April 06, 2006
My experience at Boot Camp
Authored by Scott Silverman at 10:04 AM
Category | Software » XP on Mac
When Apple released Boot Camp yesterday and I had a MacBook Pro at my disposal, I knew immediately for what my night was destined. I began the install process with a minor glitch while using Boot Camp to partition a section of my drive for Windows. It encountered an error and I was forced to repair my disk by running Disk Utility from the OS X install CD. After that, though, things went fine, mostly.
According to the Boot Camp requirements page, a full install disc of Windows XP Service Pack 2 is required for installation on a Mac. I only had Service Pack 1 available to me, but I decided to give it a try anyways. The install process surprisingly succeeded and I was able to successfully boot into Windows XP. Problems, success, and results follow...(click)
The next set of problems I encountered I have a feeling was caused by the lack of Service Pack 2. Once booted into Windows, I tried to install my drivers CD that Boot Camp had burned for me earlier. It managed to successfully install a few drivers, including the display driver and the driver allowing the Eject key to work in XP. The rest (including Ethernet, Wi-Fi, USB, Bluetooth, etc) encountered an error when installing and caused the installer to quit. Thanks to my dark days of experience while shrouded in the other camp, I was able to manually find and install these remaining drivers. I have a feeling I never would have run into any of these problems had I used a Service Pack 2 install CD.
Windows boots normally now (proof in the picture above, click for larger version) and works just as if it was running on a PC, only it's not. After all this was said and done, I found myself just sitting idly in Windows XP, wondering what to do with myself. The internet browser was ugly and cumbersome, there were no cool features or preinstalled software apps, and the OS kept making annoying little noises accompanied by stupid little messages reminding me to update, register, download, or take a tour.
Enough, I thought, and booted back into OS X. Once safely back into my comfort zone, I found myself asking one question-why did I just spend 7 hours into the wee of morning to put Windows on my Mac? The only answer I could come up with was just to say it could be done. I left the world of Windows two years ago and hope never to return again.
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Comments
kinda good, but I say too bad for all those Mac game makers and such, for they are now out of work. But this is a step for apple and a large step at that. It shows that Apple can be a dynamic company again, I think this is a large change for them make people want to switch to OSX. Apple again changes the way we see computers
Posted by: daniel | April 6, 2006 03:31 PM
Hi Scott, I was wondering if you could help me. Like you, I didn't have an XP install disc with SP2 on it, and I'm having trouble installing the drivers. I was wondering if you could tell me where to find those hidden files on the system? I'd REALLY appreciate it, since as of now, my mac partition isn't being recognized by the computer, and I can't do much of anything on the windows side (like connect to the internet)
Posted by: Justin | April 7, 2006 05:54 PM