Boot Camp

Let me start this post by saying that I'm not an Apple person.  I have a Windows phone (though I hate it; I prefer Android, but this one was cheaper) and Windows PCs at home and work.  I'm primarily a .NET developer (which you'll note is a Microsoft product).  I don't hate Macs (well, I didn't before this); I just don't use them.  They're more expensive than PCs and I don't know them as well as I know PCs.  I've had a PC since back when they were called IBM compatibles.

TL;DR: Boot Camp Assistant is probably great, but on old machines it sucks.  Snow Leopard with Boot Camp Assistant 3.2 is not as user friendly as newer versions probably are.  A Macbook Pro manufactured in 2009 cannot boot from a thumb drive.  When all else fails, just let the computer do it's thing.

All that said, I married an Apple person.  Everyone in her family is an Apple person.  I knew it when we decided to get married, but I didn't think it would be the one thing that finally made me crazy.  My mother-in-law got a new job, which requires her to have Windows on her home computer.  She has a Mac.  No problem, though, right?  Using Boot Camp Assistant, Mac will guide you through the painless process of dual booting OS X and Windows on the same machine.

I verified the specs, double-checked everything and got started.  It is now three days later and I'm almost finished.  Let me walk you through my troubles in the hopes that my trials and tribulations may help you in a similar situation.

I started off by launching Boot Camp Assistant and trying to download the drivers, as the instructions from Apple say to do.  No joy there.  A message came up that no drivers were found or something.  I honestly don't remember now; that was two days ago.  OK, no big deal.  A quick search of the Internet found the instructions that say I should just skip that part.  Got it.  Moving on then.  The next part of the wizard creates the partition for Windows.  At this point I'm happy.  I just want to make that clear.  At this point everything seems to be going according to plan.  The Chiefs are finally starting to put up a fight against the Patriots and it appears for the moment as though Apple's instructions will work fine.

But no.  Boot Camp Assistant can't create the partition because "some files could not be moved".  I find a video on YouTube where a guy explains how to get around it by running (what appear to be) some Unix commands.  That doesn't work either.  Some more searching of the Web and I find a solution to create a backup, wipe the drive, restore from backup and try again.  Well, that's not going to work for me.  I don't have an external hard drive to which to backup the OS and I don't particularly want to wipe the drive anyway.  I text the MIL and tell her no can do, boss.  She says I should go ahead and wipe it and reinstall.  Apparently she had anticipated this would happen and had backed everything up except her pictures.

OK.  Copy the pictures to a thumb drive, wipe the hard drive, copy the pictures back.  Got it.  How do I copy the pictures to the thumb drive?  It is now 11:30 PM on day 2.  I'm tired.  I'm falling asleep.  My wife is asleep next to me on the couch.  I want to quit.  OK.  Back to the Internet.  Ah, I need to "export" the files from iPhoto to the thumb drive.  Got it.  That was easy.  Time to wipe the hard drive.  Put the disc in and... hey, look at that... something went like it was supposed to.  Sweet.  I let it finish wiping and call it a night (although it is technically morning).

Surprisingly the reinstall goes pretty smoothly.  I will give Apple credit on this one: their install process is much faster than Windows (or so I thought at the time).  Great!  OK, OS X is installed.  Run Boot Camp Assistant again, partition the hard drive... and I'm done with the Mac side of things!  Woohoo!!

Getting to this point was supposed to be the hard part.  I had never done that stuff before.  From here on out it's just a matter of installing Windows, which I've done roughly a billion times.  Sweet.  I've got my bootable USB with a 32-bit copy of Windows 7 on it.  I've tested it to make sure it registers properly on my computer and we're good to go.  Put the thumb drive in when prompted for the disc and... Boot Camp Assistant doesn't see it.  Nor does it have any way to point to it.  Back to the Internet.  I see that I can install rEFIt and that should solve the problem.  Did that.  No joy.

After a lot more searching and a little bit of crying I decide I'll need to burn a DVD with Windows on it.  I don't have any blank DVDs.  To Walmart!  Back.  I make a bootable DVD.  I put it in the drive on the Mac.  I reboot the Mac and... nothing happens.  It just boots into OS X.  Oh, I forgot to hold the option key while it was booting.  No problem.  Reboot, hold option key (after the chime) and I get an option to boot to the Windows CD!  WOOOHOOO!!!  Choose that option and I'm home free... hahahahahahahahahahaha... no, that's not how it goes.

I end up on a black screen with a blinking cursor.  I wait.  I wait.  I wait.  I cry.  I wait some more.  I decide waiting isn't working.  Back to the Internet.  First suggestion: just wait.  Seriously.  Reboot into OS X.  Run Boot Camp Assistant.  Try to use the wizard.  It looks like it works, but I'm not going to get excited.  No.  I'm not going to.  Nope.  Nice try, Mac.  OK, what's this?  It looks like it's working!?  YES!!!!   Oh, wait, actually no.  It didn't work.

Reboot, hold option, choose Windows, black screen with blinking cursor, cry, yell, cry more, power down, walk away, drink, drink more, yell more, cry a little bit more, boot computer, forget to hold option... Windows is loading.  Holy crap.  No, this time I'm really not going to get excited.  I'm just going to stare at this screen through now-bloodshot eyes and wonder when this nightmare will end.  Wait, what's this?  It wants a product key?  I'm done?  HOLY CRAP IT WORKED!  I'M BRILLIANT!