How to get Windows 7 work reliably with Bootcamp?

[Hashim]

Hi, I have a MacBook Pro which is running on Mac OSX 10.5. I have used Boot camp installed and have created two partitions out of which I am installing Windows Xp and on one partition I am gonna install Windows 7. Windows Xp is working fine with Bootcamp except some minor problems but i want to know if it is possible to make Windows 7 work reliably on Bootcamp? Please guide me in this. I have divided my hard disk as follows, out of 130gb of total space 20gb is kept for Windows 7 and 10gb for Windows XP and the rest for OSX. Also I want to know if using bootcamp will any problems?

[Elijah]

Actually it is not good idea to use boot camp on Mac machines. Boot camp is an application which changes the file system of the hard disk of Mac computer which is not a good practice. While creating partitions, boot camp can also delete the existing OSX partition which will make your system unbootable. Therefore it is better to avoid use of Bootcamp to install the Windows operating system on a MAC system.

[Solomon]

Yes I have faced the after effects of using Bootcamp utility to create partitions for Windows operating system. I also used boot camp utility to create partitions for windows system but it resulted in making my system completely unbootable. The bootcamp utility displayed that the partition is successfully created for installing windows but when the system restarted, only one partition was available whose capacity was equal to the capacity of the hard disk. It converted whole hard disk into partition suitable for Windows installation and deleted the OSX partition and all the data. Hence I am totally against usage of Bootcamp for creating partitions.

[jesse]

I think you must have selected the entire drive while creating partition for Windows installation. I have used bootcamp utility to create separate partitions for windows operating system and my Mac system is still working fine. I have installed Windows XP on the drive created by boot camp and it works just fine. Although there are some minor problems which I face while using Windows Xp but they are not because of boot camp. You can install any version of Windows on the partition created by boot camp without any problems.

[Calvin K]

If you have already installed Windows Xp on one of the partitions created by Boot camp, then be careful while installing Windows 7. If you want to Keep Windows 7 and Windows Xp both on the system, then create a separate partition for Windows 7. If Windows 7 is installed on the same partition as of Windows Xp, then Windows 7 will wipe out the Windows Xp installation from the drive. Therefore take backup of data which you have on the Windows XP drive as installing Windows 7 on the same drive will wipe out all the data from the drive.

[mv]

You will have to format the drive in NTFS format in order to install Windows 7 on the partition. Formatting the drive in NTFS will make the data more secure and the data loss rate is very low. Windows 7 will not get installed properly if the drive is formatted in fat32 format. Hence transfer the required data from the partition in which you are going to install Windows 7. Installing Windows 7 will remove all the files which are related to Windows XP.