Bootcamp troubles.

[thedoobieman5]

Hey guys, this will be my first post on these forums!

I've been wanting to install XP on my computer for a while and I thought I was finally going to be able to do it. I opened Bootcamp excited, only to encounter what seems to be a fairly common problem:

Bootcamp wants me to backup my HD and restore it into a single Journaled (not sure what that even means) volume, because "some files cannot be moved"

I searched around and discovered that iDefrag is a popular choice to avoid this hassle and after getting my hands on a copy of it I thought my problems were over. Unfortunately, after a day of defragmentation, I ran Bootcamp again only to encounter the same error.

I have a nice external hard drive which I use for backup anyway, so I figured I might as well do as Bootcamp asks. However, I am currently using OS 10.5.6, installed out of a family pack, i.e. lost forever in the chaos that is my home. All I have with me are the installation CDs that came with my computer, OS 10.4.9.

I have never formatted my HD, or restored anything, so I really am not sure how it works. Does it just erase whatever information is on it? Or does this involve me downgrading my OS to an older version?
If I am going to end up having to format my HD, maybe I want more than just two volumes (Mac and Windows). If I partition my HD myself using Disk Utility, can I install Windows or another OS such as LINUX or Mac OS 9 on one of my volumes w/o using Bootcamp?

If anyone has the answers to my questions or any ideas I should try I'd love to hear them.

Thanks!

Please note that I have asked google this several different ways, so I have already:
-Tried defragmenting
-Tried making my partition smaller
-Moved large files to an external HD

Also I don't know if this matters, but I have around 30GB of free space at the moment.

 

[steveza]

You will need to find you 10.5.x installation disks to install the boot camp software once you have installed Windows.

Not sure about the other problem. Did you try creating a smaller partition?

 

[thedoobieman5]

Yes I have tried making the partition smaller.

Not sure what you mean by "once you have installed Windows" though.
If it's installed already why do I need Bootcamp?

 

[steveza]

Not sure what you mean by "once you have installed Windows" though.
If it's installed already why do I need Bootcamp?

It provides the drivers for your Apple products while running in Windows mode. You can get most things off the web but some stuff like the keyboard hardware control buttons (like eject, volume, brightness etc) wont work.

 

[thedoobieman5]

OK I understand now.

Basically you're saying I'm going to need the 10.5.x no matter what?

 

[thedoobieman5]

Alright I ended up figuring this out so I'll go ahead and post the answer for future reference:

By using Disk Utility I managed to make a bootable copy of my computer to my external HD. Then I just booted from the external and copied from the external to my computer. No Discs required for that, and I was able to partition my computer no problem after this.

As for installing windows, it can all be done w/o the leopard DVDs, but then you'll be missing drivers you probably want so you either need the DVDs or the drivers themselves.

Thank you to everyone who replied.