Windows XP Booting on Mac Contest Over

[exodar]

As far as I know, the GFX cards included with the Intel Macs are "Mac Edition." Meaning that the standard Windows drivers won't work even in a Windows environment without flashing the GFX card's ROM.

Ahhh....if that is indeed the case then that makes sense. However, as stated in my previous post, it appears that Windows on these Macs IS running at full resolution and that the video card was detected.

 

[Abulia]

This is great. I've been a long time mac user, but miss the gaming available to the windows world; now I can have both. Instead of partitioning, I wonder if you could format an external hard drive and install only windows on it then boot via firewire. Does anyone know?

Not sure, but this would be the logical next step for those that don't want to risk multiple partitions.

 

[Peace]

As far as I know, the GFX cards included with the Intel Macs are "Mac Edition." Meaning that the standard Windows drivers won't work even in a Windows environment without flashing the GFX card's ROM.

BINGO!

 

[ChrisA]

Who here has used a dual boot machine?

Who here has actually owned and used a dual boot machine? Raise your hands please.

Hand up: I have. Here is my summary of it: "What a pain in the ass!"

Yes really. You'd think it would be great at first because you can run programs that require either OS but now instead of simply clicking on an icon or task bar to launch a program you need to do a full re-boot, do whatever you need to do and then do another full -reboot to get back. Your email or browser bookmarks will "always" be on the non-active OS After 20 or 30 re-boots you are realy, really sick of rebotting and you will be very motivated to do one of these things:

1) thrash one of the OSes
2) Find a way to run one OS inside a virual machine inside the other OS
3) Buy a second computer.

Does anyone remember running Window 3.0? You need to hit the re-set button everyhour or so all day long and wait while it re-booted. Dual boot is kind of like running Windows 3.0 You will get to know the boot screen very well.

 

[milo]

Totally agree.. I can imagine that there are even people who'd say to themselves "Ok, I'll run a pirated copy of Software X for Windows until they release the Mac version.. no way I'm going to pay twice".

That makes total sense. I wouldn't be surprised if there ends up being an attitude in the mac community of buy the mac version, pirate the windows version.

Can't say I'd feel that bad about that.

Still not legal, though.

You might also find that Activation will help keep you honest - the copy of Windows will ask to be activated, and Microsoft will know that you're stealing from them.

Assuming you buy a new copy of XP to install on your mac, what's not legal? Activation should work just fine, just use the number that came with the new copy on the mac.

Will this know open up our macs to the windows world of viruses?? Why is nobody scared of this.

Because worst case it opens up your windows boot to the potential of viruses. If your XP gets infected, it still won't infect OSX. And XP is on a separate partition, it can't even see files on your OSX partition, can it?

However, Apple comes today and tells us all: "We love Windows, officially support it and assert that you can install it on Macs without any hurdles".

Now think for a moment: Why on Earth would Autodesk, with such news in hands, even BOTHER about porting an extensive piece of code to XCode/Mac-specific requirements, if all you happy PC-loving campers can buy its Winblows version for the same price and run it natively on a white Mac?

First off, Apple has never said the above statement. They likely never will, and will probably just make vague statements about it not being recommended. Second, wanting to run XP doesn't make someone a "happy PC-loving camper", don't go off on a straw man argument.

To answer your second question, they would do it because it would result in sales of the OSX version. If they ship an OSX version, anyone running a mac with an XP boot partition would buy the OSX version instead of the PC version (unless they screw over mac users with price, features, release dates etc). Why wouldn't someone in that situation do exactly that?

Also, if another company creates a viable OSX competitor while autodesk tells customers to create an XP partition, autodesk will lose sales to that competitor. Mac users want this option, but it's only a last resort, a necessary evil.

I would LOVE to see some real-world performance tests. Photoshop, games, etc. Would be nice to directly compare OS X performance to WinXP on identical hardware.

You don't need benchmarks for those. Photoshop will get its butt kicked in OSX since it's not universal. Games will get their butt kicked in XP since there are no video drivers yet. Benchmarks already exist for most apps under XP since there are plenty of shipping PC's with the same chipset as the intel macs.

so if u have a intel mac with windows xp on it, can you run pc games on it smoothly?

Read the thread. NO. No video drivers yet.


Anyone (Steve?) know if XP can be installed on a USB or FW disk? Or so far is it only on the internal hard drive? Is that something that may happen in the near future?

 

[YoNeX]

The reason why you don't see the BSOD in XP as much or at all is because Microsoft by DEFAULT turned it off. Instead, all it does is just restart your computer instead. If you want to see if you ever get a BSOD (for whatever reason )

My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Startup Recovery > Settings > System Failure. Now just uncheck Automatically Restart. Now you might see the BSOD. There is a trick if you do some registry editing and press a bunch of keys, you can BSOD on command . Google for that if your interested.

