First time using Boot Camp

[Briggaman]

I'm not really good with computer hardware and things, so I apologise in advance if all of my questions sound a bit idiotic. However, I am looking to run Windows on my MacBook Pro through the use of Boot Camp.

I suppose it would be good to give the reasons first and to give the specs of my laptop. Well, it is an old MacBook Pro (from around 2005) if I remember correctly. It has the following specs:

*2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo
*2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
*Radeon X1600
*100 GB HD

I am looking to use Windows because I want to play Aion. I have considered buying another computer, however I would prefer not to splash a lot of cash in order to do so. Therefore I am hoping that Windows would work ok on my laptop and would allow me to runt he likes of Aion.

Basically do you think it is worth trying, or would it be best to buy a new laptop or desktop? I would prefer not to have to as the ones I have looked at are around £700-£800.

Anyway, if I do decide to run Boot Camp then can I just use say 10-15gb for Windows and run my games (such as Aion) from a portable hd? Plus, how much would Windows cost to buy and which would you recommend for me to get (such as XP, Vista or 7)? I was also wondering if I would need to buy some sort of antivirus software, and if so then could that go on the portable hd too? Also, if I did get a virus on the Windows partition, would it spread to the Mac OS side?

Well, I hope that someone will be able to provide me with some help on this as it would be greatly appreciated. I'm just trying to save money, as I don't really want to buy a new system for one game....

 

[Consultant]

google: boot camp how to

 

[Stridder44]

I'm not really good with computer hardware and things, so I apologise in advance if all of my questions sound a bit idiotic. However, I am looking to run Windows on my MacBook Pro through the use of Boot Camp.

I suppose it would be good to give the reasons first and to give the specs of my laptop. Well, it is an old MacBook Pro (from around 2005) if I remember correctly. It has the following specs:

*2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo
*2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
*Radeon X1600
*100 GB HD

I am looking to use Windows because I want to play Aion. I have considered buying another computer, however I would prefer not to splash a lot of cash in order to do so. Therefore I am hoping that Windows would work ok on my laptop and would allow me to runt he likes of Aion.

Basically do you think it is worth trying, or would it be best to buy a new laptop or desktop? I would prefer not to have to as the ones I have looked at are around £700-£800.

Anyway, if I do decide to run Boot Camp then can I just use say 10-15gb for Windows and run my games (such as Aion) from a portable hd? Plus, how much would Windows cost to buy and which would you recommend for me to get (such as XP, Vista or 7)? I was also wondering if I would need to buy some sort of antivirus software, and if so then could that go on the portable hd too? Also, if I did get a virus on the Windows partition, would it spread to the Mac OS side?

Well, I hope that someone will be able to provide me with some help on this as it would be greatly appreciated. I'm just trying to save money, as I don't really want to buy a new system for one game....

Absolutely. Boot Camp is free. If you have a copy of Windows, definitely give it a try. However, 10-15 GB is not going to be enough, hell it won't be enough for just Aion (or Windows for that matter). As far as which OS to get, do not, I repeat, DO NOT buy Vista or XP at this point. Wait till Windows 7 is available (or pre-order it). 7 blows Vista/XP out of the water in many ways. Anti-virus/malware/etc. software is easy: Microsoft Security Essentials (Microsoft's free anti-virus app). It's fairly new but is already highly praised by many and has an extremely low impact on system performance (just run a Google search on it if you don't believe me). I run it on my machine all the time (which I also use for gaming) and never have any slowdowns/etc. Viruses/malware/etc. that you get on your Windows partition could in no way move/affect your OS X partition. So no, even in the worst case scenario, you have absolutely nothing to worry about.

As far as your hardware, my only suggestion would be to max out that RAM to 4 GB. RAM is dirt cheap and you'll notice a nice jump in performance. It'll set you back about $50 (around £34 I think).

Here's some other links that are stickied on the top of the forum regarding Boot Camp. They will answer a lot of questions.

http://guides.macrumors.com/A_Beginner%27s_Guide_to_Running_Windows_on_a_Mac
http://guides.macrumors.com/Boot_Camp

 

[Briggaman]

Thankyou for all of that information. You have pretty much answered everything I wanted to know, so now I shall get to work on sorting that out. Oh, just one thing though. Could I not just put my games and such on my portable hd, thus meaning I would only need something like 15gb on my laptop for Windows? I am only asking this because I want to avoid using too much space for Windows if I can.

 

[Stridder44]

Thankyou for all of that information. You have pretty much answered everything I wanted to know, so now I shall get to work on sorting that out. Oh, just one thing though. Could I not just put my games and such on my portable hd, thus meaning I would only need something like 15gb on my laptop for Windows? I am only asking this because I want to avoid using too much space for Windows if I can.

Well as of Boot Camp 3.0 (which is on the Snow Leopard disc) there are now HFS+ read-only drivers. Meaning you can see you OS X partition in Windows (before Boot Camp 3, you couldn't). However, I've found that the driver only recognizes the internal OS X partition. I plugged in my external hard drive (in Windows) and it didn't find it.

