Installing Windows 7 64-Bit on Mac Mini

  • Article

I am going to blog something not related to Microsoft Dynamics CRM here today.  I spent more than half a day on this so I just want to write down what I did just incase that I have to do it again in the future.  If you are trying to do the same thing that I did, I hope the steps below will help you.  For those people wondering why I am doing this on a MAC, it’s a long story and I preferred to share it with you on a drink…

To dual boot your Mac, there are many videos on YouTube to show you how to do it, here’s the one that I followed.

How to Run Windows 7 on Your Mac

However I ran into problems with the Windows 7 ISO that I downloaded from MSDN, eject the DVD from the MacMini and BootCamp CD that I got doesn’t support 64 bits.

Windows 7 ISO Downloaded from MSDN

I downloaded Windows 7 ISO from MSDN and the burn the ISO into a DVD, however if you use the default Windows Burn Disc feature, the MAC can’t start computer by using a CDFS-based image file to install Windows.  If you boot with the DVD that burned with the Windows Burn Disc feature, your MAC will tell you “Select CD-Rom Boot Type” and you can’t so anything.  The problem occurs because the ETFSBOOT.com program does not handle file version according to the International Standards Organization (ISO) 9660 specification. 

To resolve this problem, I followed the steps from Fluxbox.co.uk blog.  Here are the steps in just the blog is not available.

Steps:

  1. Create 3 folders c:\windows7iso c:\windows7exe c:\windows7dvd

  2. Download this .exe file and put into c:\windows7exe

  3. Put the windows 7 .iso you downloaded from ms into c:\windows7iso and unzip the contents with imgburn

  4. Move .iso file out of c:\windows7iso

  5. Open a dos prompt in c:\windows7exe and type exactly as shown (Obviosuly if you decide to use the disk, change c:\ in the first part to be the letter of your DVD drive) :

    oscdimg -n -m -bc:\windows7iso\boot\etfsboot.com c:\windows7iso c:\windows7dvd\windows7dvd.iso

  6. Now burn the windows7dvd.iso file to a DVD and proceed to install windows 7 on your mac!

Eject DVD

Most Macs doesn’t have a eject button, I inserted the DVD into the drive and I have no way of taking the CD out.  I Bing quite a bit and I found that in order to eject the DVD, you have to power the Mac off.  Hold the two mouse button and then turn on the Mac, keep holding the button until the disc ejects.

BootCamp

BootCamp contains all of the drivers for the Mac.  In order to get all of your drivers functioning properly, you need to install BootCamp.  If you installed 32-Bit version of Window 7, the Boot Camp version came with your Mac should work.  All you have to do is to install BootCamp and then go to Apple’s support site to download the latest version of BootCamp, the current version is 3.2. 

The problem that I ran into is that I installed 64-Bit version of Windows 7, BootCamp didn’t work.  So I Bing and found someone posted a Torrent on BootCamp 3.0, I downloaded, installed and updated it to the latest version.

It took me quite long to finally get everything to work on my Mac Mini, and I hope that this blog will save you time if you are trying to do the same.