Printed from www.pcpro.co.uk
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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45 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.
November 28th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
I have tried your method but have met with nothing but failure for in the drivers directory which I browsed through there is no files entitled ATIKMDAG.SYS or NVLDDMKM.SYS
I am on a new core i7 iMac with a x86 windows 7 ultimate attempted installation! PLEASE HELP!
December 1st, 2009 at 6:58 pm
First let it reboot 1 time, it will get back to the installation windows and will say:
Completing Installation
After that it will reboot again. Now is the time to delete the driver using the above method.
So first let it reboot once and finish installation, after that let it reboot but choose to start the cd again.
Good luck.
December 1st, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Many thanks guys for the solution, worked a treat.
December 5th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Thanks!
December 6th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
Works greate! Thanks
December 9th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
worked like a charms, many thanks.
December 16th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
THANK U THANK YOUUUU!! i would have died if it wasn’t this site <3
December 17th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
thank you for this! now i’ll definitely go ahead and buy an imac 27 so i can install windows 7 on it!!! thanks!
December 18th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Great work and solution – worked a treat!
Note that in most cases, Windows Setup will create a “recovery” volume of 100MB at the start of the disk. This will become C: during the DOS stage of the instructions. Try the same path but D:\Windows\System32\Drivers.
As for the what is better – Windows or Mac, depends what you want. I like the Mac hardware because its well designed, has a good out of box experience (the box is shiny, not brown cardboard) and as I get educational prices its almost reasonably priced
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Thank you, thank you! This saved me so much time!
December 22nd, 2009 at 1:02 pm
is there no way of installing windows 7 direct on this as if installing on a PC? ie without using bootcamp? ie having just windows 7 on the hard drive and no other partition?
December 23rd, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Has anyone found a solution to the ”windows installation cannot proceed” error?
December 25th, 2009 at 6:35 am
Thank you!!! You saved Christmas!!! Thank you so much!
December 28th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Thank you so much. You save me from a disappointed customer !!!!
January 2nd, 2010 at 2:07 am
That comment from Gerjan is the key to making this work. Just got Windows 7 up on my new imac. thank you!!! You made my new year!
January 2nd, 2010 at 5:03 am
In response to #10 above. I had the same problem because the C: drive was not availble. I tried D: and was able to delete the file
January 2nd, 2010 at 5:30 am
One more thing. After the initial install, your mac reboots, continues the install and the screen goes blank….DON’T DO ANYTHING! The install is still going…after a few minutes, the mac will reboot again. At that time, boot from the CD and delete the ATI file….That’s how I got it to work for me!
January 5th, 2010 at 7:43 am
Thx a lot perfectly explain!
January 9th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Nick (October 28th, 2009 at 1:04 pm) wrote: “That some idiot would want to run Windows 7 on it is mind boggling.”
That kind of uneducated comment just shows how much of an idiot *you* are. One reason I don’t want to buy a Mac is because of the elitist, arrogant and smug attitude of some Mac owners and fanboys.
January 10th, 2010 at 9:02 am
Nice work done! Have tried it successfully on my new imac, however probably because we have deleted the Ati file which was supposed to be the driver for the display, i only have the default display driver which has very limited colours and resolution. Tried to update the driver from Bootcamp CD, but went black again…… what should i do at this stage???
January 12th, 2010 at 8:52 pm
It took me a while to find the Repair Your Computer link as when rebooted the screen went back to an installer asking again for Lanuguages/currency etc. I had to fill these in the click next and then I saw the link.
January 14th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
It worked like a charm with Win 7 Home Premium Norwegian. The only snag was I couldn’t find the \ on they keyboard so I had to “cd” my way into the drivers directory.
Thanks!
January 16th, 2010 at 9:16 pm
Hi, I have really appreciated this input. I have installed W7 on my new 27″ iMac. Once i get to the black screen and go to the DOS promtp, I enter the text, hit return and the system seems to accept it. I reboot… No windows 7. It goes directly into OSX. I have 10.6.2. Its the i5 Model with 8Gb ram. Its my first MAC. any advice would be appreciated.
January 18th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Thank you so much. i have been racking my brains on this for a long time now.
this helped a treat
January 19th, 2010 at 3:09 am
Great trick. It worked for me, thanks! Trouble is that the new driver seems to blink out from time to time and I get the message “A display driver has stopped working” for the ATI Radeon family. I’m going to try and get a new driver.
January 23rd, 2010 at 2:32 am
I don’t know how i can do it as i don’t have an os disc, does that mean i can not install windows 7?
February 9th, 2010 at 7:02 am
I can help clarify a few things, while I wait for my imac to come out of black screen
#28 / Patrick (Installing Windows 7 without using Bootcamp.) This is what I did. In OSX, go to Applications -> Utilities -> Disc Utility. In partitions, you can click the plus sign to create a new partition. I think Disc Utility would give clear warnings if you try to delete your main partition, but be careful not to format the whole drive with all your data. The Windows 7 installation will accept this new partition, your can ignore Bootcamp altogether. Access the Win7 installer by inserting the DVD, and holding Option (alt) as soon as your iMac turns on (before the gray apple.) If the disc symbol does not show up immidiately, have 10 seconds of patience.
#40 / Gareth (Goes directly to Mac OSX past Win7 after installation). Remember to hold Option (alt) as soon as your iMac turns on (before the gray apple appears.) This will give you the option to boot from the Windows partition.
February 9th, 2010 at 7:25 am
Make sure to update the graphics drivers after installing Windows 7 – the default drivers work, but are awfully slow and do not allow for native resolution. Go to http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx , choose your version of Windows 7 -> Radeon -> Radeon HD 4800 Series (that is, if you have the HD 4850.)