Serious Windows Problem

[TAYYFACE]

Hey guys! I have a serious Windows Problem.

I guess I used a bad version of Windows XP to download. It worked through bootcamp, and it's set up and everything, but I can't switch back over to the Mac OS X portion. Whenever I start up the computer, it goes straight to Windows XP screen. And when I put in the Mac OS X installation disk, the 'boot camp' driver appears in My Computer, but apparently I need a newer version of Windows Installer to make it work, and I can't update it because the resource 'UPDATE' is missing. Ugh. Help please?

 

[fluidedge]

Hey guys! I have a serious Windows Problem.

I guess I used a bad version of Windows XP to download. It worked through bootcamp, and it's set up and everything, but I can't switch back over to the Mac OS X portion. Whenever I start up the computer, it goes straight to Windows XP screen. And when I put in the Mac OS X installation disk, the 'boot camp' driver appears in My Computer, but apparently I need a newer version of Windows Installer to make it work, and I can't update it because the resource 'UPDATE' is missing. Ugh. Help please?

I don't really understand your problem?

1) have you tried holding down alt(option) when the computer boots?

2) If you've downloaded an illegal version of windows go and get a legal copy. Or download the windows 7 beta.

 

[TAYYFACE]

I don't really understand your problem?

1) have you tried holding down alt(option) when the computer boots?

2) If you've downloaded an illegal version of windows go and get a legal copy. Or download the windows 7 beta.

See, I never knew I had to hold down the alt button. <_< Now I have it back on Mac, thank god. But while I still have a topic open - I can transfer Vista to my mac from my sister's laptop using a firewire cable, right?

 

[toolbox]

I don't think so! you will be going from different hardware so chances are vista will bluescreen when it boots. It would be best to just do a reload.

 

[Winni]

Vista won't bluescreen, but it will require a re-activation and might be missing some drivers.

In order to transfer Vista from one machine to another, you will need a tool like Partition Magic to clone the disks. Furthermore, there is no "target mode" in the PC world - you won't be able to connect the PC via FireWire to your Mac and access it like an external hard disk.

If you don't need to have it in Boot Camp, you could use VMWare's free utility to copy the PC's hard disk to a VMWare disk image. This also works over the network. However, I don't know of a utility that can make a Boot Camp partition out of a VMWare disk image. Those tools are designed for transferring a physical PC to a disk image only.

You could remove the hard disk from the PC and put it in an external Firewire/USB case and connect that to your Mac. But I'm not sure what good that would do you; tools like SuperDuper won't work with NTFS partitions, so I don't know how it would be possible to copy the PC disk to the Mac's internal hard disk.

Your safest bet is to install Windows from scratch on the Mac.

 

[TAYYFACE]

Where can I find VMWare's free utility in order to do that?