Putting Windows 7 on a MacBook Air

November 15, 2011 2:25 PM

Two questions about putting Windows 7 on a MacBook Air. First, how do I get a Windows 7 ISO? Second, am I crazy to even do this in the first place?

I have a perfectly valid Windows disk and serial number (yay me), and a Flash drive to install from. How do I get an ISO image onto the Flash drive? Do I convert something from the disk, or do I have to download it separately?

Am I crazy to be trying this? Should I be getting a MacBook Pro?

posted by Cool Papa Bell to computers & internet (5 answers total)

You can definitely build a flash-based Win 7 boot key from the cd, we have some here at work. I'm not sure who built them or what directions they followed but it is definitely aok and works great.

Here's an article I just glanced at via Google about doing exactly what you want to do.

Install Win7 on a MacBook Air from a USB drive

Never seen one in person, myself, but we have a few users that have Win 7 on intel Imacs. YMMV?
posted by bitterkitten at 2:32 PM on November 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

The OS X Disk Utility can make an .iso as follows: mount the disk, click "New Image", and choose "CD/DVD Master" for Disk Format. It will make a file with a ".cdr" extension; you can simply rename that to ".iso"
posted by thelonius at 2:37 PM on November 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

I don't think you're crazy, but you might want to get a USB CDROM drive. They're fairly cheap, and would come in handy for this and other situations.
posted by odinsdream at 3:42 PM on November 15, 2011

You can also just download a copy of the ISO from here (I've used this site several times to fix client computers because, surprise, new computers don't come with OS re-install/recovery disks).

Just make sure you are on as big a network connection as you can find!
posted by fenriq at 4:12 PM on November 15, 2011 [2 favorites]

All you need to know about Win7 on a Macbook Air: Part1, Part2
posted by blue_beetle at 9:04 PM on November 15, 2011