[Jujujive]

I have recently purchased a 13" MacBook Pro. I have not partitioned or installed any sort of Windows software.

I saw the chance to get Windows 7 pretty cheap via the Student purchase program that went on. I bought it, downloaded it, and now all I have is an .exe file. Has anyone gotten stuck in this situation? Does anyone know how to get a usable file from this so I may install Windows 7???

Thanks,
-matt

[KPOM]

Jujujive, on 02 November 2009 - 05:35 PM, said:

I have recently purchased a 13" MacBook Pro. I have not partitioned or installed any sort of Windows software.

I saw the chance to get Windows 7 pretty cheap via the Student purchase program that went on. I bought it, downloaded it, and now all I have is an .exe file. Has anyone gotten stuck in this situation? Does anyone know how to get a usable file from this so I may install Windows 7???

Thanks,
-matt

My suggestion is to go back onto Digital River and download the ISO file (I think it is one of the sub-selections). You can download as many times as you want within 30 days of purchasing (you only get one activation key, which is how Microsoft prevents piracy). If you have 2GB of RAM on your MacBook Pro, or it is an older model with only a 32-bit processor (from 2006), download the 32-bit version. If you have 4GB, go ahead and download the 64-bit version. Either way, once the ISO file is downloaded, you can use Disk Utility in the Utilities folder of the Application folder to burn a DVD from the ISO file (select the ISO file and then click the "Burn" icon).

Once you have created the DVD, then open up Boot Camp Assistant (also inside the Utilities folder), and then create a Boot Camp partition for Windows. WIndows 7 takes up about 16GB, so I'd allocate at least 32GB to the Windows partition, and more if you plan to install a lot of Windows programs. Once the partition is created, it will prompt you to insert the DVD to install Windows. Boot Camp doesn't officially support Windows 7 but you can install the Vista drivers from your OS X installation DVD and they should work fine.