Introduction

Hey, you know what's great? Janky solutions to a problem that shouldn't have been a problem in the first place!

For context: My main laptop is a Mid 2007 MacBook Pro. The specs are listed here.

My dream setup with this laptop is a dual boot of Mac OS 10.8 and Windows Vista Extended kernel. Or Windows 7, I can go either way.

Mavericks is by far one of my favorites, I used to have a working copy of Mavericks before the December 2021 "Gravity Loft" Incident that killed my screen, and hard drive.

The plan is to eventually max out the laptop with 6gb of ram and a 500gb SSD. Not doing a DVD drive swap, I really dont need a data drive that much.
I have a newer laptop that I'd much rather put a proper data drive in, but that's a whole different blog post with it's own complaints and issues.

Problem

So whats the problem here? I pretty much have everything figured out, what's causing the jank?

64bit Windows.

This MacBook has a big drawback since it's an early Intel model. It has a 32bit EFI. Meaning any external operating system needs to be 32bit to be installed. Except Linux, I've never had trouble with 64bit Linux.
64bit Windows is indeed possible. I somehow managed to get Windows 7 64bit installed before my Mavericks drive kicked it.

So why don't I put a 32bit copy of Windows on it?

I had a 32bit copy of Windows on it!

I had a copy of Windows XP on here, which was great but lacking in it's ability to use Discord. Which ultimately became my biggest want for this laptop. It would be nice to have a proper laptop to do some texting and occasional voice chatting though Discord, and hopefully Wavelength once development gets to a point where using it is viable.

Artificial Block

The biggest drawback with XP is Web browsing. And it's really stupid.

Some websites seem to have an artificial block on what browsers are capable of being rendered on. Namely Discord, and DeviantArt. Hell, even Tumblr has some issues where the editor crashes... Beats me.

What makes me think this is an artifical block?

To put it bluntly: It worked one day, rendered semi-perfectly with zero flaws in the functionality. Then the next day: I can't even log in or do basic tasks without the site's crash screen appearing.

The best bit is: This is happening on MyPal 68, and FireFox Legacy 71. Both forks of Firefox 68, and 71 respectively. Which really bothers me since these browsers are at most two years old. Hell, the latest ESR build for mavericks could run Discord and do voice chat, but FireFox Legacy which was actually newer than the ESR build mentioned: couldn't do voice chat. Now it can't run the site at all.

I do wonder if I could run discord on FireFox ESR but I don't think theres a point right now.

Solution

So where does this all lead to? Why mounting the BootCamp partition and installing Windows on that of course! Just like my Mavericks drive.

That's right! With VMware Fusion 5 and a shit ton of prayers: I managed to somewhat get Windows 7 64bit installed on a Mid 2007 MacBook Pro.
Minus the driver issues I had, since I was trying to get 32bit BootCamp to run on a 64bit OS. With little luck too, since my Mac is so old and limited compared to it's Unibody Brethren.

You can theoretically get it done with Parallels Desktop 9, but that's where my problems began. I want to recreate that setup (but this time I want to get the proper drivers installed with Snappy Driver Installer)

I grabbed a copy of Parallels 9 with the use of my subscription to America Online, and a bit torrent client to avoid file corruption (Yes, my internet is that bad. Stay away from HughesNet.) There's a copy of Parallels 9 on Archive.org, actually!
I also grabbed my Windows Vista and 7 images off my sister's pc, and since I don't have any flash drives at the moment; I decided to throw all the necessary files on my iPod.
Vista was a bit of a pain, since my iPod was formatted with FAT32. The ISO image have for Vista includes the Extended Kernel which significantly increases the file size to a lean 5gb. Which is more than FAT32 can handle.
I fixed that by putting the image on my phone, transerring it to my computer, and sending the file to my Mac using FileZilla and an Ethernet cable. *sigh*

Further Problems

fter getting everything set up: it was time to install Parallels 9 and install Windows!

...And it needs a key. No matter, I can use the trial!

...And the servers are down...

After banging my head against the wall for the 12th time this week: I grabbed an activated copy of Parallels 9 from... sources...

I got it installed, and it worked just fine. Now: do i recommend piracy for this? No.
Obviously I can't stop you, but I also had no other choice since I couldn't even activate the software anyway. I love internet activation!

I was able to mount my XP partition with Parallels and boot into my Vista ISO without a hitch! I did end up hitting a bit of a snag when trying to install Vista, though.
Parallels threw a drive protection message, saying it prevented the VM from editing the boot files on my drive.
Odd...

I ignored it, then Windows threw a 0x80070057 error during the first step of installation.
I have a feeling this would have worked at least slightly more if Vista and above didn't require NTFS formatted drives for a fresh install.

I think El Capitan can make NTFS drives but I really don't want to install an entire new OS just for a file format that Mac OS should have had when Vista came out.

I figured I could just make a FAT32 partition and just format it as NTFS through Windows to get Vista installed, then just set it up as planned and go on with my life.

So I tried that...

...That ended up failing so bad; I now have to re-format my drive and re-install Mac OS X to restore functionality in Disk Utility. I tried to repair the drive but that did literally nothing.

Conclusion

Shit, I never thought Microsoft would have a superior partition editor built in to Windows since NT 3.5.
Even MiniTool's Demo for Partition Wizard has more recovery and repair functions than Disk Utility. And that demo has fuck all for recovery features.

Very anti-climatic and irritating, indeed...

But, As you've been reading: Theres a piece missing to this puzzle.

How did all of this start?

I broke my XP install trying to install Tiger...
...Which needed another partition.

Lesson learned. Do what your friend said and do your Mac OS Dual-Boot first before worrying about BootCamp.
Because literally ANY EDIT in Disk Utility will render your Windows install un-bootable and un-repairable. Even changing the volume label.
What a shit fest...

That's where I'm at so far. Check back soon when I re-format my drive and (hopefully) get all of this going!
Thanks for reading! -Gigabyte1027

Mac OS Bullshit