There has been a lot of buzz flying around Windows 7 since its public beta release earlier this year. Team Fusion released a Practical Guide to Windows 7 on Mac with VMware Fusion when the Windows 7 public beta was released earlier and lots of users took advantage of the opportunity to check out the forthcoming version of Windows.
In fact, I have been running my day to day work life out of a Windows 7 Public Beta VM using Mirrored Folders and Shared Applications since the beta was released and it has been working really well with a couple of known caveats that we mentioned at the time.
Today, Microsoft released a public release candidate of Windows 7. We have installed Windows 7 RC on a number of Macs from a first generation MacBook Air to a higher end MacBook Pro and Windows 7 RC is really responsive with the default VMware Fusion settings on all Macs we have tried.
Personally, I am excited to see the improvements in my day to day use of Windows 7 at work. More important, I am excited that the Windows 7 Release Candidate is the easiest way for you to try out Windows on your Mac for FREE (at least until the beta expires). That’s right, you can download Windows 7 Release Candidate through July 1st and it’s free to use until it expires on June 1, 2010.
While VMware Fusion won’t formally support Windows 7 until it is released later this year, the Windows 7 Release Candidate works really well in VMware Fusion 2.0.4 based on our initial testing.
Getting Up and Running with Windows 7 in VMware Fusion
Windows 7 Release Candidate, both 32-bit and 64-bit editions, is not officially supported with VMware Fusion 2 today, but the VMware Fusion features you rely upon including Drag and Drop, Unity, Shared Applications, and more all seem to work really well so far.
The caveats we mentioned for the Windows 7 Public Beta around 3D, Shared Folders, and Mirrored Folders are NO longer an issue with the Windows 7 Release Candidate.
We plan to fully support Windows 7 after it is officially released with a future release of VMware Fusion.
See below for some guidance on how to set things up for best success.
NOTE: If you have an existing Windows 7 Beta virtual machine or Windows XP virtual machine, you CANNOT upgrade them to Windows 7 RC according to Microsoft. You will need to create a new Windows 7 RC virtual machine.
Download the Windows 7 Release Candidate
First, download the Windows 7 Release Candidate ISO from Microsoft’s Windows 7 site and get yourself a release candidate product key. You can use 32-bit or 64-bit, but the world is moving to 64-bit for better performance, so this example will assume you are using the 64-bit edition of Windows 7. Just download the Windows 7 ISO to your desktop.
Creating Your Windows 7 Virtual Machine
First, you’ll create a new virtual machine, the same as you’ve done before via “File>New”:
Next, we’re going to point the New Virtual Machine Assistant at the Windows 7 Release Candidate ISO you just downloaded. Typically, if you just insert a Windows install disk, VMware Fusion automatically recognizes what OS is in it, but in this case, we have to point it at the ISO.
Click “Continue without disk.”
Then, choose “Use operating system installation disk image file”:
Just select the ISO in the dialog that pops up:
Windows Easy Install will parse the disk image as Windows Vista (either 32 or 64 bit, depending on which ISO you downloaded). Accept the Vista default option.
Next, enter the serial key that was provided to you by Microsoft, and paste it into the Windows Product Key entry in Windows Easy Install.
At this point, you should see your final configuration setup, with 1 GB of RAM assigned, and a virtual hard disk that will expand up to 40GB (but will start much smaller). Click “Finish.”
Once you hit “Finish,” Windows Easy Install will be off and running, installing Windows 7. You’ll see some reboots, and VMware Tools will install automatically.
After that’s all finished, you should be able to play around with Windows 7 as you would expect.
While the Windows 7 Release Candidate works well in our limited testing so far, it is not a supported configuration today, so there could be bugs you encounter until we have full support in a future VMware Fusion release with the final shipping Windows 7 software.
Tweaking Windows 7 for the Best Experience
Securing Windows
One of the most used VMware Fusion features is Unity 2.0, which includes Mirrored Folders so that Windows applications work like Mac apps and they work with your existing files and folders stored in your Mac’s Documents, Music, Pictures, and Desktop folders.
Since Mirrored Folders allows Windows to access files on your Mac, we highly recommend installing antivirus software in Windows to avoid problems.
VMware Fusion 2 bundles a 12-month subscription to McAfee VirusScan Plus to keep Windows up to date against viruses to help avoid problems. Unfortunately, the included version of McAfee VirusScan Plus does not work with Windows 7.
Since we recommend using a Windows anti-virus solution to keep Windows on your Mac secure, we recommend you go to Microsoft’s recommended antivirus partner website to download and install a Windows 7 compatible antivirus product that meets your needs.
Stop Windows 7 From Suspending Itself Every 30 Minutes
By default, Windows 7 is set to automatically put the computer to sleep every 30 minutes. While this is good on a physical PC, this isn’t optimized for a VM where the Mac is already managing when to sleep the computer.
This is easy to fix and only takes a minute to create a virtual machine savvy power management profile by doing the following.
1) Click on the Windows Start button
2) Type “Power” into the Search program and files search box
3) Select “Change power-saving settings”
4) Click “Create a power plan”
5) Choose “High Performance” as the basis and enter “VMware” as the name and click Next
6) Change “Put the computer to sleep” from 30 minutes to Never and click Create
Tweaking VMware Fusion for the Best Experience
Have a MacBook Air or other Mac with 2GB or less of RAM?
Windows 7 Release Candidate runs really well even on a MacBook Air, but you need to make a small change to VMware Fusion’s default preferences to get the best performance from Windows 7.
By default, VMware Fusion is set to optimize performance for virtual machines and this preference uses available RAM to increase disk performance. If you are running Windows XP or have 4 GB or more of RAM, this is a great choice.
However, Windows 7 requires 1 GB of RAM and if you only have 2 GB of RAM in your Mac, you need to change this preference to choose Optimize for Mac OS application performance.
This is an easy change and only takes a second, just follow the steps below:
- Select Preferences in VMware Fusion menu
- In General, change the Performance preference to "Optimize for Mac OS application performance”
You Are Now Ready To Check Out Windows 7 in VMware Fusion
If you don’t already have VMware Fusion 2, download the free trial of VMware Fusion 2 or buy yourself a copy, and then get yourself the Windows 7 Release Candidate to see how you can get the most out of Windows on your Mac.
