Windows 7 - 64 bit help?

[dKran]

Hey guys.

So i'm on my bootcamp partition earlier today, and I notice that Vista says that I only have 3gb of RAM. Unknownst to me before a quick google search, apparently Vista 32bit, and all 32bit OSes all have a limit of 3Gb.

I could not find a definitive answer as to whether or not 64 bit Vista would work on my iMac, though i did find out that my model is not officially supported by Apple (2008, 2.8ghz)

Now with Windows 7 coming out soon, I figure that I might as well just wait for that, or order it rather, and I can't find an answer anywhere to whether or not Windows 7 64bit will work.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Much appreciated.

 

[Stephen Dowling]

I'm not positive about your iMac. But, If it has an intel processor that is a Core 2 Duo then It should work fine. I have it running flawlessly on my 2.0GHz Unibody Macbook. However, when you install all of the drivers via the Leopard Installation Disk you may have to go to the disk's root and select the folder labeled x64 and then run the installer from there. That's what I did. I hope this helps you out!

 

[dKran]

Is that the only problem you had then? was just manually finding the driver install package?

And you haven't had any erratic behavior or anything because of it?

Just because i'd love to utilize the extra Gb of RAM, but don't want Windows to have any stupid issues because of it.

And it is a Core2Duo of course (Which makes me wonder why it wouldn't be supported)

 

[Stridder44]

Hey guys.

So i'm on my bootcamp partition earlier today, and I notice that Vista says that I only have 3gb of RAM. Unknownst to me before a quick google search, apparently Vista 32bit, and all 32bit OSes all have a limit of 3Gb.

I could not find a definitive answer as to whether or not 64 bit Vista would work on my iMac, though i did find out that my model is not officially supported by Apple (2008, 2.8ghz)

Now with Windows 7 coming out soon, I figure that I might as well just wait for that, or order it rather, and I can't find an answer anywhere to whether or not Windows 7 64bit will work.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Much appreciated.

Apple "says" it doesn't support it, but the drivers are 64-bit and will work fine on your iMac (although the Boot Camp drivers themselves [both 32-bit or 64-bit] are already outdated). Short answer: yes, it will work.

And whatever you do, wait for Windows 7. Do not bother spending money on XP or Vista at this point. Windows 7 will work perfectly on your iMac. Many people here run 64-bit versions of Vista or Win7 and have little to no issues. Any issues that do arise are simply because Apple hasn't updated the drivers in...well, too long. Snow Leopard, which will contain Boot Camp 3, will fix this though.

 

[dKran]

beautiful

Thanks you for the help

 

[dKran]

Thanks again for the help, and i have another question

So. I've been reading a bunch, and it looks like the problem I would come across would be finding the drivers after the install, apparently the iMac disk doesn't have the 64bit Drivers on it, and they are apparently hard to find. Can anyone confirm or put this to rest? Also, my girlfriend has a new 13 inch Macbook Pro, would the restore discs for it have the 64bit drivers on them?

Thanks again.

 

[Andrmgic]

I think apple has been primarily shipping 64bit drivers only with the mac pro machines. You should be able to find the drivers if you look around on the net a bit.

you could just search for "bootcamp 64 bit drivers" and probably find them without much trouble.

Windows 7 probably has a wired network and maybe even a wireless driver for your imac already included.. so I think you'd at least be online after the install without any additional effort. That is the way it was with my alu macbook.

 

[fhall1]

There are 64 bit drivers on the OS X DVD....but I ran them and had problems because "KeyAgent" and "macHAL" weren't signed and 64 bit Windows only accepts signed drivers.

After I blew away my 64 bit install and re-did BootCamp with 32 bit Win7, on the web (cough - torrent - cough) I found the 2.02 BootCamp MacPro drivers that supposedly are signed, but I haven't had the energy to blow BootCamp away yet again just to "see" if they'll work.

 

[weckart]

There are 64 bit drivers on the OS X DVD....but I ran them and had problems because "KeyAgent" and "macHAL" weren't signed and 64 bit Windows only accepts signed drivers.
.

You need Bootcamp 2.1 drivers at the bare minimum to get signed drivers for x64. I had the same problem as you did with the unsigned drivers with an earlier version of Bootcamp. The short fix for it is to find a utility that resets Vista/Win 7 into Test Mode and force install the unsigned drivers until you get hold of the updated drivers.

DSEO utility for unsigned Windows drivers

It also depends upon the age of your machine. Mine is of Santa Rosa vintage, so Apple has had time to write the drivers. You might have to wait for Snow Leopard for the next batch of drivers with Bootcamp 3.

 

[dKran]

So would the Mac Pro drivers still give an easier time? and is it easy to get out of the "test mode" or whatever.

And is it going to be any easier to do this with bootcamp 3 when SL comes out? Or should I just do it now?

 

[fhall1]

You need Bootcamp 2.1 drivers at the bare minimum to get signed drivers for x64. I had the same problem as you did with the unsigned drivers with an earlier version of Bootcamp. The short fix for it is to find a utility that resets Vista/Win 7 into Test Mode and force install the unsigned drivers until you get hold of the updated drivers.

DSEO utility for unsigned Windows drivers

It also depends upon the age of your machine. Mine is of Santa Rosa vintage, so Apple has had time to write the drivers. You might have to wait for Snow Leopard for the next batch of drivers with Bootcamp 3.

I had 2.1 drivers on my 2009 iMac DVD...they still gave me the "unsigned" error.