Also, yes Mac OS X does get kernal panics too. It does come out of no where sometimes on me too, but when comparing between the frequency of XP's BSOD vs OS X's Kernel Panic, I say their about equal. Rarely do i get a BSOD or kernel panic, unless I'm really tweeking around with the system.

 

[FoxyKaye]

Ahhh....if that is indeed the case then that makes sense. However, as stated in my previous post, it appears that Windows on these Macs IS running at full resolution and that the video card was detected.

Windows carries some limited support for standard display types - otherwise, if you were to install it on a system with a fancy GFX card, you'd never get a picture to work with while you're installing. My guess is that it has some native support for a generic widescreen LCD display - however, the features and ability for the GFX card to function properly are most likely still disabled. What this means is that you *could* install a graphics-heavy game, but the card in the Mac may not properly handle DirectX calls, rendering and other card-specific functions.

 

[Arcus]

Dual boot? Meh...

I want to be able to run it within OS X. With the new Intel Macs I'm assuming the next version of Virtual PC will run at native speeds.

That's what I want.

But regardless, kudos to these folks.

Im in the same boat. Im anxiously awaiting this as well.

 

[exodar]

Windows carries some limited support for standard display types - otherwise, if you were to install it on a system with a fancy GFX card, you'd never get a picture to work with while you're installing. My guess is that it has some native support for a generic widescreen LCD display - however, the features and ability for the GFX card to function properly are most likely still disabled. What this means is that you *could* install a graphics-heavy game, but the card in the Mac may not properly handle DirectX calls, rendering and other card-specific functions.

Okay...I think we are getting to the CRUX of the problem as to why I left Windows in the first damn place. All of these drivers and different hardware....god....it makes my butt hurt! I think I will just stick to Mac OS X on my hardware that I KNOW it works with. Good luck to everyone else

 

[FoxyKaye]

Okay...I think we are getting to the CRUX of the problem as to why I left Windows in the first damn place. All of these drivers and different hardware....god....it makes my butt hurt! I think I will just stick to Mac OS X on my hardware that I KNOW it works with. Good luck to everyone else

Hee hee - that and the not so infrequent complete system crashes because what M$ claims is "protected" memory really isn't.

I'm with you - if I run Windows on any future Intel iMac I'm using, it will only be to see how it's done and to have a little fun with it. Thereafter, it's a complete HDD re-partition, erase and re-install of trusty OS X.

However, as a supported option, I hope the next version of Virtual PC can take full advantage of the Intel chipset and mobo. It would be nice to have VPC become more of a background process like Rosetta, but not have OS X run Windows apps completely native (as we all learned with OS/2 was a bad, bad, idea).

 

[nostaws]

more than just instructions

files are also included in the download. You have to make your own "custom" Windows install CD using 99% of the normal windows CD and then add the downloadable files to your custom CD.

From the site:
Servers are getting hit with too much traffic - please go to irc.freenode.net - channel #winxponmac

 

[fixyourthinking]

Funny, it took almost as long to get OS X on beige boxen as it did to get Windows on Apple boxen.



Uhh, if the end user is savvy enough to know what 'dual boot' means I think they could handle it.

We've been doing for some time with dual booting 9.2.2 and OS X on older G3's and G4's

 

[ethernet76]

Who here has actually owned and used a dual boot machine? Raise your hands please.

Hand up: I have. Here is my summary of it: "What a pain in the ass!"

Yes really. You'd think it would be great at first because you can run programs that require either OS but now instead of simply clicking on an icon or task bar to launch a program you need to do a full re-boot, do whatever you need to do and then do another full -reboot to get back. Your email or browser bookmarks will "always" be on the non-active OS After 20 or 30 re-boots you are realy, really sick of rebotting and you will be very motivated to do one of these things:

1) thrash one of the OSes
2) Find a way to run one OS inside a virual machine inside the other OS
3) Buy a second computer.

Does anyone remember running Window 3.0? You need to hit the re-set button everyhour or so all day long and wait while it re-booted. Dual boot is kind of like running Windows 3.0 You will get to know the boot screen very well.

I have. Dual-boot OS 9 and OS 10.2. Quark Xpress 4 required a dongle that wasn't recognized in OS 9 in Classic mode.

Also Redhat/XP. Neither was a problem. This just seems like a more elegant solution than the XP boot loader.

My only remaining question is whether you would still be able to enter into safe mode for windows. Also, DirectX support might be an issue.

 

[xStep]

Because worst case it opens up your windows boot to the potential of viruses. If your XP gets infected, it still won't infect OSX. And XP is on a separate partition, it can't even see files on your OSX partition, can it?

That simply isn't the case. I can think of two scenarios.

