boot-camp interview questions
Top boot-camp frequently asked interview questions
Has anyone been able to install Windows 7 x64 under Bootcamp on a Mac? I was able to get the 32-bit version to install, but I cannot get x64 to install. The Mac doesn't seem to even want to boot the DVD. And even if I get it installed are there drivers that will work with it?
I'd prefer to have Windows 7 x64 because I'd like to use the entire 6GB RAM in my MacBook Pro.
I'd appreciate any tips or advice.
Source: (StackOverflow)
I installed cleanly using Boot Camp on my MacBook Air and managed to install Boot Camp Control Panel without any problems.
My screen brightness, keyboard brightness, and volume function keys all work great, except I no longer get the indicator on the screen showing the levels of those options.
Does anyone know how to fix this?
Source: (StackOverflow)
I'm trying to install Windows 8 with Bootcamp on my Macbook Pro.
Sadly it won't let me get past the disk partition choice (even after formatting the Bootcamp-drive).
It says:
Windows can't be installed on this storage device. The chosen harddisk contains a MBR-partition-table. Windows can only be installed on GPT-harddisks on EFI-systems. freely translated
What is going wrong here?
Here's a photo:
Source: (StackOverflow)
Using bootcamp to create a mountable installable USB drive with a Windows 10 .iso gives me an error saying:
Boot Camp only supports Windows 7 or later installation on this platform. Please use an ISO file for Windows 7 or later installation.
Why does this happen, is there any way I can fix this, or is there any alternate .iso. I can confirm this is the 64bit .iso and that my MacBook Pro is 64bit.
Source: (StackOverflow)
With the Boot Camp tools installed on Windows, there's an option for rebooting directly to Mac OS ("Restart in Mac OS X" from Boot Camp system tray item).
But is this possible in the opposite direction? In other words, instead of the procedure 1) "Restart", 2) wait for OS X to shut down, 3) hold Option key (⌥), and 4) select the Windows partition, can I tell my Mac to restart so that Windows is selected on the next boot? Something like "Restart in Windows" which would let me bypass steps 2-4.
NB: I want to keep Mac OS X as the default OS; I'm just looking for a convenient shortcut when normally running OS X and occasionally wanting to boot to Windows.
Source: (StackOverflow)
I have a MacBook Pro with Windows 7 installed on the Boot Camp partition. I've figured out how to invoke most of the "missing keys" (like home, end, page up, page down) but have not yet figured out if there are equivalents for "Print Screen" and "Alt+Print Screen". What are the keyboard shortcuts for this?
Source: (StackOverflow)
Is it possible to install Windows 7 (64-bit) on a Mac Pro without Boot Camp?
I don't need Mac OS at all and just want to install Windows 7.
EDIT:
Yes, it seems possible (see answer), but I would strongly recommend to follow deddebme's advice on this matter.
Source: (StackOverflow)
I needed to resize my Boot Camp partition so I used Gparted to move and resize it. This seemed to work, except that now I can't boot into Windows.
I can boot into OS X just fine. OS X can recognize the Boot Camp partition and view its contents. When I try to reboot into Windows, however I get the message:
No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key
The only solutions I've been able to find online suggest that the only way to fix this is to either clone the drive or remove the Windows partition and re-install it.
Is there any way to fix my Windows partition so that I don't have to reinstall Windows again?
Source: (StackOverflow)
I'm running an iMac with OS X Leopard, and the Windows 7 Release Candidate (using bootcamp). Sometimes when I boot into Windows, and then boot back into OSX, I find that Windows has changed the system's clock to use an incorrect time. I've had this problem when using Vista with bootcamp too.
How do I prevent this from happening?
Source: (StackOverflow)
I installed Windows 10 on my 15" Retina Macbook Pro. Once installed, I attempted to install the BootCamp drivers but it keeps getting hung up on the Realtek audio driver. I even left it overnight thinking it was just really slow but still no luck.
Anyone have trouble with the install and/or know what could be the issue here?
Specifics:
- BootCamp 6
- 2013 15" Retina MacBook Pro
- OS X El Capitan
- Realtek Driver 2.84
I attempted to install the drivers individually, boot the BootCamp launcher that allows you to reboot into OS X and the Apple Touch Pad driver is not installed properly. The touchpad does not allow for scroll or right click.
