The deed is done

I can now run Windows on my iMac.

Friday afternoon, I did the installation. More than anything else, it was tedious. First, I burned a CD with documents and preferences; I haven't been using the iMac a lot, as it's a test machine, but backups before doing something potentially destructive are always a good thing.

Then I downloaded the BootCamp Assistant from the Apple web site and printed out the installation guide. Following instructions, I downloaded and applied the Firmware Update, and I created the Apple Drivers CD.

Then it was time to partition the hard drive. It's very straightforward, as you just move a slider to determine the partition size you want. The only gotcha here is that you have to have your Windows partition be less than 32GB if you want it to be formatted FAT32 instead of NTFS. Why would you want the less-secure FAT32, you might ask? The answer is simple. A Mac, running Mac OS, can't write to an NTFS disk. So, FAT32 it is. Fortunately, I had read ahead in the installation guide, so I knew this.

The next step was the actual Windows installation. The BootCamp installation guide had very clear instructions that you must put Windows on the partition labeled C:, and the (blurry) illustration is as follows:

E: Partition1 [Unknown] 200MB
F: Partition2 [Unknown] 102400MB
Unpartitioned Space 128MB
C: Partition3 [Unknown] 27824MB

with C: highlighted. Nonetheless, there's a real temptation to select the first partition, or, at least, the first large partition, especially as that's what the Windows installer highlights by default. Reading the Mac support sites, it appears that at least one poster clobbered his Mac installation by doing exactly this.

I have to say that it's quite spooky to see the familiar Windows logo on a Mac and to hear the familiar Windows startup chimes. But there you are. All it takes is time. The Windows installation just chugs along. Then you run the updates and install virus protection, and download Firefox, just to be safe. But it works. The screen resolution is wonderful.

The only downer is that now that I'm back in MacOS, for some reason, the ethernet connection isn't working properly; I can't get an IP number from the DHCP server, no matter what I do. Fortunately, the wireless signal is strong enough that I'm not completely cut off.

Now to install Matlab and see what happens.