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.
great post. Thanks for sharing it
I’m interested in getting windows xp, but I can’t find a place to download it. Whatever I could find either seemed shady (illegal and possible malware?) or OEM versions that look very uncertain. Is it even possible to still get windows xp? I just want the SP1, not SP2 or higher (I always had trouble with those.)
And price: Has to be under $100. Anything over I can’t afford. It’s also a matter of purpose I’d be using windows for: being able to run and play games I used to enjoy on my old PC before it gave up and became unusable. I’d also be using it to instal a few programs not mac compatible. But overall I can’t see the use I’d have being worth me sacrificing rent, food, clothing etc for a $200+ program. (if I needed it for business purposes maybe it would. But for games, IDK) But I still long for it and miss the games I used to enjoy.
Well, not sure how much luck you’ll have, but try eBay and see if you can find a copy of Windows XP. Should be pretty cheap, needless to say. 🙂
Dave.
Managed to install WinXP (SP3) on a MacBook Pro (OS 10.5). Subsequently, the USB ports do not work on the Windows side but do work on the Mac side. Suggestions on how to remedy the Windows side? Thanks!
Honestly, haven’t run with Boot Camp for years. I’ve found that VMWare Fusion has more than enough oomph to run Windows for me at speed, and plenty of people swear by Parallels Desktop too.
why my id in windose not oppening why showing the trobbel
hello dear and you are welcome I’m ones of mine people who likes you
I’v question to ask you about my mac book when I installing a windows system , Is all thing will be normally. I mean my last system is it will removed or its will be two system I’ll have?
thanx allot
Very good and detailed article. I have written on how to install windows on mac at least 5 times now. I finished an entire series on it about 3 months ago. It’s written under my name, but unfortunately it’s not on my site (http://thehightechsociety.com) as I didn’t own a site yet. That’s actually why I am here though. Although I have written about this many times, I like to research and see if there’s anything new I can add. I found some great things in your article that I can add, and a lot of help as well just in the comments.
Something that maybe I can contribute for readers is to be aware of is which version of Windows they use with BootCamp. Different versions will help Windows run better or worse, and 32 bit vs 64 bit can matter as well. I know this article is on Windows XP, but Windows XP will actually not even work with the newest BootCamp (4.0). If you’re using an older version of BootCamp though and want to play your old Windows games on your Mac, Windows XP is better then Windows VIsta. Of course, XP is better than Vista pretty much anytime…ha ha. If you have Mac Lion or Mountain Lion and want Windows XP with BootCamp, there are some ways to get around it, but it is a bit tough and would mean you have to get rid of 4.0 and download an earlier version. I haven’t tried this myself, but in research I found that it should work. If you are having issues with Windows on Mac, one thing that has been an easy fix for many of these has been to simply update your drivers. If anyone gets really stuck, Apple suport has really great detailed information on their site. You can get the manual there for setting up BootCamp, and find a lot of troubleshooting tips.
Sorry for the long post, guess I started writing it over again right here on your site! Thanks for a great article and site with real answers!
Thank you so much! I wish apple gave instructions as clear as you do!
Help …..
I need a windows driver for iMac (dual) versions 10.6.4/10.6.1 17 “.
I’ve been looking on the internet but not found.
Please help.
Thank you
Otto
Help …..
I need a windows driver for iMac (dual) version 10.6.4 17 “.
I’ve been looking on the internet but not found.
Please help.
Thank you
Otto
How to Install Windows 7 from a USB drive on Macbook Air – The Really Working Tutorial
http://csjourneyisrael.blogspot.com/2012/04/how-to-install-windows-7-from-usb-drive.html
Can i install windows Xp in apple pc.Will it work same as normal windows Xp OS.
