Just in case anyone finds my experience installing Win7-64 on an early 2008 MBP useful...
I had an existing Vista-64 Bootcamp partition on my MBP which I wanted to replace with Win7-64.
I popped the Win7-64 DVD into the drive and rebooted while holding the Option key. Upon reboot, there were FOUR things to choose from to boot, and I selected the Windows disc. There is an option for EFI Boot which didn't do anything but boot OS X if anyone is wondering.
Anyway, the install went super easy using the new, finally-usable Winbloze installer that doesn't halt several times during installation. Windows Vista and 7 both install in a "ready to use" state unlike previous versions that stopped to ask questions along the way. Once your Vista/7 install is running, you can walk-away and do other stuff without finding that it halted 5 minutes after you left to ask about the stupid networking or something like that
Once the installation was complete, Windows 7 was fully functional. All drivers were found by default and I did NOT install ANY Bootcamp drivers.
However, the sound didn't work, nor did the graphics allow full-screen accelerated modes.
To fix the sound:
Go to http://www.realtek.com/downloads/ and get the "High Definition Audio Codecs (Software)" latest version. Install this while in Win7.
To fix the video:
My MBP has an nVidia 8600m, so I went to nVidia to get the latest drivers: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us If you have an ATI based graphics card, you're on your own but this is a good start and where I get drivers for my desktop gaming machine: http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx
After installing the audio drivers and video drivers (remember, I used NO BOOTCAMP drivers) everything works GREAT. Well, as great as Winbloze gets I can play all of the games I've tried including Runes of Magic, Left For Dead, and Defense Grid.
It appears that Win7 includes all of the drivers needed for basic use on a Mac out of the box, but with just a couple changes, you can get a full-blown experience for gaming or whatever. I have an early 2008 MBP (2.5GHz C2D, 512MB 8600m, 6GB RAM) and all hardware is detected and used as expected.
The one potential gotcha in my setup that someone may not like is that I use a 2-button mouse when in Winbloze and if you use a single-button mouse, the ctrl-click won't right-click (that's a Bootcamp driver I believe). But, IMO, if you're running Winbloze, you really should be using a 2-button mouse anyway, and not having to dredge-up my Leopard discs and then install multiple versions of BC drivers from the disc + download is well worth this. Not to mention that even with the BC drivers, I NEVER got ctrl-click to right-click for me even in Vista...
Hopefully that helps someone out or helps answer a question or two!
Mike
I had an existing Vista-64 Bootcamp partition on my MBP which I wanted to replace with Win7-64.
I popped the Win7-64 DVD into the drive and rebooted while holding the Option key. Upon reboot, there were FOUR things to choose from to boot, and I selected the Windows disc. There is an option for EFI Boot which didn't do anything but boot OS X if anyone is wondering.
Anyway, the install went super easy using the new, finally-usable Winbloze installer that doesn't halt several times during installation. Windows Vista and 7 both install in a "ready to use" state unlike previous versions that stopped to ask questions along the way. Once your Vista/7 install is running, you can walk-away and do other stuff without finding that it halted 5 minutes after you left to ask about the stupid networking or something like that
Once the installation was complete, Windows 7 was fully functional. All drivers were found by default and I did NOT install ANY Bootcamp drivers.
However, the sound didn't work, nor did the graphics allow full-screen accelerated modes.
To fix the sound:
Go to http://www.realtek.com/downloads/ and get the "High Definition Audio Codecs (Software)" latest version. Install this while in Win7.
To fix the video:
My MBP has an nVidia 8600m, so I went to nVidia to get the latest drivers: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us If you have an ATI based graphics card, you're on your own but this is a good start and where I get drivers for my desktop gaming machine: http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx
After installing the audio drivers and video drivers (remember, I used NO BOOTCAMP drivers) everything works GREAT. Well, as great as Winbloze gets
I can play all of the games I've tried including Runes of Magic, Left For Dead, and Defense Grid.It appears that Win7 includes all of the drivers needed for basic use on a Mac out of the box, but with just a couple changes, you can get a full-blown experience for gaming or whatever. I have an early 2008 MBP (2.5GHz C2D, 512MB 8600m, 6GB RAM) and all hardware is detected and used as expected.
The one potential gotcha in my setup that someone may not like is that I use a 2-button mouse when in Winbloze and if you use a single-button mouse, the ctrl-click won't right-click (that's a Bootcamp driver I believe). But, IMO, if you're running Winbloze, you really should be using a 2-button mouse anyway, and not having to dredge-up my Leopard discs and then install multiple versions of BC drivers from the disc + download is well worth this. Not to mention that even with the BC drivers, I NEVER got ctrl-click to right-click for me even in Vista...
Hopefully that helps someone out or helps answer a question or two!
Mike
