3 Vista Questions

[theman5725]

1. Is it possible to install Vista directly with Boot Camp or do you need to upgrade from XP? (and if so can you upgrade from SP1?)

2. Does the driver CD that Boot Camp burns for you work with Vista, or do you need to find the drivers somewhere?

3. On a 2.0GHz Macbook with 512 RAM, is it possible to run the full Aero UI, or do I need 1GB of RAM?

 

[bearbo]

1. Is it possible to install Vista directly with Boot Camp or do you need to upgrade from XP? (and if so can you upgrade from SP1?)

2. Does the driver CD that Boot Camp burns for you work with Vista, or do you need to find the drivers somewhere?

3. On a 2.0GHz Macbook with 512 RAM, is it possible to run the full Aero UI, or do I need 1GB of RAM?

you do not need windows xp to install vista.. just stick the disc for vista when it asks for XP disk (at the end of partitioning)

some of the drivers works with vista, the the CD sure doesn't... most of the driver is actually already installed, without the use of the supplied driver... but the ones that don't work, you can try to extract from the CD (you can search for the exactraction of the driver on this forum)

you probably want 1G RAM, but but i'm more worried about a better graphic card to run full Aero UI

 

[theman5725]

Finally one more rather stupid question:

To burn the .iso, do you just drag the file on to the DVD? I'm fairly new to OS X and have yet to burn an iso, so I was wondering if you needed a special program or can you just use the finder.

Also, I heard somewhere that the minimum amount of space for a partion you can use for Vista is 15GB. Is this true or no?

 

[theorem7]

To burn the .iso, open up Disk Utility and drag the Vista image file onto the pane on the left side of the window. Then pop in your DVD and with the Vista image selected in the pane of Disk Utility, hit Burn at the top of the window, choose your settings, and then click burn.

Regarding the partition size, Vista will only install on a partition that is formatted as NTFS, and Boot Camp will only format it this way if you make it larger than 32 GB, so unfortunately, your partition is going to end up being rather large... I believe you are right in saying that Vista needs 15 GB for an install, but the only way to achieve this and use a minimal partition size is to go through XP first, and format it as NTFS through that, which is kind of a pain. Vista's installer acts like it will try to format the disk if it is the incorrect format when you select it, but I had no success with Vista's formatter, and so had to end up going with 35 GB.

 

[theman5725]

D:

I don't even have 32GB of space left on my HD (I really need to buy an external), so I don't know how I am going to do this. :/

 

[bearbo]

about bootcamp can't format NTFS.. it's false

bootcamp does NOT format your harddrive, make it 15 (well, perhaps a BIT more, maybe 20 if that's okay... you can install all the program on external, when you get it, but the OS has to stay on internal (well, unless you want to do more work..)) or whatever you want... bootcamp partition your harddrive, bootcamp does not format your harddrive

you format the partition at installation (provided you went installation straight from partition by bootcamp), to NTFS if you want to install vista, and proceed as you would install any other thing (oh yeah, make sure you choose the C:\ drive when you install)

 

[Steve Jobless]

ive installed vista with a 9 gb, a 12 gb and now a 15 gb partition with little problem, removing 9 gb required reinstalling os x, 12 gb perfect, 15 gb keeps booting from disc. I never got to pick ntfs or fat since vista only works in ntfs

 

[bearbo]

did you do the 9,12,15 simultaneously? or were they on separate occasions?

if simultaneously (well, i dont know why you would do this...), but id imagine you can't directly restore any of them w/o erase all three partition aside from the OS x and you should be to be able to run OS X just fine w/o reinstalling

if separately, i certainly can't imagine why you can't just restore partition using bootcamp...

 

[theman5725]

Well I plan on making the partion 10GB-15GB. Is this enough for Vista you think?

 

[Steve Jobless]

did you do the 9,12,15 simultaneously? or were they on separate occasions?

if simultaneously (well, i dont know why you would do this...), but id imagine you can't directly restore any of them w/o erase all three partition aside from the OS x and you should be to be able to run OS X just fine w/o reinstalling

if separately, i certainly can't imagine why you can't just restore partition using bootcamp...

separate occasions.

i made a mistake regarding the first partition i reinstalled osx thinking the vista partition would delete. so the auto defragger ruined the partition.

10-15 gbs really isnt enough since the install itself is rather large, im down to 8gb on a 15 gb partition and havent installed anything yet

 

[theman5725]

I will only be installing like 1 game, and eventually the games will be moved to an external.

I was just wondering for the actual OS if 15 was enough, and it sounds like plenty.

