Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Mountain Lion Edition

Boot Camp

To set up Boot Camp, you need the proper ingredients (plus an Intel-based Mac, which, since you have Mountain Lion, you obviously have):

• A copy of Windows 7. That’s right: Mountain Lion requires the Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate editions of Windows 7.

• At least 10 gigs of free hard drive space on your built-in hard drive, or a second internal drive. (You can’t install Windows on an external drive using Boot Camp.)

• A wired keyboard and mouse—or Apple Bluetooth wireless versions—is required for the installation process. You can use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse once the installation is complete.

Then you’re ready to proceed.

Installing Boot Camp

Open your Applications→Utilities folder. Inside, open the program called Boot Camp Assistant.

On the Introduction screen, you can print the instruction booklet, if you like (although the following pages contain the essential info). There’s a lot of good, conservative legalese in that booklet: the importance of backing up your whole Mac before you begin, for example.

Click Continue. You arrive at the Select Tasks screen, where you have three options:

• Create a Windows 7 install disk. If you see this checkbox at all, it means that you have a recent MacBook Air or another Mac that has no DVD drive. And you’re in luck: you can install a disk-image (downloadable) copy of Windows 7, which Microsoft sells. When you click Continue, Boot Camp Assistant will copy the Windows 7 disk image to a USB flash drive that you insert (you’ll need one with ...