Vista RC1 on the Mac Pro-- working

[Andrew Locke]

Hey guys- been lurking here for a bit and the info is invaluable, so I thought I should give back a little. I got Vista RC1 running natively on the Mac Pro, thought getting there was ugly. In short I ended up having to throw XP (though not SATA-patched) onto the box 1st, then do a clean Vista install FROM XP.

I dumped more details here:
http://andrewlocke.wordpress.com/2006/09/09/geek-post-running-windows-vista-rc1-on-the-mac-pro/

I hope the smarter of you can replicate and improve on this...

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

Hey guy- been lurking here for a bit and the info is invaluable, so I thought I should give back a little. I got Vista RC1 running natively on the Mac Pro, thought getting there was ugly. In short I ended up having to throw XP (though not SATA-patched) onto the box 1st, then do a clean Vista install FROM XP.

I dumped more details here:
http://andrewlocke.wordpress.com/2006/09/09/geek-post-running-windows-vista-rc1-on-the-mac-pro/

I hope the smarter of you can replicate and improve on this...

Great work and welcome to the forums!! How does Vista look on a 30" ACD?

 

[Andrew Locke]

beautiful

I'm shooting some pictures that I'll throw up on the blog in a bit...

 

[Krevnik]

Hey guys- been lurking here for a bit and the info is invaluable, so I thought I should give back a little. I got Vista RC1 running natively on the Mac Pro, thought getting there was ugly. In short I ended up having to throw XP (though not SATA-patched) onto the box 1st, then do a clean Vista install FROM XP.

I dumped more details here:
http://andrewlocke.wordpress.com/2006/09/09/geek-post-running-windows-vista-rc1-on-the-mac-pro/

I hope the smarter of you can replicate and improve on this...

This is the same result I had last night when I finally remembered to being a copy of Vista home. The problem is that because of this, if you want Vista x64 running, you need to install XP 64 first.

I am not sure why Vista has such problems with the disk either. It sees the partitions on the controller just fine, but it just refuses to install onto the drive because the CSM reports that the drive isn't 'bootable'. :/

 

[aiongiant]

thats awesome getting vista running on your Mac Pro
i ahve it running on my PC irght now

i tried installing it on my Mac Pro everythign was good
but i get a display problem.. says not enough resources to run my vid card so 4bit aglore!

dunno why some ppl were sucessful wiht the vid card and some ppl are not

i have a stock 3ghz mac pro with stock 7300 card

and oh to get my vista to install nicely i pretty much added another harddrive..split it up into 3 partitions.. windows xp ..vista..and backup (fat32)
installed xp jsut fine... then one of the key thing was i had to make that harddrive the startup drive.. thennn i can install Vista on it..

 

[aiongiant]

was your vista installation in 32bit colors?
casue when i install in my PC it was at 24/32bit colors already
but in my Mac Pro the installation was jsut a 8bit color...

 

[Andrew Locke]

I half suspect the Vista installer is set up specifically NOT to completely overwrite your disk so that users/testers can easily revert to previous builds during the testing period. It wouldn't surprise me if that changed before release.

Yes, my install came up with full, 32-bit color and I can run it at the full resolution of my 30" display (2600x1950 or whatever). I didn't ever see the error you describe about not enough resources.

 

[Andrew Locke]

More detail on the install process...

I'm finally at home and have posted streamlined instructions on the blog, as well as more detail and answers to a few questions...

 

[Krevnik]

I half suspect the Vista installer is set up specifically NOT to completely overwrite your disk so that users/testers can easily revert to previous builds during the testing period. It wouldn't surprise me if that changed before release.

I really hope it does, but it doesn't look like it will.

By using Boot Camp to kick off the install (the Vista disc is recognized by Boot Camp), Vista doesn't complain about being unable to boot off the target disk, but still simply refuses to install on it. Drove me nuts.

Actually had to whip out XP x64, install it instead of XP 32, and then installed Vista x64. x64 has one unusual issue that after the install, the X1900XT glitches and doesn't enter into Aero Glass. The solution to that problem was simply uninstall the device driver, and then tell Vista to look for hardware changes... and then it will start working again.

I found that a lot of the extra steps you took wasn't needed in my case. No needing to remove drives, just keeping the USB peripherals down to a minimum worked. Those warnings you see about the PCIe ports is seen in Windows as well... it seems to be related to the fact that the chipset allows a couple different modes for the PCIe slots.

I am currently planning to disect the msi that is used by the Apple drivers CD, and rebuild a new one that is designed to configure audio for Vista so that the outputs work correctly.

EDIT: Vista x64 isn't exactly stable with the Radeon x1900 XT... kinda depressing, actually... Vista x86 doesn't have the problem. You have to uninstall the device driver every time you run Vista to get Glass.