Installing Windows on a MAC using BOOT CAMP

This is for those who wish to dual boot their MAC with Windows. Whether you accept it or not, Windows is quite popular among the masses and the profusion of useful windows specific software forces MAC users to install it on their beasts even if they don't quite like it. Compatibility with other Windows users is another driving factor for the necessity to install Windows. Apple made this possible with their Intel transition in 2006. Boot Camp made the process very simple with its introduction along with MAC OS 10.5 (Leopard). Boot Camp has seen an upgrade to version 3 with the release of MAC OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard), with support for Windows 7. Let us go through this simple process without further delay.


In a nutshell, we have to create a partition on which Windows needs to be installed. This is taken care of by the Boot Camp Assistant located in the Utilities folder. Before going into all this, I strongly recommend you to update your machine with the latest firmware and software updates provided by Apple. I am assuming that you are running Snow Leopard and that you want to install Windows 7. The procedure is not too different for installing other versions of Windows. Please note that for installing Windows 7, you require version 3 of Boot Camp. Snow Leopard comes with version 3 of Boot Camp. Just remember to back-up your data before doing any experiments of this sort. Also make sure that you read the manual for the Boot Camp Assistant and that you are installing a compatible version of Windows on your MAC. The manual is available for download and may also be available on the Snow Leopard installation disc.


Open the Boot Camp Assistant from the Utilities folder. You'll be shown this screen.

Click Continue. The next screen allows you to select a partition size for the Windows installation. Drag the divider to select the partition size of your choice. I would recommend around 30 GB for Windows 7 installation.

Once you decide upon the size for the installation, click "Partition". The Assistant allocates space of the specified size. If you are ready for the installation, just pop-in the Windows installation disc and click " Start Installation". Your computer starts-up from the windows installation disc that you inserted.

The next key step is partitioning the "Correct" partition. The partition created by the Boot Camp Assistant will be named "BOOTCAMP". Although it indicates the partition type to be FAT32, it is actually not formatted. One faces a dilemma here -Which type of partition to choose, FAT32 or NTFS. I would advice the reader to go for NTFS for its relative advantages. Partitions of size greater than 32 GB need to be formatted with NTFS. To format the partition in Windows 7, click on "Drive Options (Advanced)" and then "Format". By default, MAC OS doesn't allow one to write on NTFS partitions but there's this tool called MacFUSE, available here, that comes to the rescue.

After this, it is the usual procedure for windows installation. After successful installation, restart the machine and hold the "OPTION" key to choose the OS you want to boot into. Boot into windows and pop-in the Snow Leopard installation disc to install the necessary drivers. After a few restarts, you're done. 

Hope the installation worked for you. If you faced any difficulties, kindly post them as comments and I'll be more than happy to help you. I would love to write an extension to this post. That'll be regarding setting up of a Triple Boot on your MAC. I hope I'll be able to do that pretty soon as I've recovered from an illness that kept me away from spending time for my blog. I would also be publishing Lecture 2 of my LaTeX tutorial series very soon. Stay tuned!