Install windows 7 without bootcamp

Hi everyone
I was planning to buy mac book pro but only want it to run Windows 7 ( no Mac OS X and bootcamp ) Is this doable ?

I tried to find a installation guide on the internet but couldn't find one. Could you please help me out ??

Many thanks in advance
Zolek

 

I dont think you can, other then via BootCamp.

Why would you want a MacBook Pro to primarily run Windows?? If you want to stick with Windows 7 you may as well get a higher spec notebook rather then a MBP, or save some money. Windows will run better on a notebook and you wont have driver issues etc - its installed via Bootcamp on a MAC as a secondary operating system, for those who need windows on the odd occasion for playing a game, or for work etc. If you are buying a MBP, then your main OS should be MAC OSX.

 

This question has been asked many many MANY times in the forums. Search and you will find.

Long story short, it's not advisable. If you aren't buying a Mac because you need or want OSX, then you're buying it for the wrong reason and you'll be better off buying an appropriate Windows based laptop.

 

Honestly, I'm buying a Mac just because of its design and top notch customer support, been searching on google but couldn't find it.

Well, I will search again in this forum. Hopefully I found it.

 

You need bootcamp for it's drivers, and you will still need OS X installed.

 

think you may be mistaken what bootcamp is...

its just a utility to help you get Windows installed. It is NOT required to actually install or run Windows, its just a helpful tool. Even if you don't use Bootcamp assistant, and just install Windows directly and take up the whole drive, you'll still want to install the bootcamp utilities in Windows to get full driver support... so yes its very possible to install Windows all by itself and get rid of OSX... usually thats not the best choice for Mac hardware, but if it meets your needs, then go for it.

you are going to lose a lot of support... running Windows is not supported by Apple.

 

I think you should just install Bootcamp and have both OS X and Windows 7. It is just easier that way. OS X doesn't even take up THAT much hard drive space.

Just don't boot it in OS X mode and use Windows 7.

 

As doh123 said, Apple will not support problems you have while running Windows which makes your above statement moot.

If you are primarily going to be using Windows, then you should buy a laptop that was designed for it as a Mac is not optimized to use Windows the way it is for OSX.

 

Macs are just like pc's on the inside.

No reason you cant just delete osx and install w7.

 

How much space OSX take ?? I might as well keep OSX and use it with some recording program, sound like a perfect match.

Maybe I'll switch to OSX in the future. who knows ?

 

dual boot is the best way to go... when you run bootcamp assistant, it will guide you through splitting your hard drive if thats what you want to do, so you can choose how big you want each partition.

 

*edit: Doesnt Bootcamp essential emulate a PCs BIOS? OR does a Mac have both EFI and BIOS?

 

macs use EFI, and windows Vista and 7 support EFI as well as BIOS natively. bootcamp is only REQUIRED to emulate BIOS for windows XP and older

 

It doesnt matter because w7 support EFI, no need for emulation.

 

Yeah yeah, the machine will run better if he runs OS X. Still it's a pretty useable machine running Windows 7.

As for "wrong reason" ... You do realize that the reasons we buy things are subjective right? There is no right reason to buy a MBP or anything for that matter.

OP, it's a fine machine and will run Windows 7 fine. However, I would give OS X a shot, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

 

"Fine" is very subjective as well.

Perhaps you should mention the trackpad quirks while running Windows? How about the keyboard backlight quirk? How about reduced battery life? Fine indeed!

 

I like my macbook pro and run windows from time to time, but i would be pretty disappointed (with the macbook pro, not windows) if I had to run windows on it full time. There are quite a few serious quirks.

I would seriously consider an alternative.

Look at the HP envy.

 

I guess I don't have the quirks (knock on wood)

backlight, trackpad works.. bit too fast when scrolling and doesn't have all the gestures as OS X but still "fine". Some PCs don't even have a backlight reduced batterylife (?) yeah, okay, maybe I get a few hours instead of 5 or 6, nowhere near what I get in OS X. I plugin.