So yes you could, but you'd have to format the external hard drive as NTFS, which you can do in Windows by right-clicking on the drive and selecting Format. It looks something like this:

NOTE: If you already have an external hard drive that you use with OS X, do not do this, as it will erase the drive. Instead, get another external hard drive, or create a second partition on the external hard drive that you already have (if you already have one).

 

[backwardsK126]

Boot camp would run fine on your computer. However, if you're looking to play Aion it looks like the specs on your computer are a little bit low to play it at a comfortable frame rate. As far as boot camp goes. Windows will run you around 100-150 bucks and if you get a virus it most likely not spread to the os x partition (I don't want to say for sure because I am not positive about this). But logically, the os x drive is hidden when you are running windows so any virus would not be able to access the drive. Hope this helps you

 

[arjen92]

Boot camp would run fine on your computer. However, if you're looking to play Aion it looks like the specs on your computer are a little bit low to play it at a comfortable frame rate. As far as boot camp goes. Windows will run you around 100-150 bucks and if you get a virus it most likely not spread to the os x partition (I don't want to say for sure because I am not positive about this). But logically, the os x drive is hidden when you are running windows so any virus would not be able to access the drive. Hope this helps you

Besides, Windows isn't able to write on the mac partition. It can only read, they did that with a purpose. If it magically happens it wouldn't matter as there are no viruses for mac (only trojan horses), and the viruses won't run on mac os x, they are designed to run on windows and are effective because of windows leaks, which aren't the same as mac os x and probably far more than mac os x.

 

[lee.perrin]

Problem with the install.

Hi there.

I have just upgraded to snow leopard yesterday for the reason to have boot camp available...

I have a old copied XP disc that I have used previously before, but the intall freezes in the blue windows setup screen. It asks you too enter to continue but the key board is dead.

Does anyone know of such a fault?

I have also tried an old version of Fusion and it freezes on the install bit too. Rationally im going with the disk being ok, is there a fault with old XP and snow leopard?

 

[mpuck972]

Hi there.

I have just upgraded to snow leopard yesterday for the reason to have boot camp available...

I have a old copied XP disc that I have used previously before, but the intall freezes in the blue windows setup screen. It asks you too enter to continue but the key board is dead.

Does anyone know of such a fault?

I have also tried an old version of Fusion and it freezes on the install bit too. Rationally im going with the disk being ok, is there a fault with old XP and snow leopard?

There is no compatibility issue with XP and SN, I would rethink your rationale about the copied disk being ok. The data on the copy may not be good and that could be causing your issue. What I would do is torrent a legit copy of XP that has not been modified for activation and then burn yourself a bootable disk in SN. Assuming that you have a valid XP license key, you can then install it. But my guess would be you have a bad disk.

 

[Acquiesce]

There is no compatibility issue with XP and SN, I would rethink your rationale about the copied disk being ok. The data on the copy may not be good and that could be causing your issue. What I would do is torrent a legit copy of XP that has not been modified for activation and then burn yourself a bootable disk in SN. Assuming that you have a valid XP license key, you can then install it. But my guess would be you have a bad disk.

Great, i've just come across the same issue. It freezes during that blue screen, and i'm afraid i've kinda installed Xp several times by now, though thats probably nonsense. Absolutely not a wizz on this, but i have this OEM copy of xp pro, which doesn't seem to work. It's all legit, so i have the license, but how would one go about getting a torrent copy of xp pro/sp3 to print on disk? Annoying as f*** trying to get the cd out while stuck with a dead keyboard and a windows blue screen. but then again, it is windows......

 

[gugucom]

There is no compatibility issue with XP and SN, I would rethink your rationale about the copied disk being ok. The data on the copy may not be good and that could be causing your issue. What I would do is torrent a legit copy of XP that has not been modified for activation and then burn yourself a bootable disk in SN. Assuming that you have a valid XP license key, you can then install it. But my guess would be you have a bad disk.

Blue screens with Bootcamp 3.0 are common due to bugs in the Apple HFS driver. It installs in windows/system32/drivers/AppleHFS.sys. By renaming the file you can disable the driver.

There is also often an issue with installing SP3 for XP. The AppleMNT.sys driver in the same directory has to be disabled temporarily to install SP3.

 

[gugucom]

Thankyou for all of that information. You have pretty much answered everything I wanted to know, so now I shall get to work on sorting that out. Oh, just one thing though. Could I not just put my games and such on my portable hd, thus meaning I would only need something like 15gb on my laptop for Windows? I am only asking this because I want to avoid using too much space for Windows if I can.

I used to have the same machine and I think the CPU is actually a Core 2 Duo. It is pretty capable. I had Vista-64 Business running on that machine. I also had Vista64 in Virtual Box running. That MBP was the very first to support the Intel hardware virtualization extensions. I loved that machine until I saw the unibody.

The first thing though when I bought it used was upping the RAM to 4 GB and replacing the hard drive with a 320 GB upgrade. It costs peanuts compared to the benefits it gives. Go to iFixit for instructions to fit the drive. Unfortunately it takes 1-2 hours with good instructions. With ATI drivers the 1600 wasn't all that bad.