Boot Camp with Vista? I don't think so!
Oops, where's the weekend? It's gone. What did I do? Try to get my MacBook Pro dual booting with Vista by using Apple Boot Camp. No way Jose! Here's what I've tried.
Attempt 1:
Installed bootcamp and then tried to make it dual boot with XP to start with. First problem is that the CD I burned from the ISO image I downloaded through my MSDN subscription wasn't liked by the machine. The fact that a MacBook Pro DVD player doesn't have a real eject button doesn't help! (BTW, rebooting while pressing down the mouse button ejects the CD/DVD always).
Attempt 2:
If my XP media is corrupted maybe I can just skip this and install Vista immediately? I took the latest build I have (<5320) but I couldn't get the installation started because nor keyboard nor mouse were recognized. USB keyboard and mouse didn't help either.
Attempt 3:
Got an original Windows XP with SP2 cd and installed from this CD without errors. Installed the Mac drivers, updated Windows and voila. It works like a charm.
Now back to Vista I thought, I started the Vista installation from the running XP. Everything worked until the first reboot. Vista was obviously confused by the partitioning.
I tried to change the partitioning. Put your Mac installation CD in the drive and boot holding the c key down. You enter the setup menu and can use the Disk Utility. However the repartitioning didn't go down well. It didn't show that 200MB partition I read about and I wanted to remove
Attempt 4:
I wanted to reinstall Windows XP. Somehow, I could get this done from the Boot Camp utility anymore which complained that I need to update my software which had already been done. There were no updates available.
Right, reinstalled Tiger (man that takes long too!) updated the Mac OSX software, installed bittcamp.
Started installing Windows XP, during the installation I removed that 200MB partition and continued to install without issues. Now Vista (again). Started installing Vista from within XP and it did continue after the first reboot. Jippie! I thought :-(
After a rebootit started with the nice black screen with the colored logo but immediately after bluescreened.
Since I want to keep playing with Tiger, I'm not interested in the single boot Windows solution. So my verdict? It's a no go, yet.
Gotto go, it's still sunny outside. First I need to find my family!
This post is about: Vista, Apple Boot Camp
Comments
- Anonymous
April 23, 2006
That 200MB partition is an essential part of the EFI firmware. Removing it will only cause trouble.
Other people have Vista running - check out how they did it http://grabberslasher.no-ip.com/B1FC8465-6928-4ED7-AD7C-FAA372A5DE57/21FA70D3-A47A-49A7-A6B6-5B25026D115F/6326A862-2B0F-42C8-B231-2FC40F022139.html
[)amien - Anonymous
April 23, 2006
Wow. You almost described my daily life. The difference is, I am trying to get Vista to boot from a HDD attached to a CardBus Serial-ATA adapter in a laptop. I've also tried from USB.
I can't replace the 4200 rpm in the laptop and Vista on 4200 rpm is a huge pain. Since it is also my only computer with Aero Glass compatible graphics, I figured to try something faster like 3.5" SATA drive. Easier said than done. - Anonymous
April 23, 2006
Hans don't forget you are a developer, leave the hard stuff to it pro's, bring this laptop to the office I bet I can make it work - Anonymous
April 23, 2006
Damien , that link doesn't work for me but I would love to see it!
I guess I'm up for a complete reinstall of Tiger then. Would that recreate the partition? - Anonymous
April 23, 2006
zzz, hehe, you are not alone!
Arline, my dear colleague, shut up! ;-) - Anonymous
April 24, 2006
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
April 28, 2006
This is the situation. I got&nbsp; a MacBooc Pro now for two weeks, I tried to Install Vista on it which... - Anonymous
May 22, 2006
Here is a link describing how it is done on an iMac. This guy promotes deleting the 200MB EFI partition.
http://grabberslasher.no-ip.com/Site/Blog/6326A862-2B0F-42C8-B231-2FC40F022139.html