1.) The Wintel malware decides to be super aggresive and reformats your partitions. Just for kicks. Good bye OS X!

2.) You have the drivers installed on the XP partition to read the OS X partition. In that case the OS X partition looks like any other Windows partition and your files get currupted, deleted or information stolen, etc.

A product such as Virtual PC might be better because you can have it only see the file that represents the disc drive. It would NOT have access to the low level disc partitions.

 

[atari1356]

That makes total sense. I wouldn't be surprised if there ends up being an attitude in the mac community of buy the mac version, pirate the windows version.

Can't say I'd feel that bad about that.

Except in some cases with games... if Unreal Tournament 2006 (or whatever) is available for either PC or Mac, but runs faster on Intel Macs running Windows than it does running under OS X, then some people will choose to buy the PC version instead of the Mac version.

That's bad for Mac game developers.

 

[codepoet80]

Actually, it's not possible for Intel Macs to be running "Mac Edition" video cards. The "Mac Edition" referred to a change in Endianess, due to differences between x86 and PowerPC. Since Intel Macs use Intel chips, and therefore Intel's take on Endianess, a Mac Edition video card would not work.
It should be possible to just write or reverse-engineer and re-implement an existing Windows driver for a similar video chipset.

This definately is not a major hurdle -- at least not compared to the incredible work narf has already accomplished.

 

[slffl]

So is this going to be like installing OSX on PCs? As in, everythings going to run like crap because there's no drivers? Or are the drivers there and we can now play games at full speed?

 

[milo]

That simply isn't the case. I can think of two scenarios.

1.) The Wintel malware decides to be super aggresive and reformats your partitions. Just for kicks. Good bye OS X!

2.) You have the drivers installed on the XP partition to read the OS X partition. In that case the OS X partition looks like any other Windows partition and your files get currupted, deleted or information stolen, etc.

Do we know that you can reformat the whole drive (including partitions XP can't see) with this particular install?

The second one is an option, you don't have to if you don't want to. It's the equivalent of making more or fewer external folders visible to VPC.

if Unreal Tournament 2006 (or whatever) is available for either PC or Mac, but runs faster on Intel Macs running Windows than it does running under OS X, then some people will choose to buy the PC version instead of the Mac version.

Then I guess the mac game developers better get off their ass and start optimizing code. If they're shipping inferior product, shouldn't that hurt their sales?

So is this going to be like installing OSX on PCs? As in, everythings going to run like crap because there's no drivers? Or are the drivers there and we can now play games at full speed?

Easy there, cowboy. This has only been working for ONE DAY. It's a bit early to give up on drivers already.

 

[Steve1496]

My question is has anyone REVERSED the process? Meaning removing this dual boot setup and installing just Mac OS X back on again.

Also...is there ANYTHING going on here that if done improperly could render your mac unuseable? This whole taking over of the boot process kind of worries me a little. My first impression is that if you did do anything wrong you could just pop your Mac OS X install disc and start over again. However, with this being experimental I worry about "bricking" my mac.

exodar

sudo bless --folder /System/Library/CoreServices --file boot.efi --setBoot

 

[atari1356]

Actually, it's not possible for Intel Macs to be running "Mac Edition" video cards. The "Mac Edition" referred to a change in Endianess, due to differences between x86 and PowerPC. Since Intel Macs use Intel chips, and therefore Intel's take on Endianess, a Mac Edition video card would not work.
It should be possible to just write or reverse-engineer and re-implement an existing Windows driver for a similar video chipset.

This definately is not a major hurdle -- at least not compared to the incredible work narf has already accomplished.

Score:5, Insightful

 

[Steve1496]

The solution available for download right now talks about iMacs, normally I would asume that the same steps apply to any intel Apple hardware, but are these the same steps for a MacBook Pro?

Yes.

 

[calculus]

I predict a lot of knackered macs!

 

[balamw]

Windows carries some limited support for standard display types.
...
What this means is that you *could* install a graphics-heavy game, but the card in the Mac may not properly handle DirectX calls, rendering and other card-specific functions.

You're right about this, and that the mac video cards use different firmware (I think it's optimized for OpenGL calls instead of DirectX).

Basically though, the system as it stands right now shouldn't perform any worse than a PC with old style integrated graphics.

Which brings me to a strange though. We know from various comments that the ATI cards in the MBP and the iMac are not (yet) supported by ATI's drivers, but what about the Mini's 940MP? Is its acceleration supported? Would be kinda funny if (under Windows) the Mini's would outperform the iMac and MBP.

B

 

[Kingsly]

Any word on virtualization? I really want PC games but I would rather not wipe my HDD the day after I migrated everything over/be stuck in windows until reboot.

 

[DTphonehome]

Just had a thought...

Couldn't this work on a Mac Mini to install Win XP Media Center edition? It's certainly a better DVR solution!