Great article! Am trying this on my mac mini (OSX 10.7 I believe) but have hit a major snag – the computer is a bit of a hand-me-down that didn’t have an internal disk drive, so I’m having to rely on an LG super multi drive that was sent by Best Buy after the fact. So we installed Windows OS and partitioned the hard drive (even split), but after the computer rebooted in Windows, it would always freeze up in the same point because apparently the disk drive couldn’t read it properly. Fortunately my brother who’s a bit more tech-savvy than me managed to get it rebooted back over to mac OS, but now I’ve got half my hard drive apparently partitioned to Windows with nowhere to go. Is it possible to find some sort of workaround with this existing ext. disk drive and get Windows installed this way, or should I just reformat the HD and try to download Windows from an online source? And if the latter is the case, can you recommend a good site to find such a thing? I tend to have just as much trouble downloading new programs as I do installing them.
Hi Dave…nice article! I have been living in the bootcamp world since 2008 and find it rare to read straightforward answers on this. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE? 🙂 I have an imac running xp 32 bit and wanted to upgrade to 4gb…learned that the 32 bit is maxed at 3 gb rather than 4 in the bootcamp world. I have two external hard drives and store nothing on my c drive. But I’m almost out of room because of heavy programs. It’s running great and and I want to keep it that way. How can I get more memory? Do I have to upgrade to a later version of windows..and will that mess up my bootcamp?
Not sure it’s the latest version, but you can find Boot Camp here:
http://download.cnet.com/Apple-Boot-Camp/3000-18513_4-93144.html
Hope that’s helpful!
I canot find Boot Camp on the apple site for my 2008 MBP. Where will I find it?
Thanx for this article.. really this is great and its work for me .. but i have one problem after successfully installation of XP SP2 on my Macbook (core 2 due 2.4 GHz). keyboard and trackpad not working in xp rather on MAC OS X its working fine ..
so i have no idea why this is happening ? please help me how do i enable my keyboard and trackpad on xp ?
Hi,
I have a question:
Can i install win xp sp1 on a iMac 10.3.9 i dont have internet on that mac
O i have a win xp istallation disk for my other pc can i use that one?
Oh i dont have the mac installation disk does that also work???
grtz
Nice article, Thank you for giving this information
I install window via bootcamp I don’t now first I instaal bootcamp. Than deleted it.. Installed again. Now I am in window xp but can’t come back to mac. Please help me. Emergency
I have a MacAir. I tried to replace GLOBALROOT\DEVICE\CDROMO with GLOBALROOT\DEVICE\D:\I386 and GLOBALROOT\D:\I386
Neither option works for me. Am I doing something wrong.
Thanks. This is great site.
Jill, I don’t think you can use an ISO disk image to install WinXP within a Boot Camp or other VM partition, but you can use a disk utility to burn a DVD based on the ISO image, then use that DVD as your install disk. Now, where on CNET can you buy and download a full, legal copy of the Windows XP Install disk?
Can I install winxp using bootcamp and downloading winxp from a site such as cNet, instead of using a disc – which I no longer have.
Dave, great article! By the way instead of partitioning, could I just add an external usb hard drive and us it as my windows drive? or partitioning is the only way?
Hello Dave,
I have my friends Apple mac laptop, she wanted to install windows XP as a dual boot option. I am only familiar with XP windows and Not Apple OS, so please let me know steps for installation and also how and where to download Boot camp.
I appreciate your assistance very much.
Do you need to know the version of the Apple OS ?
any other information you require before I start the process will be of great help too.
Cheers!
Azme Shariff
I do not have a genuine copy of windows XP and i am using an iMac with Mac OS X with an intel i5 processor and 500 GB hard disk drive. Will i be able to install Windows on my mac?
while creating partition,
when i click parttion a screen appears “some files cann’t be transfered”
which files it is talking about
What should i do…
i need to format my mac which is running win xp and reload the xp ,but when i try to boot frommy win xp cd,its not booting . how can i install my xp on mac ? please help.