Not to say those quirks don't exist at all. My niece has a 15" early 2009 mbp... she told me yesterday her trackpad is freakin out in XP. Worked fine before her latest bootcamp update in windows about a month or two ago. Might be an apple XP driver issue, whereas I'm in win7x64 and am "fine"


but if for windows ONLY machine. Yeah, get a nice PC. I've got a few but still find myself drawn to my Mac more than the others.

 

What quirks? I was running native Win7 on my MBP 13 since last December, and there's nothing wrong with either keyboard or touchpad.

Battery life is marginally worse ( probably like 30-40 minut reduction)
Keyboard backlight works like a charm
Touchpad is missing only 3&4 finger gestures, but the operating is flawless...

 

For god's sake, if you're primarily going to use Windows, don't get a Mac. If you still want the "great" customer support, get a business class notebook. Boot Camp is cool and all, but Windows doesn't run well on the Mac, because Apple makes terrible drivers for Windows (of course it's on purpose)

Running Windows on a Mac can/will cause the following problems:

Battery life halved
Overheating
Driver problems on the Windows side, especially sound drivers (this pisses me off the most)
backlit keyboard is always on
GPU issues

 

this.

10char

 

If you're going to be running windows, get a windows laptop. I tried using windows mostly on my macbook pro and it was awful. The drivers suck for the most part and they aren't a priority for apple to update. The customer support is not really there (except for hardware issues, and then its like any other vendor, except charging you more).

Apple charges a premium for getting to use their os, and charges a premium for os support for their os. You can buy a cheaper windows machine with the same specs and better windows support.

As others have said, HP Envy is a good alternative. It looks very similar and is designed well. The 14'' which is coming out soon should be a very good machine for a very good price.

 

what is awful with the drivers? Why do they suck? What version of the Windows OS and bootcamp versions are being used when you experience the suckiness?'m really wondering because I'm not having any aweful experience with win7x64 in bootcamp using bootcamp 3.0. no problems whatsoever.

I'm wondering if the awful experiences are due to specific combinations of bootcamp version and win OS.

I've said this a few times about having no problems in bootcamp with win7. But all I hear on here is how much it sucks for the rest of you. I'm also wondering if these reports of terrible drivers aren't just people quoting what they have heard from others who had really bad experiences with early windows versions and bootcamp. And now everyone automatically says bootcamp is weak sauce even if theyve not tried it.

again, no problems at all here. none

I'm not endorseing buying a mac to use just with windows or to use it primarily with windows. I'm just saying it isn't bad (in my experience) like I'm hearing from the rest of you. And I'm using it everyday for at least 3 or 4 hrs.

 

I tot u can use any drivers that can support win7 ? why is it a problem ?

 

drivers for the keyboard, touchpad, video, sound, etc... these drivers are all supplied by Apple and you must use them otherwise these devices will not operate at all and the ones that do operate will not operate well.

Some people on here (most?) are saying the drivers are terrible. In my experience, they are not terrible with my Win OS version and bootcamp driver versions. I'm trying determine which windows OS mixed with which version of the APple bootcamp drivers are so terrible. Or perhaps the negative posts about bootcamp drivers are from people spreading misinformation because people repeat what they've heard without actually trying it. I don't know.

 

what windows are u using ?

 

WIN 7 Ultimate 64 bit

and latest bootcamp drivers.

I'm doing Oracle development in bootcamp right now in fact for the past couple hours. In fact, I've got XP Mode (Virtual PC) running inside win7 too with a couple of Oracle Apps instances running inside of it. I've got VPN connection, Outlook 2007, Word, Excel and a few IE8 windows (this one included) right now in addition to my database development tools (Oracle client, pl/sql developer, Toad, etc).

I'm only using about 5 - 10% CPU at the moment, most things are idle now though as I type this.

I'm using about 3 gig of physical memory out of my 8 gig. And that is with XP Mode running too.

 

The touchpad drivers are the only problem I have with bootcamp.

And it reminds you how important good touchpad drivers really are. The supplied drivers make me want to punch babies.

