Finally, I got Win XP SP3 working in my MacBook!

Geek stuff, if you're not into computer nitty gritty, skip today's post.

Recall that I installed BootCamp (BC) partition in my MB after upgrading my hard drive to 500GB. Well I did a little more research into that and found that to be able to install SP2 (service pack 2) and Sp3, I had to do some registry editing on the Windows registry.

The Win XP disk I had was SP1 vintage, and evidently BC wants to start with Win SP2 before it can do its thing installing the Mac specific drivers.

So during the ensuing weeks after that initial install, I've been burning and throwing away several DVDs in an attempt to "slip-streaming" SP2 and Sp3 packages into my WinXP SP1 installer disk, on my trusty Dell 710m. That attempt to create bootable DVD failed miserably. I think I am almost there because the Mac attempts to boot from it, but I get the message that says: CDBOOT: Couldn't find NTLDR. I do have NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM in the root directory of that disk. So, I decided to go to another direction.

I am still able to boot into my Win XP in my MB, so last night I launched Firefox and searched for "Windows need 4MB ... to install Sp2". I found a discussion board that says I needed to:

1. edit the registry, and
2. to install the service pack using command line with "no backup" option

REGISTRY EDITING (while in Windows, not in Mac OSX obviously):

Go to Start -> Run, enter "regedit" in the command bar.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
\Setup
From the Edit menu select new entry
Give this new entry a name BootDir
Then right click an unselected part of the line and select Modify
Enter C:\

Exit out of the registry editing.

WINDOWS STUPID FILES:
Make sure you have NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, OSLOADER.NTD, OSCHOICE.EXE in the root directory of your Windows HD (BootCamp partition, aka C:\ ).

Extract the SP2 and Sp3 files (assuming you have it downloaded and available in your HD)

Go to Start -> Run
Enter the command line "cmd" that birngs up the black command line window
In that window enter:
> c:\sp2_package /extract:c:\sp2files (NOTE this command assumes you have the Sp2 package in the root C;\ directory)
This command will then extract the SP2 files into the C:\SP2files directory
(BTW, windows "cmd" lines are not case sensitive, so you can actually type away
without care when you are doing this task.
Go to:
> cd c:\SP2Files\i386\update
> update.exe /n ( NOTE: for SP3, the command should be update.exe /nobackup )
The above step will bring up the typical Windows XP popup about agreeing to its ruke etc and install SP2 upgrade. You wll then be asked to restart. At this point you will have to press the "Option" key so it goes back to Windows.

Once you're back in Windows, download and install BCUpdateXP from Apple (or use your Mac OSX disk One if your BootCamp OSX disk is newer version). This time around, after some delays ( seemed like a minute with nothing happening but maybe less, the BCUpdateXP will install Apple specific drivers and after a restart, your Windows XP will say that you're now at SP2. Go through the same cycle with Sp3 upgrade!

So now, I have an MacBook with 400GB partition, running Snow Leopard, and a 100GB partition, running Windows XP Sp3. what am I gonna do with it? Not much, its just a technical challenge to keep my brain cells exercised.