Source: (StackOverflow)
Boot Camp, Parallels, VirtualBox Or Fusion?
In a recent article on Australian LifeHacker.com they discussed the following question, I trust the SU group more then the anonymous answers from LifeHacker and I thought I would re-ask it here?
I’m sitting here with my MacBook Pro
and a copy of Windows 7, wanting to
combine the two into the ultimate
blogging machine. But how to do it?
I could go the cheap option of Boot
Camp, which only lets me boot one OS
at a time, and is free. Or I could
spring for a copy of Parallels or
VMWare Fusion to do the whole virtual
machine thing.
So the question today is which should
I choose? Either because you want to
know what the process is like, or
because you recommend the solution –
either one is fine by me.
EDIT: Work is paying too; so don't worry about price affecting your choice!
Source: (StackOverflow)
As you guys may know, for several years now, Apple uses 4-ring headphone jacks instead of 3-ring headphone jacks, and the fourth ring is dedicated to microphone input. This is what lets you have headphones that also serve as a microphone on the iPhone (and probably most competing phones nowadays, too).
Also for several years now, these jacks have been recognized by MacBook Pros so that you can connect this kind of headset on your computer and use its microphone.
However, even though my MacBook Pro on Mac OS X recognizes the microphone built into my headset (that has one of those 4-ring jacks), it seems that Windows 8.1 on Boot Camp doesn't register my headset as a microphone and instead insists on using only the built-in microphone. This is an issue when I'm playing games because the fan kicks in and annoys everyone voice chatting with me.
Is there a way to make Windows aware of the microphone integrated to my headset and using the fourth ring of the jack?
The device manager says that the headset is advertised by the 'Cirrus Logic CS4206A (AB 11)' audio controller.
Source: (StackOverflow)
Is it possible to use the true hibernate system functionalities of Win 7 and OS X to create a kind of instant switching between the two? Imagine this when reading/writing the sleep images to a quick SATA-3 SSD.
Hibernate-corruption-fix: If this is made possible, make sure that your different partitions are not write-enabled from eachother. (e.g. make it so that Boot Camp Windows 7 cannot write to OS X partition and vice versa). This safety measure should make it impossible for your different systems to corrupt eachother when one is suspended into hibernation.
Edit: I realized that I'm not sure that this is how partitions work on a disk. The hibernated OS X kernel could have references to blocks on the disk which it will continue to write to when it is woken up again. Are disk blocks like these contained within a partition or are they assigned to a partition after they have been written on? Is it different on HDD and SSD? Does this affect the above hibernate-corruption-fix?
Ok let's move on:
Windows 7 already has an option "Hibernate" which allows you to boot back to your OS X partition, but OS X does not exactly offer the same.
With OS X it is possible to hibernate by changing the hibernatemode system variable.
Pre OS X 10.7
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 2
OS X 10.7
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25
This makes your Mac go into hibernate when you put it to sleep.
You can put it to sleep with:
sudo shutdown -s now
Ok, so far so good. So we can put both Windows 7 and OS X Lion into hibernation at will. But wait! There's more problems up ahead.
When you put OS X into hibernate it will automatically boot back into OS X when you power your Mac on again. This makes it impossible for us to use it for "hotswitching" between partitions.
Possible fixes:
If you install rEFIt without rEFItBlesser you will get the rEFIt boot menu after OS X hibernation. On OS X 10.7 Lion however, this does not fully work, instead you get a black screen and have to hard shutdown your Mac. But hey! At least it interrupts the automatic OS X boot, right? Maybe it can be tweaked further from there.
As mentioned on earlier OS X:s the rEFIt boot menu actually does come up after hibernation shutdown + power on. This allows you to e.g. boot your Boot Camp Windows 7 partition instead.
There are problems here as well though. Apparently the OS X partition loses its hibernation flag if you follow this method, which means that the next time you boot into OS X, it will not return from its hibernation state. Instead it will do a clean startup. Why is this?
Does OS X look for the existence of a sleep image to determine wether to wake up from hibernation or to do a clean start or does it have some kind of system variable/flag set?
Summary
When Win 7 goes into hibernate it shuts down completely and you can then boot into OS X on startup. On OS X however, hibernate forces you to wake up into OS X. Can you hack this so that you're allowed to select boot partition after OS X hibernates and still be able to return later to OS X and wake it up from its hibernate?
Let's see what we collectively can come up with!
