If you’ve been running Windows 7 RC on a MacBook Pro in a Bootcamp partition, beware. The path to reinstalling Windows 7 is fraught with problems, hassles, risks and time wasters.
Quick summary, if you don’t want to read the rest of this post. After several hours of effort each day, over several days, I am unable to reinstall Windows on my Mac. So I have given up until I buy a new computer to replace this one. [Editor’s note: problem solved. See the March 8 post in this blog.]
Warning: If You Use Win 7 RC, You Must Take Action
As of March 1, Microsoft has ratcheted up the pressure on users to replace the RC software.
Windows shuts itself down every 2 hours; software upgrades will no longer work. Given no advance warning, you cannot save your work before the system shuts down.
You will experience visual humiliation (like notices that your software is not genuine.) And even if you can withstand these hassles, by June 1 Windows 7 RC will not work at all.
Knowing this was going to happen, I began my journey last Friday to reinstall Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro. But first, the back story…
My Story
When I decided last summer to take my chances on the RC release, I did so knowing that I would have to take action in Q2 to replace the Windows 7 RC software.
No problem, I thought. By then Apple will have released the next generation MacBook Pro, I’ll decommission my current notebook, and transfer Mac OS X apps and files to the new one. (Super easy to do, Mac-to-Mac.) I’ll install a new copy of Windows 7 in a fresh new Bootcamp partition, and then I’ll reinstall all the Windows 7 apps and files. That way the hassles and down time will be relatively minimal.
Alas, my grand plan had some flawed assumptions.
My Journey
Problem #1: Apple has not yet released the next version of the MacBook Pro. Rumors abound that a release is imminent, but who knows when Apple will be ready to take an order and ship a new-gen MacBook Pro to my office.
Given the impact of frequent shutdowns every day, I felt there was no option but to take action now. So I went shopping…
Problem #2: Even if you were running XP or Vista before installing Win 7 RC, says Microsoft, you must buy a full license to Windows 7 Ultimate: you cannot install an Upgrade version. [Translation: we know you’re loyal customers, and you’re willing to pay more for the privilege of helping us weed out the bugs from our software.]
Be prepared to spend about $100 more than you’d shell out for an upgrade license…
This is not a customer-friendly way to treat beta testers. Certainly not if you consider them among your most loyal customers.
Caveat: In theory, you could downgrade to XP or Vista and then install Windows 7 Upgrade <something>. Whether this will work on a Mac with Bootcamp is a mystery. I didn’t have that much time to waste, so I didn’t bother.
Problem #3: Most of the retail stores in this area stock only the Upgrade versions of the software. So if you haven’t yet ordered your Windows replacement software, you may face a brief delay before receiving a copy to install. Or, you can buy a download license and wait for the software to be downloaded from Microsoft’s online store.
Problem #4: You get different stories from the retail clerks about which version of Windows to buy. Most appear to believe the Upgrade version will work, if you previously ran Vista or XP on your device. If you buy an Upgrade version and then discover only the full-licensed version will do, you’ve wasted a couple of hundred dollars.
Problem #5: The text on the Microsoft Store (online) is ambiguous, especially in the context of the sidebars and links. If you don’t study the text closely, you can get the impression that an Upgrade version will suffice. Like the brick-and-mortar stores, Microsoft’s online merchandising is heavily focused on the Upgrade versions. So I ordered my software from Amazon, to get a wee discount.
Fast forward to today. FedEx delivered my software from Amazon.
Today’s Catch-22’s
I restarted my computer in Windows 7 RC. I tried to run Windows Easy Transfer (to transfer files and settings to a USB memory stick). Windows shut down, so that process failed. (Fortunately, I’d backed up data files and documents to a network drive yesterday.)
Eventually I was able to insert the Windows 7 installation DVD in the drive.
Despite multiple tries (and special attention to ensure I was running the setup.exe file with administrator privileges), Windows 7 was unable to create an “installation folder” on my computer, so the installation program failed with an error message. (I’m guessing, but don’t know, that this is some sort of glitch between Bootcamp and Windows.)
I gave up on the Windows side, so I shut down and restarted in Mac OS X, and verified that I have the latest version of Bootcamp running under Snow Leopard.
My plan was to take semi-drastic action: to remove the Bootcamp partition, create a new Bootcamp partition, reformat it as NTFS, and then install Windows 7 in the newly formatted partition. (Following the usual Bootcamp process.)
Bootcamp was able to delete the Bootcamp partition (and convert my hard drive to a single Mac OS X drive); however, despite multiple attempts, it was unable to repartition the hard drive to create space for Windows. Apparently there are some (unidentified) files that cannot be moved. I verified the drive with Disk Utility, and it appears to be okay.
Apple’s Bootcamp documentation suggests that at this point the only recourse is to reformat the hard drive altogether, reinstall Mac OS X and all the programs and files; and then run the Bootcamp utility to repartition the drive – and resume the work to install Windows 7. If you have a Time Machine backup, as I do, you should be able to restore all your Mac files and programs from your most recent backup.
As for me, I’ve given up. This is way too much trouble to take for a computer that I expect? hope? to decommission in a few weeks — or whenever Apple eventually releases the next version of their MacBook Pro laptops.
I hope your experience is smoother than mine. Meanwhile I can no longer run Windows of any sort on this device.
I’m definitely not “a PC.” And Windows 7 was not “my idea.”
Revised on June 4, 2010
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