Thursday, May 21, 2009

Dual boot MacOS X and Windows 7RC1 on my MacBook Air

I love my MacBook Air but MS Windows is still needed unfortunate for JavaME development. First I started to use VMWare Fusion but it has became so slow.

I decided to test boot camp instead and install windows 7Rc1. Boot Camp enables you to install Windows on your Intel-based Mac computer, using a Microsoft Windows install disc that you provide. Windows is installed on its own partition. After installation, you can use either Windows or Mac OS X on your Mac computer

I have found it works very well!!
I have to tell you how I did (it took me a time) before it worked

I did this:
1 ) I run the Boot Camp Assistant (I follow the Boot Camp installation & Setup Guide), but it was impossible to create new partition, it throws an error about not being able to partition, because some files cannot be moved. I solved it, I bought iDefrag. First I created a boot CD with Coriolis CDMaker (it was included in iDefrag). I boot up my Mac from this CD and run iDefrag and made a "Full defrag" and then I was able to create a new partition with Boot Camp Assistant.

2) I then download Windows 7Rc1 (64-bit versions of Windows 7 RC1 ) and install it.

3) After that I try to install the Apple drivers, but it throws an error "Boot Camp x64 is unsupported on this computer".
I Solved it by install it in a different way: In the Start Menu Type “cmd”, then right-click on the program that appears and choose “Run As Administrator”, Then enter;
D:
cd "Boot Camp\Drivers\Apple"
msiexec /i BootCamp64.msi

4) Every things works well except the USB Ethernet dongle, it is because there is no Windows 7 boot camp driver for it, but I found out how to solved it (see step 5).

5) After that I then install Netbeans 6.5.1, JavaME SDK 3.0 and Nokia N97 SDK.

6) I had problems to get N97 SDK to work with Netbeans, it throws an error "Cannot start Series 60 SDK for MIDP", but I found a solution, MS Windows 7 is missing a required DLL file: MSVCR71.dll. I took this file from a MS Windows XP computer and place it in the bin folder of the Nokia S60 MIDP SDK and then it works.

Update:
I have also installed Eclipse Galieo M7 and update it with MTJ 1.0 RC1
(Update site: http://download.eclipse.org/dsdp/mtj/updates/1.0/stable/ )
For the moment it throws an error when I try to open the Nokia N97 SDK using MTJ 1.0 RC1

No comments: