How do I install Windows XP on my Mac using Boot Camp?I'm thrilled to learn that I can now dual-boot my new Intel-based Mac so that I can live in the warm fuzzy world of Mac OS X or flip over to the business world of Windows XP. I have a shiny new copy of WinXP from my IT people, an Intel-based Mac Mini, and lots of enthusiasm, but that's about it. How the heck do I actually install Windows XP on my Mac so I can work in either operating system? There's been a lot written about Apple's dramatic release of Boot Camp, a free download that lets you repartition your Intel-based Mac's drive and install Windows XP as an alternative operating system, but even the magazine coverage I've seen doesn't give you screen-by-screen details. So let's see what we can do about that! Your first step is to make sure you have an Intel-based Mac: any G4 or G5 Mac will not install Boot Camp and you won't be able to dual boot into Windows XP. You can still run an emulator like Microsoft Virtual PC, but it's an inferior solution and my own experience with VPC has been that it's glacial and useless for all but the most simplistic of Windows applications. You'll also need to be able to burn a CD during the process: make sure you have a blank, burnable CD disk on hand. Now, download Boot Camp from the Apple site and double click on the ".dmg" disk image that's dropped onto your desktop. Here's what you'll see:  Your first step, as highlighted in the "Read Before You Install" document, is to print a copy of the Boot Camp Beta Installation & Setup Guide. Trust me, you'll want it! Double-click on the "BootCampAssistant.pkg" icon and you'll be able to install the Boot Camp assistant:  As with all Mac software installs, this will require you to type in your administrative password. It's probably the same as your default account password:  A few seconds of activity later, you'll have the software successfully copied onto your computer and can quit this first installer. Now your first challenge: finding the new installation assistant! It turns out that the program is installed on your computer in Applications --> Utilities --> Boot Camp Assistant. Launch it and it's quite possible you'll see the same message I did:  No huge problem. Quit by clicking the "Quit" button, then go to Apple's Support Downloads and check their Available Firmware Updates list to click directly to the firmware update for your own Intel system. For my Mini, I simply go back to the downloads page and scan down for the name of my system. Once the correct firmware update is installed, you need to reboot, but not in the usual fashion. Instead, press and hold the power button on the Mini itself -- it takes about ten seconds -- until the power indicator light flashes repeatedly to begin the update. Your system will boot and you'll see the Apple icon and a progress bar:  That will advance, it took me about 90 seconds total, and you'll reboot again, ready to go! Finally, we're ready to actually start working with Boot Camp itself. The first step is to read all of Apple's warnings:  Okay, now let's proceed. First choice: do we want to burn a Macintosh Drivers CD, which contains important device drivers for Windows XP so it can access the various hardware parts of the Mac, or do we already have one. I don't already have one, so I'll choose the default of "Burn a Macintosh Drivers CD now":  I slip in the blank disk and the system tells me it's "ready to burn". Click "Burn" and it'll do everything necessary to create the Windows XP drivers CD. This took a few minutes on my Mini, but it wasn't terribly long. Next step is much more exciting: it's time to partition the hard disk! Partitioning is a geeky buzzword for something that will actually make a lot of sense to you, believe it or not. The idea is that if you have a large hard disk, why not configure it to act like two small hard disks? Or three? In this way, smart system administrators can isolate accounts, minimize out-of-disk-space errors and disruptions, and so on. With Apple Boot Camp, we'll want to partition the default disk to allow us to have one "disk" that represents the Windows XP world, and another "disk" that represents Mac OS X. By default, Boot Camp offers up a pretty tiny partition for Windows, as you can see:  I'd recommend that you make it bigger if you're actually going to use Windows for anything important; Microsoft recommends 10GB as the smallest reasonable and functional partition, for example. If you're just playing, however, 5GB will probably work fine (until your first big game install). I'll make mine 8GB to be somewhere in the middle. Change the partition sizes by clicking and dragging on the vertical bar between the two areas until you have the size or sizes you desire. With my Mini configuration, it left me with 66GB for Mac OS X, of which 20GB is free, and 8GB for Windows XP. Once the partitions are set up as you desire, click on "Partition" and keep your fingers crossed (there is a slight chance it'll actually mangle everything on the disk. Not likely, but I would definitely recommend you do one good, clean backup before you start experimenting with Boot Camp). The disk partition is what we Windows folk call non-destructive or dynamic, which means that you don't have to reformat and then reinstall everything on both "sides" of the partition. That's a very, very good thing. :-) Once the partitioning is done, you're ready to install Windows itself:  Fortunately, I have a pristine new copy of Microsoft Windows XP Pro with SP2 included for PCs without Windows (who would have thought I'd think of my Mac as a PC without Windows?) and that's what I'll use. My thanks to Microsoft for sending it along... Insert the WinXP installation DVD, wait for it to be recognized by Mac OS X (it'll show up on your desktop with a cheery name like "VRMFPP_EN"), click on "Start Installation" and kiss Mac OS X goodbye. After a bit, you'll see the unfamiliar blue screen of a Windows installation:  Press ENTER or Return on the keyboard to continue, agree to the Microsoft warnings and legal restrictions page, and you'll finally get to the "choose partition" list:  Take your time here to ensure that you pick the correct partition! You want to use Partition C: which should match the size you just set too: notice on my screen it's 8407MB, which is about 8GB, as expected. Move the highlight bar down to the correct partition and press Enter to actually install WinXP. Now you need to pick a partition formatting option. The two main choices are NTFS or FAT. NTFS is more modern and supports very large partitions, but can't interoperate with Mac OS X. FAT, on the other hand, can't support partitions larger than 32GB, but is compatible with the Mac. You'll see why that's important later. For now, select FAT and do a full, not a quick, format:  Now some time will pass while the partition is formatted using the Windows FAT32 format. It took my system about five minutes to fill in the progress bar:  I won't document every single step involved in installing Windows XP as it's pretty straightforward. Just make sure you have your product key available for the verification step of the process. It's in the package within the Microsoft Windows XP disk, and it's really a good idea to use a new version of the OS rather than the same key you've used with other PCs in your office or home. Worst case, you can skip the verification step and have 30 days of "trial period" before you have to deal with finding a valid key to enter for verification purposes. Once you've finished the full Windows XP install, which can take rather quite a while, your system will reboot and you'll want to eject the WinXP install disk and slip in the Mac drivers CD you burned earlier in the process. With Windows, this is done by going to My Computer and right-clicking on the optical drive D: then selecting Eject. Slip in the Mac disk and everything should just automatically launch and start up. If not, look for and double click on the file Install Macintosh Drivers for Win XP.exe. Here's what you'll see:  I admit, it's kind of weird to see a Mac installation program running within Windows XP on a Mac computer, but it's a brave new world out there. Probably, during the installation process, you'll learn that various components of your Intel-based Macintosh haven't passed the Microsoft Windows compatibility test:  Apple assures us that it's safe to continue anyway, so I did. Three times! Then you get to go through a few waves of "new hardware found", and in all cases you can simply accept all the default settings for each wizard, as those guys in Redmond call 'em, and proceed. Finally, you'll get to the last configuration screen:  Click "reboot now" and if the hardware compatibility Gods are smiling upon you, the Mac will reboot right into Windows and you'll be the proud owner of a Macintosh that can run Windows natively, astonishingly enough. One last tip: to select which OS you want to run, hold down the OPTION key when you start up the Mac and you'll be able to see both Mac OS X and Windows XP:  Use the arrow keys to move to the choice you desire, then press Enter or RETURN to select it and zoom into that mode. When you do boot into Mac OS X, you'll notice that there's a new hard disk on your desktop too, called "NO NAME". Click on the name, count to five, and click again, then type "Windows XP" and you'll forevermore realize what it is. And yes, you can navigate through it and find your data files from when you're running Windows, but I'll talk about that in another article! It's a long, tricky process, but I hope this explains exactly how to install and get running with Apple Boot Camp. Also, don't miss my tutorial on how to install Parallels to run Windows XP within Mac OS X, rather than having to reboot each time you want to switch systems.
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Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader. The latest Apple ads I've been seeing for how you can run Windows on a Mac are now mentioning Parallels in the fine print. Parallels is a virtual machine for running an instance of Windows within OS/X. If you don't need full-blown 3D performance, running Windows in a virtual machine, can be a lot better. Virtualization is a LOT faster than the old Windows emulators like SoftWindows or VirtualPC, and not just because of the newer faster CPUs. Virtualization is faster because it doesn't have to translate instructions meant for an Intel processor into instructions a PowerPC processor can understand. It can pass them straight through. It's not perfect, though. There is some speed loss and high-end graphics applications (like games) may not work as well. So, if you want to do 3D gaming, you want to run Windows via Boot Camp. If, on the other hand, you've migrated your e-mail, calendar, and other goodies to your Mac, but you have a couple of Windows-based business applications you can't leave behind, virtualization is perfect. With Boot Camp, all those apps (e-mail, calendar, etc.) are unavailable because you're booted directly into Windows. To get at them, you have to reboot back into OS/X. With virtualization, you're in OS/X, all those apps are available, and Windows is running in a window just like any other program. Boot Camp is neat, but unless you need 100% of your machine's power for a specific Windows application, it's impractical. Seems even Apple is realizing virtualization is the way to go. Posted by: Greg Bulmash at June 21, 2006 12:46 PMGreat article, thank. I want to also back up the poster who mentioned Parallels virtualization software. It is fast and powerful, and it allows basic Windows functionality. I don't really want a dual boot machine, so this works great for me. hello Mr Dave Taylor ! Nice article, I am having trouble with my Mac Mini bootcamp install. I can not get past the firmware update message, my firmware and system is up to date? Any advise on this? Article is great. I've encountered another problem installing Windows XP on my MacBook. The MacBook rejects the Windows XP installation disk before even starting the install. Any suggestions? That's very helpdul Dave, thank you for taking he time to post. Mr C Posted by: Mr C at November 25, 2006 6:22 PMMany thanks. was beginning to panic till I found this. Thank god i still had my old mac running so I could get this info would have been impossible otherwise Posted by: david at January 20, 2007 2:42 PMYes - thanks for this guide. When I got to the partition selection in the XP set up I had no clue what to do and exited, but - most distressingly - to a black screen that said "Missing operating system". I couldn't even get to OS X. I then loaded this page on to another machine, worked out by deduction that holding down ctrl with the power key would restart using the XP disc and followed the installation guide here to the letter. I'd reccomend anyone to do the same. Posted by: Simon at January 26, 2007 3:55 PMExcellent article. The XP installation went fine. However, when i placed the Macintosh Driver CD, the windows read the initial part and then did not respond. I tried re-starting the system few times, but it always stop at the beginning of Macintosh Driver installation. I was wondering if the CD i created for Mac Drivers is not working or got damaged. Now, what do you think i need to do? I can not access any of the mac hardware because windows can not recognize it. I have no other Drivers CD for mac. All i got, is the original Mac OS X installation discs. Appreciate your assistance in this matter. Thanks again. Thanks a lot, this worked wonders for me. Keep up the good work sir. Posted by: Taylor at March 22, 2007 1:41 PMHi Dave, You are the MAN. Excellent article. I will be following your doc to install XP tomorrow on my new Mac Mini. Thanks. Posted by: Sammy at March 22, 2007 9:21 PMMy keyboard on my macbook pro does not work when i reach the blue screen, therefore, I cannot even start the installation. please help Posted by: Tin at March 29, 2007 7:33 PMhi i have a macbook pro os/x verion 10.4.9 ,,,,,,,, can i put windows vista on my mac or is it only xp ? thank you for your help Posted by: brian hudson at March 30, 2007 9:25 AMWhen I install BootCamp assistance after "authenticate" installation starts, appears a sentence installation complete but no window that would allow to burn MAC drivers or select the partition appears. Many thanks. Cheers, Hi Dave, You're The Bomb. now ... Can I uninstall Windows and repartion ... and then redo? I have a new MacBook Pro (160MB hard drive). After selecting "Use DeFault Size" which was 32GB and installing Windows XP Professional, C: Partition3 [Unknown] is displaying as a little over 32000 MB and FAT is not an option. Is there anything I can do to change the parition size now? Hopefully, with appreciation, Thanks Dave for the info. Posted by: Fred at April 15, 2007 8:27 AMHey dave I need help in getting windows off my computer it has slowed my apple software right down. What do I do? Posted by: dave davies at April 20, 2007 1:17 AMHi Dave, I will be following the procedures to install XP on a Macbook but I am having great dofficulty tring to work out whether I have to have a full retail XP or an OEM ? Posted by: Sid at April 21, 2007 12:30 PMMay I only Install pure-WinXP OS with MAC OS in Intel Core2Duo MacBook ? Posted by: KangCC at April 24, 2007 3:57 AMhey dave thanx for the info bro Windows is working as well as mac. But I could not install the mac disked I burned. Can I go back and install it. I tried to run it in widows nothing happenes. Thanks for help Posted by: Darrell at May 15, 2007 6:48 PMHy! What should I do? Thanks! Posted by: ariben at May 21, 2007 1:43 PMAriben, are you sure you have the latest version of the Boot Camp drivers? There were some changes in 1.2 that were supposed to *improve* the compatibility of the trackpad and keyboard. If you aren't getting there, is it possible that the stall-out is during the installation of WinXP itself? In which case, you might well have a non-SP2 version of Windows, which won't install correctly. Posted by: Dave Taylor at May 21, 2007 4:47 PMFantastic article, helped me along quite a bit. However, I seemed to have reached a point that I can't get past. After I partition, I insert the Windows XP CD and click Start Installation. When the computer (a Mac Pro) restarts, I see the familiar grey screen, and then nothing; my monitor even says "No Digital Signal". Any idea what's going on here? Posted by: Jake Boxer at May 22, 2007 10:52 PMgreat article and thanks for the step by step guide, but when i try to load up windows i get this: Starting Caldera DR-DOS... EMM386 3.27 Copyright (c) 1992, 1998 Calder, Inc. All rights resevred. the cd I am using is Windows XP (sp2)...maybe i burnt the iso wrong? Posted by: mike at May 23, 2007 1:15 PMGreat Article...Just wondering whether you need to have Win xp with Service pack 2 to be installed on mac. I've only got Xp with service pack 1 on it... Help...Cheers Posted by: lionel at May 29, 2007 7:48 AMI don't know if it's a requirement as it is with Parallels, but I know that it's certainly a very good idea. You can try installing SP1 and then using all the online updates (just keep running Windows Update and rebooting until it finally says "no updates") and see how it works. Please report back whether you have success or not. Posted by: Dave Taylor at May 29, 2007 11:59 AMWow, man this is amazing. I'm just finishing the final installation right now, and so far it's been incredibly easy and straightforward. Thanks a million, I literally couldn't have done it without you. Posted by: Will H at June 1, 2007 2:44 PMHi! I followed all the steps.. it came to the blue screen.. and once it says "welcome to steup, press enter to conintue" it wont let me press enter.. nothing happends.. its as if it doesnt recognize wen i press anything please help Posted by: amanda at June 3, 2007 8:11 PMi cant seem to partition my disk and its telling me to repair it using disk utility but the repair button is disabled.what should i do? Posted by: joseph at July 2, 2007 1:45 PMSo... in the end, what happens when you made your Windows partition too small. How can you "add more space" to the Windows partition? Posted by: gary at July 6, 2007 12:42 AMHelp - Dave Hi Dave. I have a brand new MacBook Pro and the correct copy of windows xp. Everything with the partitioning and copying windows files to the Mac went great. But then came the installation of Windows. It went on and on for hours...eventually I just gave up. It seems there is a "loop" or something and the installation of Windows just never happens. Any ideas? Thanks Posted by: Mark at July 19, 2007 7:29 PMDave, I just bought myself the MacBook and am planning to run the XP installation myself. Only thing is, I don't remember whether I have XP/SP2 or SP1 - and I won't know until the install goes bust. Is there any feedback on whether the SP1 -> SP2 update works, because I'm sure I have one of the later Service Packs lying about with me. Posted by: KeeDay at August 8, 2007 6:30 AMWhen I get to teh set-up screen and choose the contiue option by pressing ENTER, nothing happens. I have to shut down and reboot into Mac OS. What am i doing wrong? Posted by: Bob at August 8, 2007 8:53 AMhi Dave, your article on installing Windows on the Mac with Boot Camp was excellent! Question: running Windows XP on the Mac I have the problem that the USB of my external HD is not recoqnized and the message is: "insert disc in drive D". Previously any PC seemed to pick up the external HD without a problem. As far as I know, you really can't use SP1 at all, even if your intent is to immediately upgrade it to SP2. You need an SP2 *install disk*, which might mean that you need to buy a newer copy of XP. Posted by: Dave Taylor at August 8, 2007 12:10 PMArticle is great. However, I've encountered a problem installing Windows XP on my MacBook. The MacBook rejects the Windows XP installation disk before even starting the install. Any suggestions? Once I get to the blue screen to press enter. I am unable to do anything. My macbook pro's keyboard does not work. Now my mac doesn't work at all as I am unable to get the windows disk out or boot up os x. Please Help Posted by: Eric at August 9, 2007 6:05 AMHey Dave, really need you to help me and the other guys up here on this one! : After getting to the "blue screen" can't hit enter for some reason and continue the installation process. Attaching external keyboards don't work either. Posted by: Aneel at August 17, 2007 4:41 PMGood write up, I need some help though. I have tried using a microsoft issued xp with sp2 disc, the one with holograms, and a burned copy of that disk and a burned copy of xp pro, however all of them are not recognized by the boot camp installer. They do show up on my desktop as the VRMHOEM_EN name, what should I do to make them work or should I try to get my hands on more/different copies of a disk? Posted by: derek at August 18, 2007 6:08 PMMy keyboard on my macbook does not work when i reach the blue screen, therefore, I cannot even start the installation. please help Posted by: Grace at August 25, 2007 6:07 AMI have a major problem. I did the man thing and didn't look at any instructions and tried to install windows on my mac. I partitioned the wrong drive and now can't even get into my desktop when I turn my computer on....Any suggestions? Posted by: tim at August 31, 2007 9:04 AMhi dave.... ive read your article but i have 1 question... can i do it with out the xp disc? or i must have 1? Posted by: yehonatan at September 1, 2007 5:22 AMAs far as I am aware, yes, you need a real Windows install CD to get going with either Boot Camp or Parallels. Posted by: Dave Taylor at September 2, 2007 8:21 AMHi Dave, thanks for this very helpful article! But im sadly stuck on 'Welcome to Set-up' - I want to select 'Enter' to continue setting up Windows XP but I can't seem to select this or use my enter key. (I actually can't seem to select anything on my keyboard, even to quit.) I do hope you can help and look forward to your reply. Posted by: Sarah at September 5, 2007 9:06 AMHey Dave, When I get to the blue set-up screen and choose the continue option by pressing ENTER, nothing happens. I have to shut down and reboot into Mac OS. What am i doing wrong? And how do I get the keyboard to work. Thanks Posted by: Amit at September 8, 2007 11:51 AMI have succesfully done everything up until installing windows. When i insert my disc and say install in the assistant it says that the cd can't be found. Im using an xp disc with sp2 so it should work. Shouldnt it? Posted by: Jack at September 8, 2007 12:16 PMOk the issue is with the Service Packs...try and find a different version of XP discs. The different version (without SP) worked for me. Posted by: Dammit at September 8, 2007 12:19 PMcould someone send me the link to the exact windows xp version that i need to buy??? i dont know if the upgrade will work or which version that i need... help please Posted by: adam at September 10, 2007 2:49 PMIs there a way to add more space to the windows disk after the initial partition? I made it too small and I want to redo it without doing the whole thing over. Posted by: mitch at September 10, 2007 5:13 PMHey Dave great article worked all the way through until I reached the blue screen at the beginning of windows installation at which point my enter key and the rest of my keyboard ceased to work except the power button please help! Mitch, don't know how to resize the partition in Boot Camp, I'd just Google it if I were you. :-) Kamran, if you are experiencing the dead computer problem, I bet you don't have the proper Windows XP SP2 install disk. Try borrowing one from someone else. Remember, an original (SP1 or pre-SP) WinXP will *not* install properly, as far as I know. Posted by: Dave Taylor at September 14, 2007 8:10 PMhello dave, i have just bought a paralles desktop for my mac, please mail me back, thanks in advance, I try to install the Windows XP Pro, in my MAC, but after doing the partition? when I got to the point where you have to choose the disk to install windows, then it didn't show the one I choose, so I cancel the installation and now I only get a blank screen, everytime that I turn my computer and have no idea how to start up OX S, even inserting the Leopard CD, etc... please I'll appreciatte if you could help me on this items Posted by: Daniel at November 18, 2007 10:28 AMSP1 can be installed through boot camp, but it fails part way through (did for me at least...) and if it doesn't windows won't run (from what i have read) because theres drivers lacking, and the Apple cd doesn't work with SP1... not the end of the world, i got it to work (see blog on my website...) but you will need fusion / parallels or something (the trial version should work fine if you dont have the full version.) all you have to do is boot up the boot camp partition as a VM in Mac and complete the installation of SP1 (depending on how far you got...) then upgrade to SP2 (download the network install file same as slipstreaming). Reboot with the mac drivers cd in, run the installs and continue on as normal. Posted by: Matthew Robinson at November 21, 2007 9:46 AMOk, I didnt realize you needed SP2 so i put a windows cd for sp1 and now my comp wont reboot at all. it will just keep asking me to reboot from cd and to keep installing windows over and over again. OS X wont boot and theres no way i can take out the cd from the computer... Im really scared! HELP ME Posted by: Luke at November 23, 2007 1:24 PMHi everyone, Ok so, i have service pak 2, and while installing the windows os i get as far as the screen that gives you updates on how Long your installation is going to take (39 Min). Now it seems that it wont start installing windows and instead sounds like the disk is just trying to spin but not getting very far and im unable to get past the green circle on preparing installation. Well i hope that was enough information, thanks. Posted by: Joel at November 28, 2007 6:05 PMhold "option" key while grey screen comes on and after a while you should get a boot disk to choose and can boot from the Mac OSX partition Posted by: blahblabla at November 30, 2007 5:55 PMIf I load Boot Camp and install XP PRo, can I just install parallels at a later time if I find it necessary? Or do I have to install the whole thing all over again. And will I be able to use same XP Pro version and install Id numbers. Posted by: Jerry C at December 15, 2007 2:14 PMI've had the same problem. When the blue WindowsXP screen appeared my keyboard stopped working. After reading a LOT of forums I found an easy way to saolve that. Just disconnect your mouse before the WindowsXP screen loads....and voila. Good Luck. Posted by: Rhapsody at December 19, 2007 10:21 AMDear Dave, I can't get icon to come on desktop when inserting a new copy of XP Pro with SP2, It spins alittle then pops out. Once i did get there and hit start installation, but the macbook restarted and I ended up with that black screen saying no bootable disc, I got out of that, but still load this thing. Any suggestions? Posted by: Jerry C at December 20, 2007 9:49 AMmr. d.t., I've installed windows on my Mac Book pro, but now it seems my battery life has been cut in half! How can I uninstall windows or get rid of the partition? Please help! Posted by: Sylis at January 3, 2008 6:31 PMHi Dave, I had Windows XP (SP2) installed in my MAC and the dual boot was working fine. Please suggest... -Sutanu Posted by: Sutanu at January 4, 2008 6:54 AMHi Dave, I am trying to install windows xp onto my macbook, but I have a xp disc with only service pack 1 and I know I need one with SP2. What can I do? Does that mean I have to buy a new CD? PLease help!! Thank you!! Hey Dave, Thanks, Evan Posted by: Evan at January 13, 2008 7:27 PMHi Dave! Is there a way I can run Windows alone on my mac? I understand its quite weird doing it, But just that I'd love to do it that way. Can you please help me> Very very help full, Hi ANY IDEAS? Many thanks chris Posted by: chris at January 19, 2008 4:08 PMMan i installet windows and after i restarted to boot directly to windows the screen gets white with the apple in the middle and it has that circle that is loading..and is loading for a long time it doesent get either in os or windows...should i just wait??? Posted by: Vlad Barin at February 11, 