When I first got the macBook last year, I attempted to install Win XP but never got it to boot at all. Last month, I upgraded my HD to 500GB, so I thought I'd give it another try. First I partitioned the HD into two part, giving the Mac 400GB, and Windows 100GB with BootCamp. However, right of the bat I already knew something was wrong. Windows XP wants the HD to be formatted as NTFS, but BootCamp only supports FAT32. Thus it was a no starter from the beginning. I went ahead and installed WinXP following the BC instruction, but at the end, Windows will not boot correctly. I think part of the issue is that MacOS still have not been able to write to NTFS partition.
So I took the HD out from the Mac, and using a USB carrier, I hooked that up to my Dell and format the 100GB partition to NTFS. Then I put the HD back into the Mac. Relaunch BC, and proceeded to install WinXP. It went to completion, including the reboot afterwards. Then I was supposed to insert Mac OSX Disk One for the Apple drivers. No Go. Unfortunately, the XP installer I had was of ServicePack1 vintage, and BC does not like that version. It complained about not finding 'UPDATE', or something to that effect. So, copied the Apple driver folder from the Apple disk to the Windows HD. I then individually installed the drivers for the video, trackpad, audio, wireless card, etc. That step got most of the functionality to work from Windows in my Mac. But, keyboard volume control, complete shutdown, and a couple other function did not work. I then downloaded SP2 (and for good measure SP3 service packs).
Invoking the Sp2 did not work, it says I don't have enough disk space, and need a mere 4 MB more. My gosh, I know I had at least 80GB disk space available. So something is wrong here. So the next thing I did was to download Apple's BC 2.1 upgrade. This too failed to launch and install, saying that it could not find ordinal 264 in msi.dll something.
So after wasting almost 8 hours of work doing all that, I thought about "slipstreaming" SP2 into my Windows XP SP1 install disk. I spent the better part of last Friday and Saturday trying to do this, and made several CD and DVD coasters (in other word: un-usable trash disks). So far I have NOT been able to make these new disks bootable.
On hindsight, the fact that I have to reboot the Mac to switch OS is not the way to go. I've contemplated of trying Parallels, but I am not sure if this is even worth the effort. So for now, I just have to switch laptops if I need to run some utilities that only exist in the Windows world. I also installed CrossOver in the Mac, but I don't like the way it intercepts Win applications by creating "bottles". It semed too slow and confusing. That's it for today, November Two.
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You really need to get Parells to use both. Next time you are home I will show you on our office laptop so you can see it in action. Forget this bootcamp stuff.
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