Windows 7 / Bootcamp and Macbook Pro 4.1 17" - Several Technical Problems

H

happykoala

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This refers to the commercial, licensed version of Windows 7 Ultimate with Mac OSX 10.6 Bootcamp drivers installed.

While I find the Windows 7 Ultimate experience on my Macbook Pro to be in general quite pleasant, it has some significant problems.

1. Suspend / Resume does not work. When closing the lid, the OS continues running, sometimes - which leads to dangerously excessive heat build up as the fans appear to stop.

2. When leaving the laptop lid open and the laptop unused for a period of time - the machine will simply go black. I suppose its suspended, but the only way to bring the machine out of this state is to fully power cycle the machine, leading to a Microsoft message that Windows shutdown improperly. Repeating this over a number of times leads eventually to Windows requiring a chkdsk at bootup - something takes almost 3 hours to complete on my 50gb BOOTCAMP partition.

3. Temperature control is appalling. The laptop in general runs dangerously hot when booted into windows 7, I have even burnt my thigh as a result.

4. My Apple Bluetooth Wireless keyboard works inconsistently and the pairing is nearly impossible to set up, requiring a bizarre process of switching bluetooth drivers.

5. Why is the Airport basestation + bonjour an obscure download on Apple.com and not detected as needed and available in the Bootcamp driver set? Or available via Apple software update? Surely the software would know its connected wirelessley to an Apple basestation??


If anybody knows a way of solving any of these problems in Windows 7, please do let me know.
 
Apple has many issues to correct with Bootcamp and Windows 7 at this point. You might want to try to make sure these issues are not happening on the Mac side to be sure its not your hardware. Beyond that like the article suggests, you may want to consider using visualization for running 7 until the updates are released.
 
Thanks for the tip,

No virtualisation isnt a solution, the performance of a virtual machine compared to an OS on bare metal is very very bad and makes the OS unsuable anyhow.
 
I think you will see improvement when Apple releases their Boot Camp drivers update for Win 7, which missed the 'by the end of 2009' that Apple had announced several months ago. Apple has not released that announced update yet (as of Jan 9, 2010)
 
Hi,
it seems that on any version of bootcamp, even with updates the cpu control and fan control is very poor. I think this is because windows can't handle the emulated bios. However i've got a few tricks, which besides enhanced my battery life (approx. 3 hrs with windows on macbook 13" 2008).

-> Get RMclock. (freeware). Under Profiles, you can enter voltages. Get a tutorial on how to undervolt your CPU or find values that someone figured out (depends on cpu model). For the battery profile check "use p-state transitions". I checked the 6x and the 8x times. However, you really can tweak how fast your cpu should run on battery or AC and at wich voltages. This prevents a lot of cpu overheating.

-> Get lubbo's fancontrol. (freeware). You can configure your fan speeds depending on temperature. This allows a better control than with windows. It is the only software I know that controls the fans trough the smc.

-> Deactivate useless services and startup processes. This will prevent your cpu from doing useless calculations.... Moreover you can get "process explorer" which is much better than the task manager. If you notice that you have a lot of "hardware interrupts" (eg. more than 2%), then you may have a hardware (hard disk, gpu, soundcard, wireless card) that is triggering those events and using cpu for nothing. Updating hardware drivers might help.

-> Make sure your hardware and power management settings are right. Check that the power saving options are enabled for your hardware, especially graphics card when running on battery. Also configure your power management profiles in the control panel.

All in all, the undervolting of the cpu is the best thing to do. Before this, at max load it heated up to 90°C, fans at max. After undervolting it was at 66° fans at 3/4 speed. You can drop almost by 30°C.....!!!!! Moreover you cannot damage your cpu or system with this, its safe! All that can happen is that you get a BSOD, then you simply reboot.

I hope this helps folks.
 
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