The Troubles I've Seen.
There’s someone using my computer at work on the days I’m not there, but the software they need is all for Windows. No problem! Purchased a copy of Windows 7, partitioned the drive and let Bootcamp do it’s magic. In a day it was dual booting OS X 10.6 and the 64bit flavor of Windows 7, in two days it was running smooth as butter.
I’ve got 10.6 and Windows 7 sharing a drive on my home computer too, but the Windows install is only 32bit. That wasn’t good enough for me, for some reason. So I brought the 64bit install DVD home with me, planning to wipe out the old Windows install and start anew with twice as many bits.
Bootcamp assistant obliterates the old installation of Windows no problem, but starts throwing errors in my face when I try to divvy up the drive again. Something in the hierarchy of my drive is all messed up, and it wants me to boot from my install disk so it can root around and repair things.
Where’d I put that damned 10.6 DVD? Fuck it, I’ll just download an image of it.
Copy the image over to an external drive, rub it the right way, and presto-change-o it’s like a DVD but rectangular and goes whirrrrr.
Apparently the version of Disk Utility on the installation “DVD” thinks my system is pretty ugly. Should I just reinstall the Mac OS too? Ennnngh, okay fine. I’ve got backups for days.
OS X 10.6 installs in like half an hour off the firewire external. That’s pretty sweet. Oh, and it can migrate over all my documents and applications from the Time Machine backup? Fuckin’ rad!
I come home from work and the Mac side of my system is just as it was before I blew a hole where the operating system used to be. I mean, exactly as I left it, except a bit snappier. Cool.
Okay, fire up Bootcamp and pop in that Windows 7 64bit DVD, let’s get this thing dual booting again. Uh, that’s a weird error. Googling on my phone while the BIOS-esque screen waits reveals that, ummmm, fuck, ummmm, okay it won’t work. My laptop doesn’t have the latest firmware, I guess it’s got EFI32 and not EFI64. Bummer!
Well, I’ll just boot back into OS X and google a fix or two. Well I would, but the internet is out.
Did I mention that my sole connection to the net is via my tethered phone? It works, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the best. It’s kind of annoying having your networking all tied up in a media management app. And now it’s not even working.
Okay, I blame iTunes. Some more googling on the little screen in my hand says the Apple Mobile Devices something-or-other can get fucked up sometimes and if I know what’s good for me I’ll just pitch my local version of iTunes and grab the latest and greatest copy from the mothership. Would if I could.
I’d just download it to my phone and then move the installer from there to my computer, but MobileSafari doesn’t like the idea of storing anything locally, it is Mobile, after all.
But of course there’s a fix. Rifle through Cydia and you’ll find Safari Download Manager, a kickass little life saver that let’s you stash files from the web in /private/var/mobile/media/Downloads.
So I let iTunes.dmg download (at a zippy 200kbps) and then drag and drop it over to the Mac’s desktop after SSHing in.
Old iTunes in the trash. New iTunes installed. AND FUCKING T’DAH the internet tethering via iPhone is restored!
Wait, what was I doing in the first place? Why did I want 64bit Windows? All these bad ideas.