Hi Dave, when I click “boot camp” for the partition, Apple came up blank. It doesn’t have any boot camp anymore. Hence, how do I make a partition on my Mac? Are there any parallels somewhere? Thanks for your help 🙂
Thanks for the help…I HATE MAC!!…but i needed to refer to this for a buddy who wanted windows installed…question…why even bother buying a computer with the MAC operating system already installed when you all end up putting windows on it anyways? you could save money by not buying a MAC in the first place,they are over-priced and under-performing…At least windows has an Operating System that works…yeah sure it’s flawed because it doesn’t run on a kernel like MAC and Linux but just because it works better than MAC could ever dream I support Windows
i dot have bootcamp.. please
i use ibookG4 i want to run win
Thank you for your article. I have tried myself but the system keeps “installing” Windows but always comes back to the same blue sreen called “Welcome to Windows Installation”. Also it doesn’t ask me to choose between FAT, NIFS, etc I don’t even know if I still have MAC OS running as the computer gets stuck at the blue screen, no matter how many times I restart. Can you help by any chance?
Hi Dave! Great article, however, I am having a MAJOR problem. I have a new (2011) MacBook Pro, 13 inch, 8bg ram, 500 gb hard drive. I partitioned the hard drive for XP at 32 gb. It then told me to insert the windows installation cd and so I did. Then it restarted, started going through the process, and went to the “setup is inspecting your computer’s hardware configuration” screen. And stayed there. And stayed there. So I held the power button to restart, but now it only brings me back to this screen. I hold the eject button and the XP installation cd will not eject. I am freaking out! Any help you advice you could send my way would be Greatly appreciated!
Im trying to install Windows XP on mac via bootcamp. but when system restarts its not going into normal CD rom Boot…but its going to Caldera DR DOS. wht do i need to do install windows XP?
Dave, trying to load WIndows XP Sp2 on my mac mini using bootcamp 3.0. The disc partitions OK but when I come to install WinXP my screen goes grey with an intermittent flashing of the Apple symbol and ‘no system’ icons. I have tried this now with 3 different original WinXP discs. Getting a bit frustrated as i can’t work out the problem. The latest edition of bootcamp will not let you install XP only WIn7 and Vista so am a bit wary of upgrading my Mac OS X 10.6. Any help would be useful.
hi
i want to install windows xp on iMac
i started it welll but after it gets installed and reboots and then goes to a black screen forever! It’s a pirated version- VMware Fusion ran it perfectlly but i can’t use that because the disc space/ram is too small. What can i do to get my iMac to run it with bootcamp?
Dear Dave,
I has installed Win XP on Mac book air yesterday.
Installation of XP was successful.
But the last step “Install Macintosh Drivers for Win XP.exe.” after window installation could not be successful because it said “this is for Winow 7”. So I tried to find Boot Camp for Win XP. But cannot find till now. How can I proceed?
Rgds,
Nicholas Naing (nicholasnaing@gmail.com)
Hello, i have a question about it. I got internet modem but it doesn’t work on mac nad it work on windows Xp. so, if I download it on my macbook pro. is it gonna work i guess?
And is it possible to both of them macintoch and windows xp??
hi
i want to install windows xp on macbook pro
i started it welll but after it gets installed and reboots it shows disc error on the screen… wat do i do…. i have the pirated windows xp installation cd only…..so pls help me to proceed
Hi!
I followed the instructions on your website, and installed xp on my macbook air. however, i’m not able to create the windows xp driver CD for mac, and hence im not able to install the drivers required. Is there any way I can get the drivers?
Pls help!
Thanks!!
Hi Dave, I’m having a problem. I’ve installed WinsXP on my mac using boot camp. Your procedure is different than the one in apple store where we burn the drivers on a cd. We are told to install the mac os x disc for the drivers after uploading wins xp but when i do that the process ceases, there is a window that shows up (green) for a couple of seconds and the first line says “the system has encountered a problem…” and brings me back to the mac portion of my hard drive. How can I fix this?
I used your directions last night and everything went perfectly. Thanks!!!!
in imac key board is not working to press ENTER key while installing XP.
can some one help how to use keyboard while installing xp in imac