 

Which version of windows and service pack? Which bootcamp drivers? And what is it about the touchpad that you don't like in bootcamp?

mine scrolls faster than in OS X when in bootcamp when doing the two finger scroll. But it isn't bad at all and doesn't hinder what I'm working on, maybe I just have the hands of a surgeon. ha. I wouldn't use the touchpad to play a 1st person shooter of course. But I wouldn't use it for that purpose in OS X either.

 

Quick question for you. Is there any reason for preferring bootcamp over running win 7 using parallels or vmware? I assume win 7 is faster when you run its own but I wonder if it is worth the price of not having both OSes accessible at the same time.

I am developer as well, and I am thinking of buying a MacBook pro in the future. My plan is to use as many tools and IDEs as possible inside OSX (eclipse and anything that is java based) and only windows software that don't have mac versions in parallels. For me it is important to have everything available at the same time, and I am curious to find out if you went that route already and perhaps there was something that you didn't like?

Thanks

 

gaming in Windows in a virtual machine is truly horrid unless the game is very old...

 

Right. But if you don't do play games I expect the performance to be reasonable.

 

get an HP Envy 14...
it has the same build as the Macbook Pro

 

Sounds like parallels is for you. Especially if it is just a few programs that you have which require windows. I actually used Parallels for quite awhile with XP Pro SP3 in it and I liked it very much. Much more than vmware which I tried for a few months prior. Parallels was very seamless with OS X and sounds like it is just the ticket. Experiment with your file shareing with that setup. I can't remember exactly but I think it is possible to share the vm windows files with OS X. You can keep the virtual HDD file mounted even when parallels is not running so that you can access your windows file system within OS X. Pretty cool.

Sadly, most of my business applications are only available for Windows. I would like to someday have more of those tools running native in OS X and then do away with windows all together. But I'm not quite there yet. I had a few other reasons for switching to bootcamp...

- i had a new 2nd internal HDD I wanted to parition just for windows (used bootcamp to partition it). Keeping my primary drive reserved just for OS X without any VMs.
- i wanted all 8GB of RAM available to windows and my tools/apps
- i wanted to test XP Mode for our legacy apps which only run under XP (such as Oracle J-initiator which is basically an old version of java which is not supported in vista or win7, only xp). I don't believe it is possible to use XP Mode inside of windows while using it in a VM such as parallels.
- i wanted to play some PC games *that was just a bonus

 

For the OP, it WILL work, but you will be missing the Apple-specific hardware drivers and will have to see if you can find them on the Apple OS disks. You will also have fun activating a few of windows 7's new features like XP-mode due to not actually having a BIOS.

Removing Apple entirely from a macbook is intentionally not easy, but possible.

Note, that its still not really advised as frankly Bootcamp is just a trade-off.
Someone has to write the drivers which pass off EFI to OS control and apple is frankly not that good at keeping up with hardware drivers and microsoft isn't that great at EFI implementations yet. (even on non-apple hardware)

Both methods of "Win7 without Bootcamp" and Win7 under bootcamp" have their "less-than-fun" moments and you will be pretty much disowned for support by both Apple and Microsoft.

As for issues under Bootcamp drivers (yes 3.0) they are usually driver issues... lesser than expected GPU performance in certain newer games, mouse/trackpad issues, the well-noted battery life issues are the norm.

All of the above really is more for hardware tinkerer/wizard/miracle-worker than the average user and I have to repeat what the others have said in regards to this being less than recommended.

It's still your money and your call.
Good luck.

 

^ I'm getting excellent GPU performance in newer games.

$0.02.

 

A reminder that "excellent GPU performance" for the above person is getting slightly better than half the game performance of a computer half the cost from 2 years ago...

my $0.02

 

Rubbish, the Envy laptop computers just look like they're made by Apple, they are nowhere as sturdy. It's just premium art work.

 

According to Envy 15 owners it's only slightly less sturdy.

 

It'd be nice if there was a PC alternative to the envy. I haven't been happy with HP's quality in the past. The business pc's from Dell have proven to be equally bad for me. Lenovo uses Intel graphics in their business lines, although their laptops are solid. There isn't really a good alternative to Apple if you like the macbook build but don't like HP, is there?