoft so I pulled down the x86 non 64bit version today, the install was fairly quick – 25 minutes or so. I have a 2Ghz dual core Macbook with 2GB Ram to give you basis.
By default the wireless works out of the box. The sound, on the other hand does not. It even looks like it should because the speaker icon is down there next to the clock but it doesn’t. The trick is to browse the leopard DVD and find the IDT Signa Tel Setup – run it. Your sound will work. You also need to browse to the Apple folder and run the track pad and various installers – you may notice that they seem to run but nothing actually comes on the screen – this is because they are installers that were meant to show up in the Bootcamp install menu and not stand alone. But It does seem to install ok.
I’ve tried pointing Windows 7 to the Intel Ethernet driver folder but it doesn’t install and I’ve tried running the other installers but for some reason the base Ethernet does not install. Which I have seen others that have had similar problems.
Of Interest:
The rating of performance is extended to 7.9 now. You may remeber in Vista the score goes from 1.0 to 5.9. I’m guessing they are accounting for the newer hardware on the market now.
As you can see my base score is a 2.0 – This is because the hard drive is a 5400 RPM Sata drive – I may update the drive in the future to a larger 7200 RPM drive. It is interesting that drivers have been updated as we all know that this model black Macbook has built in Intel 915G graphics which are not known for being great- but they got a better score in Windows 7 than they do in Vista from what I recall.
The whole system runs faster than Vista.
The task bar is a bit strange as it runs as icons instead of little bars or sub bars.
Internet Explorer 8 – pretty much the same as 7.
The install by default is a fairly large footprint. I setup a 10GB partition using bootcamp and it took up damn near all of it – I have 1.45 GB free after the install with no programs installed. By normal standards that’s fine because most new computers are coming with 500GB drives or 1TB drives. But for netbooks it’s a bit large. The download of course is Windows 7 Ultimate so that could be part of it – but I also didn’t notice an option to choose to remove items during the install even though I chose the custom option.
Update: Atheos commented in the comment section and provided a solution for getting bootcamp to install. Thanks very much, I’m including your answer here in the post proper.
Attention: You CAN use the normal Boot Camp installer located on the Leopard DVD. Trying to do that directly will probably give you error 2229 BUT you can just copy the “Boot Camp” folder on your hard drive and replace the BootCamp.msi and BootCamp64.msi packages with the ones from here (big thanks to limo79 for this!): http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=6908029&postcount=216
The fix includes support for 32 and 64 bit versions as well as Boot Camp versions 2.0 and 2.1. I did that on my early 2008 MBP with Windows 7 x64 and *everything* works perfectly (ethernet, iSight, WLAN, keyboard backlight…), including the F-keys (volume, eject etc.) and the Boot Camp Control Panel. No need to run the separate installers. I advise getting the display driver directly from Nvidia site and if there is no sound you can also downoad newer driver from Realtek site. You might want to include this information in the post as an update.
Very cool.
Tags: 7, apple, beta, Macbook, windows7
Posted in Technical, news, tutorials | 12 Comments »
January 12th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Hi!
I got the last of the white MacBooks… and i cant install almost one of the drivers…!!! i browse threw the dvd an they doenst work… can you help me?
ciao
January 12th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Again you have to do it manually – and you won’t see a status when it does it but they install.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
How did you resolve the network drivers issue? I have the same black 2.0ghz with 3gb ram. I installed the 32bit version.
January 12th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
I have not found a solution yet. If you come across it please follow up and I’ll add an addendum to the post with the information.
January 13th, 2009 at 3:35 am
Attention: You CAN use the normal Boot Camp installer located on the Leopard DVD. Trying to do that directly will probably give you error 2229 BUT you can just copy the “Boot Camp” folder on your hard drive and replace the BootCamp.msi and BootCamp64.msi packages with the ones from here (big thanks to limo79 for this!): http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=6908029&postcount=216
The fix includes support for 32 and 64 bit versions as well as Boot Camp versions 2.0 and 2.1. I did that on my early 2008 MBP with Windows 7 x64 and *everything* works perfectly (ethernet, iSight, WLAN, keyboard backlight…), including the F-keys (volume, eject etc.) and the Boot Camp Control Panel. No need to run the separate installers. I advise getting the display driver directly from Nvidia site and if there is no sound you can also downoad newer driver from Realtek site. You might want to include this information in the post as an update.
January 13th, 2009 at 8:41 am
Thanks, I’ll add your information to the post for others.
February 9th, 2009 at 1:08 am
I also have a black MacBook (circa 2/2007) with a 2.2 ghz process, but a couple of upgrades. I added 4gb RAM and a 320gb 7200rpm Seagate HD.
Performance scores:
Overall = 3.5
Processor: 5.4
Memory: 5.4
Graphics: 3.5
Gaming graphics: 4.9
Primary HD: 4.9
7200rpm HD did make a significant different. Happy upgrading.
February 9th, 2009 at 1:09 am
Sorry, prior post, circa 2/2008 (not 2007).
April 16th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
I managed to get Windows 7 64 installed on my early 2008 (January) MacBook with the fix provided here. The only thing that still doesn’t work is aero… Does anybody have a solution for that?
April 16th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
I don’t think the video card can handle it – if you can’t manually turn it on, just out of luck.
October 29th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
ive used the sound drivers posted and still to no avail. sound just refuses to work on my black macbook. i don’t have the disk and the proper driver does not seem to exist on the internet (at least after 5 hours of looking for it and trying 4 different “will fix it” drivers) any help would be appreciated.
October 29th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
I don’t know – I got it working. Do you have a legit copy of windows 7? If you didn’t wipe out our Leopard install – or Snow Leopard install you should be able to go to bootcamp tool in the utilities and create a driver disk…at least you used to be able to.