Source: (StackOverflow)
I've been playing Crysis 2 and Skyrim on my Retina MacBookPro (10,1) for months now. The two games used to run super smoothly even on nearly maxed out settings. This laptop has an Nvidia GeForce GT 650M graphics card inside, it runs great.
But I recently replaced my Windows 8 consumer preview with the retail copy, and since then, 3D games lag in this odd way, no matter what the graphics settings. Every second Skyrim and Crysis alternates between running smoothly and lagging. It's a cyclical lag that comes and goes like clockwork. I can turn the graphics down to 800x600 with no antialiasing and low texture quality, and it runs much smoother on the "up" motion of the cycle, but every second it moves back into this lag spike.
I've tried installing beta graphics drivers, re installing the operating system, re installing the bootcamp support software, and freeing up space (I have about 20 GB free). I can't figure out what suddenly caused this other than some obscure difference between the consumer preview and the retail version.
What can I try? Is my video card failing? Are there some other drivers I can install? This isn't normal lag from maxing out the card, it
ETA:
New info on the lag. Everything starts fine, but gets progressiveness worse after about 10 minutes of play, and I left it go for an hour once, and it was REALLY bad. This is bizarre.
So I've reformatted and installed Windows 7 Ultimate. Only thing on this machine is the OS, Steam, Chrome, Bootcamp Support and beta drivers. I don't get it, literally everything runs like shit. Every 3D thing has the same cyclical lag. Even CSS 3D transformations in browsers do it, I'm beginning to think it's a hardware failure. Does anyone have any other suggestions I could try? I've been at this for almost a week, it's deteriorating my state of mind.
ETA 2:
So I did some further snooping around, and it would appear others have my same problem:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4374957?start=0&tstart=0
http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/11/13/some-15-retina-macbook-pro-users-complain-of-graphics-issues-after-efi-update
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1452267
It came from a fairly recent EFI update for the rMBP that dramatically lowered the threshold for CPU down-throttling as the internals heat up during gameplay. Basically when I games are played, the laptop heats up and the EFI upgrade forces the CPU to slow down to save the MacBOok from hardware failure, despite the fact that no users complained for overheating prior to the EFI update.
Some have said resetting the SMC and PRAM solve the problem on the OS X side of things but not the Windows side. I experienced this when I tried that fix. Downgrading to 10.8.1 worked for one person, but it could've been a flook.
The verdict is people aren't sure if Apple is working on it or not. Generally is seems intentional to save Apple form replacing lots of expensive laptops if parts fail, but Apple store employees have said Apple is aware of the issue and working on it.
Until that time, the solution needed is an EFI downgrade, which is possible but extremely risky. Does anyone have any suggestions as how to proceed? This basically disabled my computer for all Windows gaming.
Thanks.
Source: (StackOverflow)
I shrinked 50GB from my main bootcamp NTFS partition.
After a reboot my windows explorer now shows that drive C's total size is 90GB,
but the Disk Management tool in windows (and EaseUS Partition Manager) still shows 140GB (there is no unnalocated space).
How do I get my 50GB back?
Disk 0 should be 500GB:
DISKPART> list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
* Disk 0 Online 465 GB 0 B
DISKPART> list partition
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 200 MB 512 B
Partition 2 Primary 325 GB 200 MB
Partition 3 Primary 619 MB 325 GB
Partition 4 Primary 140 GB 325 GB
If I try to shrink another 100MB (maybe force a reload?) I get the following message:
The parameter is incorrect.
Partition 4 is mounted as C: but ony 90GB:
TotalCommander also shows a total of 90GB.
I've used chkdsk and EaseUS's error check with no luck.
C:\Users\JorisWin>chkdsk
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is BOOTCAMP.
WARNING! F parameter not specified.
Running CHKDSK in read-only mode.
CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
187648 file records processed.
File verification completed.
262 large file records processed.
0 bad file records processed.
2 EA records processed.
66 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
259512 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned.
0 unindexed files recovered.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
187648 file SDs/SIDs processed.
Security descriptor verification completed.
35933 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
37017704 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.
95691775 KB total disk space.
68771188 KB in 139744 files.
85044 KB in 35934 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
293491 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
26542052 KB available on disk.
4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
23922943 total allocation units on disk.
6635513 allocation units available on disk.
Source: (StackOverflow)