It is recommended to leave it at 20GB or add more depending on how much one can spare and what one will use Windows for. By default, it might select 20GB for Windows and the rest for Mac OS X, but one can drag the slider between them to customize the sizes or click the “Divide Equally” button to split the drive in two equal sizes (if there is enough free space). If the Mac only has one user, then he/she should only need his/her own username and password.īoot Camp Assistant will now display a graphical representation of what the internal hard drive will look like once a Windows partition is created. Once done, it will ask for one’s administrator account user name and password to install additional helper tools. Once a blank disk is inserted or the destination location is set on an external drive, the Boot Camp Assistant will start downloading and saving the support software.

One will either be asked to put a blank disk in the DVD drive or select the location on the external drive that the support software should be saved to, depending on one’s selection on the previous screen. Note that if a USB flash drive is selected it will be formatted, so make sure to backup any data on it before using it with Boot Camp Assistant. Select one’s preference and press continue. One can choose to burn it to a CD or DVD or copy it to an external hard drive (which may include an USB flash drive as well). The next step will ask where to download the Windows support software. Download and save the Windows support software Otherwise, skip it and use an existing Windows 7 install disk. If Windows 7 was purchased from Microsoft’s online store, one should have the right Windows 7 ISO and can keep the first task selected. One can create a Windows 7 install disk with a USB flash drive, download the support software to it, and install Windows 7. The first step allows one to select which of these tasks Boot Camp Assistant should complete. As the first screen of Boot Camp Assistant states that it will download the necessary support software, partition the hard drive to make space for a Windows partition and start the Windows installer. It can be found in the Applications > Utilities folder or via Spotlight. Once all the conditions are covered, one can launch Boot Camp Assistant. If nothing works or as an alternative solution, backup the entire drive and reinstall Mac OS X, which would format the disk clean. Hopefully this will not be an issue and Boot Camp Assistant will work immediately. If it does not work, consider defragmenting the disk with a tool such as iDefrag. In that case, open Disk Utility and try a disk repair and permissions repair. If one runs into an issue where Boot Camp Assistant states that the “startup disk does not have enough space to be partitioned” and that one needs at least 10 GB of free space available even though there is already even more than that, it is possible that there is not enough free space in a single congruent piece on the hard drive, which can happen if the disk is fragmented due to having too little space available for an extended period of time. If one has 160 GB total, this would amount to about 36-52GB of ideal free space being available, of which 16-31 GB would be left to Mac OS X and 20GB would be given to Windows. The recommended amount is over 20GB, however, enough to still leave some free space for Mac OS X (ideally 10-20% of total disk space on a Mac partition) and 20GB for the Windows partition. Have at least 10 GB of free disk space available.

Get a Windows install disk or a Windows ISO from Microsoft’s online store.It no longer supports Windows XP and Windows Vista, but can be used to install Windows 7.īefore starting be sure to meet the following conditions:

Install Windows without Erasing Mac OS XĪpple has provided an official and built-in method of setting up Windows on a Mac while still keeping Mac OS X called Boot Camp. This means that Macs can run Windows natively just as all PCs can and Apple actually touts this fact as one of its upsides. The only differences are in the ways Apple integrates these components and how they design the machine as a whole. Modern Macs use the same underlying system architecture as Windows PCs.

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