Windows 7 64-bit on a MacBook Pro

I have a MacBook Pro for work, and have Windows on it in a separate partition for the occasional thing that requires it. I had to get it's logic board replaced and for various reasons it made more sense to reinstall OS X and Windows once everything was replaced and back to me. Mac OS X was easy, but Windows was a bit more of a pain because while I have several legal copies of XP, i've lost track of which license keys go with which ISOs and Microsoft wants to call me to activate things. Thankfully, this is a work computer and work as a Microsoft volume license plan so I grabbed a 64-bit Windows 7 Professional ISO and Key, and gave that a shot. First problem, the DVD wouldn't boot: it instead presented "Select CD-Rom Boot Type" and 2 options, and the keyboard was unresponsive. After a bit of Googling around, the following is the way to get around this, assuming you have another Windows system or VM available:
  1. Grab a copy of oscdimg.exe (heres one) to somewhere like C:\
  2. Put the DVD you already burned into your Windows box
  3. Run: 
    oscdimg -n -m -bd:\boot\etfsboot.com d:\ c:\win7×64.iso
  4. Burn this ISO to DVD
  5. If Needed, use Boot Camp Assistant in Mac OS X to partition your disk for Windows
  6. Boot up with this DVD (hold down C when booting, use the Boot Camp Assistant to start it up, etc) and Windows 7 will install!
Once it's up and running and you try and install the BootCamp drivers from a Snow Leopard DVD, you'll run into some more things that try and stop you. The fix for them is to manually run the 64-bit driver installer in Administrator mode. One way to do this:
  1. Open up an Admin mode console by right-clicking on "Command Prompt" in start -> all programs -> accessories, and clicking "Run as administrator"
  2. type in "cd d:/Drivers/Apple" to change to the Drivers/Apple folder on the DVD
  3. type in "msi.exe BootCamp64.msi" to launch the 64-bit installer, and it will install and do it's thing
After those few steps and not too much time, you'll be up and running in Windows 7 on your shiny Mac laptop. Some things I've noticed:
  • It's faster feeling than Windows XP
  • It's prettier than Windows XP
  • It feels like it wakes and sleeps faster than OS X
  • Steam and Team Fortress 2 work and seem faster than Windows XP
  • The Internet works.

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