 

[fishkorp]

the Vista insall (if you have an ultimate edition key) takes up about 8gb of space standard, so i'd recommend at least 15-20, a heck of a lot more if you plan on using it a lot.

 

[theman5725]

For the sake of not having a new topic...

I burn the DVD and Mac Drivers CD and I'm all ready to go until the partioning part. Boot Camp Assistant says there was an error with the partioning and I need to repair the disk.

So I open disk utility and verify the disk. I get this:
http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/1508/picture1os1.png

Now I'm really confused. What do I do?

 

[theorem7]

It looks like you didn't repair the actual volume, but tried to repair the hard drive itself. You need to select the volume named "Macintosh HD" and repair permissions on that.

 

[theman5725]

No you didn't look at the picture right. It won't let me repair. The repair button is faded out.

 

[Steve Jobless]

i didnt click, but it sounds like the same error i had, reinstalling helps alot.

also i just remembered vista sucks, withmy 12 gb partition, i ALWAY got the freakin BSOD. So I had to reinstall.

 

[ascender]

I can't believe we're at the point where a clean OS install is needing upwards of 5Gb of disk space.

 

[a456]

D:

I don't even have 32GB of space left on my HD (I really need to buy an external), so I don't know how I am going to do this. :/

You seem to want to punish yourself. Do you really need Vista?

 

[tominated]

i had the exact same error.
boot up from the os x install disc (disc 1) by inserting the disc and when booting hold the 'c' key. choose the language, then once it is loaded click utilities in the top menu and then disk utility. Click repair and leave it for a while, then tada

 

[theman5725]

You seem to want to punish yourself. Do you really need Vista?

Sadly I need it to play the games I want to play.

I'm also curious to try Vista out, as I am a longtime Windows user until recently.


Back on topic, there is no way I'm reinstalling the OS just for that. That's ridiculous. There has to be an easier way to do things.

 

[theorem7]

I apologize for my mistake earlier, I guess I thought you just meant repair permissions. But yeah, I definitely would not even consider reinstalling the OS. I don't believe it's possible to repair the partition of the disk on which you are running, so you'll need to get outside of the operating system to do this. tominated gave some good instructions, I would follow those and it should repair the disk.

i had the exact same error.
boot up from the os x install disc (disc 1) by inserting the disc and when booting hold the 'c' key. choose the language, then once it is loaded click utilities in the top menu and then disk utility. Click repair and leave it for a while, then tada

Also, just out of curiosity, what games are you intending on playing in Vista? Because, frankly, that was my reason for installing it also, and I haven't been impressed by games' interaction with Vista. I mean, they run fast and everything, but the full screen is glitchy with a lot of artifacts, and if the game uses Punkbuster (such as America's Army, which I was playing), Punkbuster isn't yet compatible with Vista, and you'll get kicked from every server (at least I did, if anyone knows how to fix this, I'd be interested in hearing that). But really what I'm trying to say is that Vista is still a beta, and if you're really serious about gaming, you probably want to go with XP. I just haven't been satisfied at all with Vista's gaming experience, but maybe you'll have better luck.

 

[ReanimationLP]

Remember, if you have 2GB of RAM installed, Vista will take up about 12-14 GB of HD space, due to the swapfiles.

 

[theman5725]

I'll try the boot from disc idea.

And about games, I'm not overly serious, but I have read online that RC1 has greatly improved game performance, especially for the games I want to run like Half-life and counter-strike.

 

[theman5725]

I haven't had time to post here so sorry about the topic bump.

I booted from the install disc and repiared the HD. When I ran Boot Camp Assistant it started pairtioning the HD and about 75% through until it gave me some error saying something along the lines of "some files can not be moved. please reformat your drive as a mac os x extended (journaled)" or something similar. I checked and my drive was already a os x extended (journaled) thing. Now everytime I try to repartion it gives me the same error as earlier, saying that I need to repiar my disk.

Is my HD actualy faulty or damaged? It works great in OS X and I have no problems with it. Is there anything I can do myself to fix this, or is it something that requires serious repair?

 

[jaw04005]

The reason Boot Camp won't let you create a partition is because the files on your hard drive are fragmented or you do not have enough disk space to complete the partition.

Boot Camp needs the space you allocated and even more space to move the files that currently reside there.

If your files are fragmented, they will probably get moved eventually. However, Mac OS X does not include a disk defrag application. The O/S is supposed to do that automatically (also known as optimizing performance).

By the way, Vista RC 2 will not currently install using Boot Camp on most Intel macs. There are workarounds, but it requires an XP install CD.