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Wanny

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 1, 2008
9
0
Well i would like to start off by saying that im a 15 years old.(incase anyone was wondering because of the way i type)

Anyways back to subject.
I was most likely getting windows Xp for my 2.4 20" Imac. the reason i want to get windows is xp is for editing because i dont wanna spend over 1200 on final cut. Then my dad came up with this question for me. Will it just give our computer viruses like our last computer that was a dell and had windows xp.

Answer please
 

swiftaw

macrumors 603
Jan 31, 2005
6,328
25
Omaha, NE, USA
Yes, your windows partition will be vulnerable to viruses just like any PC. However, they will not cross over to your OSX partition.
 

cal6n

macrumors 68020
Jul 25, 2004
2,096
273
Gloucester, UK
If you treat it the same way as you treated your Dell, then the XP partition will probably get infected just the same.

The OS X partition won't, though.

Oh, and don't mention serial generators round here. It startles the natives.
 

Wanny

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 1, 2008
9
0
what do u meen i didnt mention that ha...

Say i wanna just get Windows for

Vegas
3d Maxs
Adobe After Effects
Blender
Cinema 4d?

Then get the you no what for all of them would that be fine? and then leave it alone
 

Infrared

macrumors 68000
Mar 28, 2007
1,715
65
In theory a virus could include an HFS+ driver and write
to your Mac partition. In practice, you're safe...for now.

As always with these things the important thing is not
so much what can be done as what is being done.
 

gnasher729

Suspended
Nov 25, 2005
17,980
5,566
I was most likely getting windows Xp for my 2.4 20" Imac. the reason i want to get windows is xp is for editing because i dont wanna spend over 1200 on final cut. Then my dad came up with this question for me. Will it just give our computer viruses like our last computer that was a dell and had windows xp.

Windows XP can get viruses, but they won't pass over to MacOS X. Apart from using anti-virus software, there are a few things you can do. One is to use the Internet as little as possible from Windows. Another one is using Parallels instead of Bootcamp. The whole Windows installation will be in one big file, Back it up, and if you catch a virus, you just throw everything away and use the backup.
 

AENAON

macrumors member
Jul 7, 2005
41
0
Cyprus
I hate to break the news for you, but there are viruses that wipe your drive partition table, mft , cause corruptions, so on. Most mac users are not aware of this, most think that once you boot into windows, it can only use its partition. That's not true. Windows can interfere with every bit of your mac once they are loaded natively, and there are plenty of viruses attacking partitions tables, even the BIOS/EFI. If you want to be 100% secure, you have to load windows into a virtual environment like VMWare and Parallels.

If that's hard to believe, load windows from your bootcamp, right click "my computer", select "manage", go to "disk management" and see that windows actually sees your OSX partition.
Attention: At this point you are one click away from sending your OSX partition into oblivion...
 
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