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BootCamp assistant wants you to download the support drivers directly onto a properly formatted USB flash drive. If you go this route, your USB drive has to be formatted as MS-DOS (FAT), this is because Windows can not read the default Mac format.
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Lets handle downloading the latest Windows support software first. Here you will see the options that allows you to “Download the latest Windows support software from Apple” and “Install Windows 7 or later version”. After making a backup, open BootCamp, it can be found in the Applications/Utilities folder or by searching for it in spotlight. Whenever you do anything to modify the hard drive you should always make a backup first it’s very unlikely that something will go wrong but best be on the safe side. It’s not necessary to use BootCamp Assistant since it can all be done with Disk Utility, however I’ll go through that at the bottom of this article. Think of it this way, the soon to be roommates both live in the same house but each get their own room customized to their own liking. This means that your Mac will continue to run on Mac OS X (Journaled) and Windows will be able to run on NTFS. Partitioning splits your hard drive into 2 separate sections, each with its own format. Macs run on Mac OS X (Journaled) and Windows runs on NTFS. Next, why do I have to make a new partition to install Windows? Well the reason is that Windows and Mac don’t run on the same format. It basically helps your Mac run Windows properly.
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The Windows support drivers should be installed even if you don’t plan on using the built-in camera or any of the other Apple hardware. For example, without the drivers, when you press the volume button on your Apple keyboard it won’t do anything because there are no driver to tell Windows what that button does. One partition will be used by your Mac to run Mac OS X and the other partition will be used to run Windows.īasically what the drivers do, is allow your built-in camera, special keyboard function (like volume), magic mouse and trackpad to work properly. BootCamp Assistant does two things, it downloads all the drivers necessary for Windows to operate properly and makes it easy to partition your hard drive into 2 partitions.
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