(If you haven’t yet, read Part 1 to get up to speed) (Sorry this is so brief…I just got a call and I need to run to visit a client…)
[Today is March 1st, and if you haven’t upgraded your Windows7 Beta, you’re out of time. Here I finish my recap of upgrading my MacbookPro running Vista to Windows 7 Beta to Release Candidate (RC) to Released to Manufacturing (RTM).]
Using multiple methods, I think I’ve got everything I need backed up, imaged, logged, and accounted for. I’m now ready to take the big step…wiping my Windows partition clean and reinstalling it from scratch. You see, there’s no (supported) method for updating the RC version of Windows7 to the RTM version – something I was well aware of when I chose to install the RC version. I figured that I would benefit from a fresh, clean install and was willing to sacrifice some time and effort in order to get that.
Now for a guy who makes his living working with computers wiping his hard drive is the equivalent to a mechanic deciding to take his car apart, or a widow moving from the house she’s lived in for years into a new condo. You’re basically starting over, reinstalling all of the tools you’ve gotten comfortable with over the years, putting things in new places, shedding the detritus you’ve accumulated, and reacquiring fresh new stuff to replace it. In brief, it’s a scary process.
I held my breath, ran the Boot Camp Assistant, and deleted the Windows partition. There was no going back now!
I then created a new partition, and told Boot Camp this was going to be a Windows7 partition. I put the new Windows7 x64 disc in, rebooted my machine, held my breath again, and …. it didn’t work! Uh oh… it gave me an error the Windows DVD not being bootable. Wha?!
A quick Google of course resolved the problem (seriously, what did we do before the Internet?), which involved ripping the DVD onto the Mac partition (which is tricky if you’re low on space because you just allocated half of it to Windows), then reburning a subfolder of the image back onto a new, Mac-bootable DVD. It took me a few tries to get this to work, but eventually I got it and now all is better.
I get a 4.9 User Experience rating on this Mac, which has 4 GB of RAM (all of which is now usable under 64 bit Windows 7) and an upgraded hard drive. However, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns… more on that in my next posting.
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