2008 7:37 PMDoes the size of the partition on the hard drive relate only to the XP operating system or should it be large enough to handle all ones windows programs, such as Office 2007? Posted by: SD at February 12, 2008 10:14 AMhi, Could you please tell me how/where to download Boot Camp for free? It costs $129 on Apple website. Thanks yeh i treid that on my new imac 24" but it came up with this/Users/Ceicj/Desktop/wont work????.tiff and i used vista by the way Posted by: Ceiron Crowley-Jones at February 26, 2008 9:23 AMHi there, I have searched everywhere and found several explanations of what bootcamp is and how to use it. Sounds great. I have even got past the stage of partitioning my drive, however, when I insert my copy of WIndows XP into the drive, it can't run. There is an autorun.INF file on there, and a setup.EXE and of course, my Mac cannot either of these. How do I get past this point where I need to have Windows to run the file which installs Windows, when I don't already have Windows installed...?? Regards, after clicking on my "Boot Camp Assistant", a small thingy appeared and something like "Boot Camp Assistant Beta has expired". What should i do now? Posted by: sarah at March 15, 2008 8:55 AMok guys so i ran in to the same problem as you did with the 'ENTER' key not working... furthermore the keyboard seemed to not respond... how to SOLVE THIS... find a keyboard, not native apple keyboard..i luckily had a usb logitech keyboard that apple first didnt recognize but you can plug it in anyways and after a few short steps it will work non the less. after that partition..or run the whole set up again and now youll be able to click 'Enter' on the keyboard that you plugged in (just make sure its not apple at first) this is relatively interesting and shows a few bugs in boot camp assistant because when the installation process begins it lacks the drivers to use apple hardware while installing windows... i hope this helps out alot Posted by: val at March 20, 2008 11:09 AMthanks for the tutorial. Hi there, can you tell me out to eject the windows disc from Imac? As it needs the disc removed before it reboots otherwise it does through set up round and round. Posted by: Ken at March 28, 2008 9:39 PMDave fella, thanks a lot... was getting worried i'd ruined my precious precious mac till i found this. CHEERS Posted by: Mike at March 29, 2008 10:57 AMHi, I can run setup, , but when Windows wants to restart after the install - It asks me to press anykey to boot from CD-ROM - Is this where I am suppose to have a standard USB keyboard to use? I mean otherwise, the Airbook keyboard was working fine when I was initially asked to press any key to reboot from CD - At this point, if I shut down, I notice a couple of things: Any ideas how I get to the point where I insert my Leopard CD for the Airbook drivers? Thanks, Hopefull this will resolve soon... Frederique Problem solved - It turns out that I had to actually select the "Format drive" option (I did not try the (Quick) version because the formatting done by bootcamp was not enough. Sorry for the bother. Frederique Posted by: Frederique at April 12, 2008 9:53 PMGood info Dave: I got one issue after running bootcamp installed everything okay I can run my quickbooks which is all I need to run. I can not figure out how to get a windows internet connection while ibooted up in xp. I tried to setup a new connection but nothing seems to work. Is there any issues with internet while running xp boot? Posted by: chris Snipes at April 15, 2008 10:44 AMThanks for this guide, it's helping alot. Although after installing onto FAT32, the system reboots, then reloads the disk and restarts set up to install? If i eject the disk and press option to select windows XP, it says 'disc error, press any key to restart' which then nothing happens. Boot Camp isn't asking me to create a mac drivers disk either, I have my Leopard installation disk and tried running XP with that in the drive but i still got the disk error message. Any ideas? This has been a bit of a nightmare trying to set this up. Posted by: James Burgon at April 17, 2008 2:35 PMThanks for your help the FAT was getting me I am now using NTFS as I need more then 100GB for my windows Thanks Posted by: Glacher at April 24, 2008 9:21 AMTHanks, Dave, it helped a lot! Posted by: ted at May 4, 2008 7:33 PMhi dave thanks alot!! i have one question tho.. Brilliant! Thank you so much, unbelievably helpful, we cocked it up first time but after reading this we flew straight through the process with no problems. Everything works fine now and thank you so much for your help. I have a lot to say, but ...
I do have a comment, now that you mention it!
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