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problems with installing windows 7 on mc816(amd graphics) 2011 mini

V

volodymyrqa

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 14, 2011
135
23
Kyiv, Ukraine
hi guys.... I am having troubles with installing.... maybe someone faced this too.

bootcamp works well, i've created win install (usb).

But when i finally start installation, on step:
- select a hard drive where w7 should be installed ( called BOOTCAMP )

it says that this drive cannot be used for installation. And when i try to format it, it says that drive need to be in NTFS in order to install W7. Both ways i cannot start installation...

any ideas what may cause this issue? on my previous mini mc239 i did not experienced this...
 
Last edited:
volodymyrqa said:
hi guys.... I am having troubles with installing....

maybe someone faced this problem too.

bootcamp works well, created usb flash win install.

But when i finally start installation, on step:
- select a hard drive where w7 should be installed ( called BOOTCAMP )

it says that this drive cannot be used for installation. And when i try to format it, it says that drive need to be in NTFS in order to install W7. Both ways i cannot start installation...

any ideas what may cause this issue? on my previous mini mc239 i did not experienced this...
Click to expand...

When you select the installation drive theres an option to enter a disk utility that will let you format the drive.

2d00z74.jpg
 
Yes I am having this exact problem. I deleted the partition and even formatted it NTFS and I get the exact same errors you do every single time. I have found no way around this.

I even tried installing in a partition on my 2nd hard drive and I got the same error message.
 
boot camp assistant creates a fat32 partition since os x can't write to ntfs natively. as vermifuge said, during the win7 install it will ask you to convert the fat32 to ntfs. after it does that, it proceeds with the install.
 
indg said:
boot camp assistant creates a fat32 partition since os x can't write to ntfs natively. as vermifuge said, during the win7 install it will ask you to convert the fat32 to ntfs. after it does that, it proceeds with the install.
Click to expand...

Been there and done that, it still will not install, I get the exact same error of the OP.
 
OTACORB said:
Been there and done that, it still will not install, I get the exact same error of the OP.
Click to expand...

A few months ago I was setting up Windows 7 on a laptop I upgraded for a friend. I got a brand new 320 GB hard drive and windows 7 would NOT install to it. I ended up swapping the 320 GB drive with another one I had on hand and Windows 7 installed just fine. There was nothing wrong with the original drive otherwise. I plugged it in a USB enclosure formatted it and it worked just fine on my Mac. No matter what I did Windows would not play nice with it.

But it would error our when I tired to format it with NTFS. I don't know if this helps for anything. Is this an OEM drive or one you installed yourself? Maybeit needs a firmware update?
 
Vermifuge said:
A few months ago I was setting up Windows 7 on a laptop I upgraded for a friend. I got a brand new 320 GB hard drive and windows 7 would NOT install to it. I ended up swapping the 320 GB drive with another one I had on hand and Windows 7 installed just fine. There was nothing wrong with the original drive otherwise. I plugged it in a USB enclosure formatted it and it worked just fine on my Mac. No matter what I did Windows would not play nice with it.

But it would error our when I tired to format it with NTFS. I don't know if this helps for anything. Is this an OEM drive or one you installed yourself? Maybeit needs a firmware update?
Click to expand...

I actually tried installing this on the 240GB SSD drive and the Seagate 750gb drive and I get the same error on both of them. I installed both of these drives myself.

It is an odd situation of which I have never encountered. I am going to make some additional effort on it later tonight.

Thanks for the suggestion though! I appreciate it!
 
Judging by the posts in this thread maybe there is an issue installing it on after market drive installations. I presume it shouldn't be a problem on the stock drives that Apple ships with the Minis. I'm planning on installing Windows 7 under Bootcamp on the 750GB 7200RPM drive that came with my Mini. I hope I don't have such issues.
 
Mr.C said:
Judging by the posts in this thread maybe there is an issue installing it on after market drive installations. I presume it shouldn't be a problem on the stock drives that Apple ships with the Minis. I'm planning on installing Windows 7 under Bootcamp on the 750GB 7200RPM drive that came with my Mini. I hope I don't have such issues.
Click to expand...

I made a 200 GB partition on my Dual Core i7 /w OEM 7200 750GB hard drive. Windows 7 installed without issue.
 
Vermifuge said:
I made a 200 GB partition on my Dual Core i7 /w OEM 7200 750GB hard drive. Windows 7 installed without issue.
Click to expand...

Thanks that's good to know. My only dilemma is what size to make the Windows partition. I presume there is no way to change it's size after the fact without getting rid of it altogether and starting from scratch. It's kind of hard to know how much space I will need. I was thinking of going with 100GB's but maybe I should increase that to 150GB's or even 200GB's. My only use for it is installing and playing Windows based games.
 
Just tried creating the larger partition and making sure it was formatted NTFS. It is still a no go!

I am wondering are you guys formatting your drives GUID or MBR?
 
too bad that there is no fix for this issue yet...

