Windows on a mac?

[Stuh505]

Is it possible to install windows 7 on a macbook pro, without leaving any traces of the mac os behind? ie, just turn it into a regular windows laptop. Most references out there are for how to set up dual booting..

 

[Jon55]

From everything I understand, no. You can make the OS X partition as small as possible, but I believe it has to be installed. You'd need OS X for any firmware updates anyway.

But I mean how big is an OS X installation? 20 GB? That's nothing on 250+ GB sized drive. It's definitely worth doing if you want to run Windows natively on your Mac.

 

[Javelin3o4]

I'd just set the partition to the max size for the windows volume and install, then just set the startup disk to the windows partition so everytime you boot it up it just defaults and boots to the windows partition.

 

[Joe Average]

Because MacBooks (and all Macs) use EFI tech and not BIOS tech anymore, Windows 7 can't be installed directly onto such hardware without BootCamp, and BootCamp requires OSX to be on the drive for a variety of reasons. The only potential solution is to minimize/shrink the OSX partition as much as possible, say down to about 20-30GB, and assigning every last bit/byte of remaining space on the drive to be used exclusively for the BOOTCAMP partition where you'd install Windows.

From that point on, it's a simple matter of adjusting the BootCamp options so that Windows becomes the default OS and it'll boot to that OS from that point on. Only "issue" you'll have is that you can still see the OSX partition in Explorer when Windows is running (because BootCamp's drivers will let you see it), so in that situation you can use Disk Management in Windows to just remove the visible drive letter and voila, as close to a "pure" Windows-based Mac as you can get.

 

[Xeth]

You CAN delete the OS X partition after installing windows 7, I've done it many times. You can then expand the windows 7 partition to take up the entire hard disk.

You can even boot and install windows 7 without boot camp at all if you burn a slightly modified install DVD...

 

[Jon55]

You CAN delete the OS X partition after installing windows 7, I've done it many times. You can then expand the windows 7 partition to take up the entire hard disk.

You can even boot and install windows 7 without boot camp at all if you burn a slightly modified install DVD...

Well then please post the instructions you took.

 

[Xeth]

Well then please post the instructions you took.

Google "delete hard disk partition in windows 7"?

 

[Unknown-One]

Because MacBooks (and all Macs) use EFI tech and not BIOS tech anymore, Windows 7 can't be installed directly onto such hardware without BootCamp, and BootCamp requires OSX to be on the drive for a variety of reasons.

This is incorrect. Windows 7 can boot on EFI motherboards natively (apple or otherwise), it does not require bootcamp.

 

[SuperSubZero]

Note that the rare firmware updates for Macs can only be installed from OS X.

 

[munkle]

Because MacBooks (and all Macs) use EFI tech and not BIOS tech anymore, Windows 7 can't be installed directly onto such hardware

If this were true the new sandy bridge motherboards (most of them since most use efi now, some say efi bios not sure if that is different from efi but I doubt it) wouldn't be able to boot windows 7.

Edit: Also windows has supported efi since vista sp 1

Introducing Windows Vista Service Pack 1
Support for emerging hardware and standards, such as an Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) and an Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT).

 

[GushpinBob]

Because MacBooks (and all Macs) use EFI tech and not BIOS tech anymore <snip>

Since when have Macs ever used the BIOS (hint: BIOS =/= Open Firmware)?


Also, all x64 based versions of Windows, starting with Vista SP1, support direct booting off of EFI based systems. OTOH, all x86 based versions of Windows do not support EFI.