Does anyone have any idea whether Bootcamp will be possible on a MacBook Air seeing as it has no drive?
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Bootcamp on MacBook Air?
- Thread starter thomasemery
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It has an 80GB drive or 64GB SSD, will definitely be possible as it is a function of OS X
guessing they mean optical drive.
I'm sure you could get it on their some how, winclone from a bootcamp partition on another computer for example, or perhaps a network install via a USB ethernet adapter. Having an iso of the disk on a USB drive might work as well.
Ah yes that makes sense. I would imagine more than a few people will opt for the $ 99 external just so they can do this sort of thing without using the network. I purchased a MBA for my wife and I was thinking you'd just use the drive on another mac to do this OTA, but I do not think she will need windows on it. Still feel like I should go back and order the external drive for some strange reason.
Good point they may have allowed the Optical drive sharing to act as an install option for Bootcamp or force users to buy an external drive.
Thanks for the opinions guys. It would seem that it would be somewhat difficult to install Windows without the optical drive.
I think this will become an issue for some people thinking about purchasing the Macbook Air
I think this will become an issue for some people thinking about purchasing the Macbook Air
Running Windows
I'm also teetering on the brink of an MBA purchase (lock up that credit card!) but need to run Windows SW sometimes. A wiser head in a different thread suggested using VM Fusion or Parallels rather than Bootcamp to avoid the loss of precious disk space that partitioning involves.
Since both progs are normal Mac SW, I guess they should install OK thru the remote disk thingy.
I'm also teetering on the brink of an MBA purchase (lock up that credit card!) but need to run Windows SW sometimes. A wiser head in a different thread suggested using VM Fusion or Parallels rather than Bootcamp to avoid the loss of precious disk space that partitioning involves.
Since both progs are normal Mac SW, I guess they should install OK thru the remote disk thingy.
You will need the optical drive to load windows. You'll also need to purchase a remote for front row.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307310
MacBook Air: USB optical drive required for installing Boot Camp
Last Modified on: January 29, 2008
Article: 307310
MacBook Air requires a USB optical drive for the installation of Microsoft Windows XP SP2 (Service Pack 2) or Microsoft Windows Vista (32-bit versions only). The Remote Disc sharing software included with the MacBook Air cannot be used to install Microsoft Windows. Be sure to connect your external USB optical drive to your MacBook Air before starting the Boot Camp Assistant.
MacBook Air: USB optical drive required for installing Boot Camp
Last Modified on: January 29, 2008
Article: 307310
MacBook Air requires a USB optical drive for the installation of Microsoft Windows XP SP2 (Service Pack 2) or Microsoft Windows Vista (32-bit versions only). The Remote Disc sharing software included with the MacBook Air cannot be used to install Microsoft Windows. Be sure to connect your external USB optical drive to your MacBook Air before starting the Boot Camp Assistant.
Thanks for the info Jimmie, but [grumble...]. Wonder if making a disk image of the XP disk, moving the disk into the MBA, and then using that to install would work? Would be very annoying if just installing software required new hardware...
I wonder if this would work using a flash drive on OS X?
http://www.vandomburg.net/installing-windows-xp-from-usb
http://www.vandomburg.net/installing-windows-xp-from-usb
I've been using the Fujitsu Lifebook P7010D for two years. It has a removable
DVD player. You can either put in a second battery or put a cover over the bay.
Once you get used to not having the optical drive, you start to wonder why did I drag it and all of the disks on a trip? Many times they would just stay in my luggage.
And I never had to do that dreaded reinstall of XP...
To clarify, you don't need to "install" Windows on your MBA if you are using Parallels or VMWare (not Bootcamp). You can create a Windows image on another computer and copy it over to use on the MBA.
I rarely need Windows on the road, so I am going to test using a larger flash drive (32gb) and run Windows from there. That way I'm not taking up much disk space.
Can you let us know whether you have any success with this? That is if you are talking about trying to boot into windows from the flash drive (I have heard not easy to boot XP from an external drive). If you are going the virtual machine route then that should work I imagine.
Q1) You mean you need another Mac to install Parallels or VMWare on the MBA? I thought that Parallels or VMWare can be installed via remote disk (even from a Windows PC) on the MBA and hence also the respective WinXP image to be used by Parallels or VMWare...
Q2) Anybody knows if a non superdrive will work on the MBA? I have an ordinary external optical drive with USB and would need it only for installing. Thought I may give it a try before spending 99USD for nothing purposes
Q1) You mean you need another Mac to install Parallels or VMWare on the MBA? I thought that Parallels or VMWare can be installed via remote disk (even from a Windows PC) on the MBA and hence also the respective WinXP image to be used by Parallels or VMWare...
Q2) Anybody knows if a non superdrive will work on the MBA? I have an ordinary external optical drive with USB and would need it only for installing. Thought I may give it a try before spending 99USD for nothing purposes
Q1: you don't need another mac.. what the other person was suggesting is you can make a cd image of windows from another computer.. eg. iso, bin,dmg etc etc once you made this you can simply copy it over via wireless or via external drive and install parallels or vmware using that image
as for the remote disc i'm not too sure if you can use it to install windows.. i dont' see why not as it will just read the disc as data but never know
Q2: any external optical drive will work on the macbook air as long as it's compatible with osx
Windows x64 ?
I am curious as to whether this infers that the MBA EFI will not load a 64 bit version of Windows or whether MBA boot camp simply doesn't have all the 64 bit drivers and is therefore unsupported. Any guess? Anyone tried?
I am curious as to whether this infers that the MBA EFI will not load a 64 bit version of Windows or whether MBA boot camp simply doesn't have all the 64 bit drivers and is therefore unsupported. Any guess? Anyone tried?
i wonder if you would need a second M$ vista/xp license if running windows on two machines?
Yes.
But not like the check.
I rarely need Windows on the road, so I am going to test using a larger flash drive (32gb) and run Windows from there. That way I'm not taking up much disk space.[/QUOTE]
Let us know about loading & using Windows from flash drive.
I also would be interested in this.
Thanks!
Let us know about loading & using Windows from flash drive.
I also would be interested in this.
Thanks!
How do you do that? I am going to get an MBA and want to run Windows via Fusion. I already own a PC.
0 for 1
Ok so I tried and got stuck but there are several reasons why this might not have worked, the biggest being that I used the new partition as the install source...
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/428734/
Has anyone else tried?
Ok so I tried and got stuck but there are several reasons why this might not have worked, the biggest being that I used the new partition as the install source...
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/428734/
Has anyone else tried?