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Posted on October 26th, 2009 by David Bayon
How to install Windows 7 on the new 27in iMac
Windows 7 isn’t officially supported in Boot Camp just yet, but that doesn’t stop it working a treat most of the time. We have it installed on one of the new MacBooks in the Labs, but the gigantic 27in iMac proved to be much more problematic (we’ll have a full review of the monster in question later this week).
The problem occurs after the main Windows 7 installation has taken place. The system reboots, the Windows 7 logo circles into life and the desktop should appear – but all you get is blackness. The system is still running – press the Caps Lock key and you’ll see the light ping on – but you can’t see anything, indicating a problem with the iMac’s ATI graphics drivers.
Fear not, though. If you’ve just blown £1,350 on this beautiful beast and are now scratching your head as to why you can’t get it working, there is a workaround to crowbar Windows 7 onto it. Just connect a USB keyboard and mouse, then follow these steps:
- Run the Boot Camp Assistant in OS X as normal and create a partition when asked, then insert your Windows 7 disc to reboot and begin the process proper.
- Windows 7 requires the NTFS file system, so once in the installer just select your new partition (labelled BOOTCAMP), click on Drive options (Advanced) and choose to format it. Then select the newly formatted partition and continue.
- Windows 7 will begin installing, and once it gets almost to the bottom of its checklist, it’ll try to reboot. Now, if you leave it here, you’ll get so far and see the black screen. Any further attempts to reboot will bring you to the same dead end.
- Instead, restart and press a key to boot from the Windows 7 disc when prompted. Rather than running the installation again, choose the little option at the bottom to Repair your computer. Decline any suggestions that pop up until you see a list of options with Command Prompt at the bottom. Choose that option.
- At the Command Prompt, type DEL C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ATIKMDAG.SYS to delete the default ATI driver, then close the window and reboot.
- This time, Windows should successfully initialise a more appropriate display driver, allowing you into the desktop. From here insert your OS X disc to install the relevant hardware drivers as you normally would, then run Windows update to clear up any leftovers.
And there’s a working Windows 7 installation on your new 27in iMac. Who needs official Apple support anyway?
Tags: Apple iMac 27in, Boot Camp, operating system, Windows 7
Posted in: Hardware, How To, Software, Windows 7
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17 Responses to “ How to install Windows 7 on the new 27in iMac ”
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October 26th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Just got 2 of the 27″ iMacs today and tried to install Windows 7 to no avail. 3 hours on the phone with Apple and MS . No help. Told that a fix would be out by year end. Then I found you comments re the exact problem I was having. Problem SOLVED ! Many thanks.
October 27th, 2009 at 8:40 am
You could always use VMWare Fusion 3 that now supports a 64-bit installation of Windows 7, that’s what I’ll be doing after being a happy Fusion 1 and 2 owner!
October 27th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Michael,
if you need decent graphics performance, for example, then Fusion isn’t going to help. Virtualisation is great for many things, but not everything, unfortunately.
October 27th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Fusion is completely wonderful – and there are hardware graphics accelleration passthrough capabilities, though Serge Robe, VMWare’s irrepressibly french product manager or Fusion, will admit that they are somewhat in beta. Having said that, though, if you want proper graphics then why not just get a sensible machine like a mac Pro?
October 28th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Well maybe because the cheapest Mac Pro with a half decent graphics card in(not the poor gt120) will set you back £2,058.99. Not a sensible price considering it’s just an HD 4870
October 28th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Why on *Earth* would you soil an iMac with the uselessly over complicated nonsense that is Windows 7?
The dock is better, the control panel sensible, there are no silly interstitial web pages blocking simple dialogs, there are not masses of useless folders jammed into your root directory you can neither delete or move – it’s a horrific OS.
In terms of sheer simplicity OS X is astronomic units ahead of Windows. That some idiot would want to run Windows 7 on it is mind boggling.
Running XP in a VM I can understand. On my iMac it runs very well, even full screen. Fundamentally though, I’m glad it’s only a VM.
October 28th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Ow man! Thank you so much for your help!!! We were lost for hours after the iMac turned black! Thank god we found your tips on the net. Again, a thousand thank you!!!
October 29th, 2009 at 7:25 am
Actually Macs are good but when it comes to do the real job, it gives up. My imac 27 with i7 and 8 gb is coming soon. I have to install win7 because mac can not do a thing on some of the web projects and video editing projects I have. yes final cut pro is great but it gives up on persian and arabic script. leave alone that even the ms office on mac does not support fully persian.
spent two ours at apple store and those great boys could not even figure it out why it fails even on the mac’s own office version (i don’t know what you call it).
ok yes i love mac but until mac can do the real video editing on multi-lingual bases, i will praise windows.
I got mac because it is cute and the screen resolution and because it has finally has a real possessor like i7 and i5 and ddr3 support.
Mac is great but windows does more. Yes, it can get viruses but my machines never got a virus in about 15 years. I have used c prompt, dos, win3, 95, 98, 98b, win server4 2k pro, xp pro and vista. all of them buggy but all of them does the job better then man.
My first PSs were, Quadra, mac 2, powerbook 100, powerbook duo 250, etc.
I gave them all up when windows 2k came with multilingual support for all applications.
As I said, mac is good and i hope in the future it really can show some work done but for now I will want to rely on win7
October 29th, 2009 at 7:32 am
Oh sorry, I really forgot to thank you for this article because this is the kind of article I was searching for. My English is poor but you people are smart to figure it out what I mean.
Thank you.
October 31st, 2009 at 2:22 am
HELP, i wrote what you are saying(DEL C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ATIKMDAG.SYS) but the answer i get is could not find C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ATIKMDAG.SYS please, i have been spending many many hours to install windows7 on my mac what should i do?
October 31st, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Thank you!
I was troubleshooting for hours after someone gave me the link to your blog entry, awesome!
October 31st, 2009 at 5:36 pm
to 10. above: the file could be NVLDDMKM.SYS
see this page: http://geekswithblogs.net/ajames/archive/2009/08/12/take-an-imac-and-windows-7-rtm-ndash-and-have.aspx
November 1st, 2009 at 10:16 am
THIS DOES NOT WORK, IT SAYS CANNOT FIND FILE. NO HELP AT ALL.
November 2nd, 2009 at 9:03 pm
same problems… file doesnt found
November 3rd, 2009 at 7:17 am
I ran into the black screen problem also.
First I tried deleting the ATIKMDAG.SYS file as recommended.
I know see the screen, but Windows puts up a dialog a few seconds later: An unexpected error has occurred. Windows 7 setup cannot continue. Click ok to reboot and restart Windows 7 setup.
November 4th, 2009 at 1:40 am
If it says file not found, let it boot up and go into the black screen. It actually hasn’t finished completing the installation. After that, I was able to delete the specific file. BUT after that I run into the “An unexpected error has occured.” and am told to reinstall windows… help?
November 17th, 2009 at 12:05 am
I got into the cmd of Windows 7 but I could not find either C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ATIKMDAG.SYS or C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\NVLDDMKM.SYS
Please help me I have an iMac from Canada or USA model what is the driver???
If anybody can help by giving me the .sys to delete, that would be greatly appreciated. I did a DIR for all .sys files with the ATI tag but it did not get any results.
On http://geekswithblogs.net/ajames/archive/2009/08/12/take-an-imac-and-windows-7-rtm-ndash-and-have.aspx ,
I also want to know if the solution is to delete C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ati*.sys Does this work?
Any reply will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.