Just want XP on my Macbook Pro ... too much to ask?

[springchicken]

Alright, I bought my MBPro (2.16 GHz, 2 GB RAM) about a year and a half ago and was of course stoked cause I had just found out about BootCamp and how you could have Windows and Mac OS on the same computer. So I have been trying to do that on and off ever since I first got the thing, and it has all been unsuccessful.

I have tried installing Windows using both BootCamp and Parallels and both have failed. It usually starts screwing up at the blue startup screen when installing Windows XP SP2 ... my MBP slows down a bunch and then tell me something about acpi.sys being corrupted during installation, and before this it also has stuff about acpi plug and play bus drivers. Then it says to press any key to restart installation and never leaves this infernal loop of suckiness.

I finally have broken down and made this thread cause I really just cant stand not having my Windows stuff anymore. It also doesnt help that I recommended to three other friends that they should get a MBP and dual-boot and all of them have been successful in doing this.

So if anyone has some helpful advice, I would sure find it ... helpful.

 

[OllyW]

If it fails on both Boot Camp & Parallels with the same problem it suggests to me that your Windows disc may have a corrupted file.

Is it a retail disc you have? Could you borrow a Windows disc off one of your friends and try installing off that?

 

[Yoursh]

You mention installing SP2 causes problems. Are you using a pre-SP2 install disc? I have found that pre-SP2 discs gave me problems when I installed XP under the Tiger Bootcamp beta. When I upgraded to leopard, I tracked down an install disc with SP2 included. Didn't have a single problem with the install on my Macbook. I believe Apple even states that you should only install XP SP2 with Bootcamp.

If this is the case, I would say track down an install disc with SP2.

 

[Matek]

If i understood correctly, he's already installing the SP2 version.

Anyway, I had a similar problem and it had to do with partitions. I ran Boot Camp Assistant to start the process, it resized my partition and made one for Windows. I then rebooted and started installing Windows.

When I reached the step where you choose the partition you want to install to, I noticed there is a couple hundred megabytes of unallocated free space between the Mac partition and the Windows partition, so I erased the partition BootCamp created and then made another one that included the previousely unallocated space.

At first, everything seemed okay, but after the first reboot I got the exact same blue screen you're mentioning. So I erased the Windows partition with Boot Camp assistant and started the whole process again. This time I didn't touch the partitions, I just picked the one BootCamp prepared for WinXP and went on with the installation. It worked perfectly, the empty space was obviousely some internal thing needed for everything to work properly.

 

[pulsewidth947]

I had a similar problem when I used a disk I thought was SP2, but it wasn't. I googled instructions for creating my own XP SP2 disk, tried that and it worked fine.

 

[m1ss1ontomars]

When I reached the step where you choose the partition you want to install to, I noticed there is a couple hundred megabytes of unallocated free space between the Mac partition and the Windows partition, so I erased the partition BootCamp created and then made another one that included the previousely unallocated space.

To be exact, that's the 200.00 MB EFI partition. Nobody knows what it does, and most people have confirmed it's safe to delete. I didn't delete it though, being afraid of having bad luck .

 

[palmerized]

Not sure -- just asking -- does it matter what format the drive is formatted in? Macs are "Extended" and Windows are usually NTFS or Fat... could this have something to do with it?

Dunno -- worth a shot.

 

[m1ss1ontomars]

Not sure -- just asking -- does it matter what format the drive is formatted in? Macs are "Extended" and Windows are usually NTFS or Fat... could this have something to do with it?

Dunno -- worth a shot.

To be exact (again), Macs are by default HFS+ (Journaled). HFS+ is also known as HFS Extended. Macs can also boot up from HFS+, HFS+ Case-sensitive, HFS+ Case-sensitive (Journaled), and a bunch of other formats, but not NTFS or Fat32.

Windows NT (and derivatives thereof, like XP, 2000, and Vista) drives are by default NTFS or Fat32. Vista requires an NTFS drive.

So yes, it does matter what format a drive is. Actually it matters quite a great deal. It matters a lot a lot a lot.