I guess all i can do is install another disc, for example ssd....

Bad apple, bad!
 
I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit on both the Mac mini (5,2) with the dual-core i5 and now that I switched to the Quad Core i7, I had to redo it on the Mac mini server (5,3). Neither time presented any problems whatsoever.

Let's see how we can remedy this for you. Are you saying that you're deleting the BOOTCAMP partition that OS X creates to prep the installation as soon as it reboots to start the actual Windows installation? You should NOT delete it, but instead FORMAT it as NTFS. Again, no re-formatting before you get to that point, i.e. you're out of the OS X environment and in the Windows installation. It's easy to find which partition you need to format, as the BootCamp assistant temporarily names it BOOTCAMP, which will go away after you format it (and hit Install).

Incidentally, what exactly are you using for the Windows source files? The Boot Camp assistant can help you make a bootable(!) USB flash drive and you should also let it download the Apple package (the drivers, etc. for when you're done with the installation and inside Windows 7). That folder is called WindowsSupport and the way I do it is I let it download it to my desktop and then I manually copy it to the USB flash drive (with all the Windows 7 source files).

Let me know if any of this makes sense and where you need further help. ;)
 
Crunch said:
I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit on both the Mac mini (5,2) with the dual-core i5 and now that I switched to the Quad Core i7, I had to redo it on the Mac mini server (5,3). Neither time presented any problems whatsoever.

Let's see how we can remedy this for you. Are you saying that you're deleting the BOOTCAMP partition that OS X creates to prep the installation as soon as it reboots to start the actual Windows installation? You should NOT delete it, but instead FORMAT it as NTFS. Again, no re-formatting before you get to that point, i.e. you're out of the OS X environment and in the Windows installation. It's easy to find which partition you need to format, as the BootCamp assistant temporarily names it BOOTCAMP, which will go away after you format it (and hit Install).

Incidentally, what exactly are you using for the Windows source files? The Boot Camp assistant can help you make a bootable(!) USB flash drive and you should also let it download the Apple package (the drivers, etc. for when you're done with the installation and inside Windows 7). That folder is called WindowsSupport and the way I do it is I let it download it to my desktop and then I manually copy it to the USB flash drive (with all the Windows 7 source files).

Let me know if any of this makes sense and where you need further help. ;)
Click to expand...

I really appreciate your help :)

But:
- i am re formatting BOOTCAMP drive into NTFS during win7 installation ( not deleting it )
- i have created usb drive with Win7 and support drivers.

As i said before, this whole installation process is really easy... very hard to make a mistake. It is software problem from Bootcamp side? Not mine :) I did installed win7 on my previous mini without troubles.
Thank you
 
I put Windows 7 Ultimate on my new i5 Mini today. I partitioned it at 75gb for Windows. The first run through on Bootcamp gave me the same issue the original poster had. I simply restarted into Lion and ran Bootcamp again with the same usb/iso Win7 drive that bootcamp created. The 2nd time it worked doing exactly as instructed (reformatting into NTFS during the install).

So just repeating bootcamp a 2nd time worked for me.
 
I installed BootCamp on both the $799 Mac mini to do benchmarks on it, as well as the $999 Mac mini server to do the same. I can report the following interesting graphics card difference in the WEI value (Windows Experience Index) as far as Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit is concerned:

On a scale of 1 to 7.9, the Windows Aero Graphics test score actually went UP with the Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics chip on the high-end 2011 Mini server with a score of 6.3. The same test on the "mid-size" Mini with the AMD Radeon HD 6630M graphics chip revealed a score of 5.7.

Fairly close together were the Gaming graphics scores with the Intel HD 3000 again scoring a 6.3 and, not surprisingly, the Mini with the AMD GPU scored higher at 6.6. Perhaps surprising was the mere 0.3 difference that the AMD GPU scored higher than the Intel HD 3000, which works great, by the way, and I'm glad I upgraded to the server edition of the 2011 Mac mini. ;-)

I'll post the screenshots of the entire WEI benchmarks, along with a multitude of others, shortly after I do my last upgrade on my Mac mini for now. This will be the installation of the 2nd of what will be a RAID 0 combo of two of the SATA III (6Gbps) OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD's, which just arrived today. Just ONE of these tests at over 500MB/s with a FULL installation of OS X 10.7 Server taking a tad over 4 (four) minutes! Booting to a fully populated desktop after installing about 10 applications takes between 5 and 8 seconds, depending on when you start to count, i.e. immediately after hitting the power button or as of when the Apple appears on the screen. Let's see if we can shave off some of that boot time to the snap of a finger. :D Video of the aforementioned will also be posted. :)

Tip: If you're going to get these particular SSD's from OWC, make sure to specifically ask for the ones that end in a T, which denotes that you're getting the new 32nm Toggle NAND flash, as opposed to the 25nm IMFT Synchronous NAND RAM that was in the "older" 6G EXTREME SSD's. By "older", I mean the ones that were sold before August. lol...
 
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