Vista Pre-RC1 on MacBook
There’s been a lot of buzz about the Pre-RC1 build of Vista working with Boot Camp. I decided to give it a try, and it was pretty easy. You’ll want to perform a full backup before you try this!!!
- First, run the BootCamp Assistant and delete your Windows installation. This will wipe out all your data, but will restore your Mac to a single partition. You only need to do this if you want to perform the next step.
- I’m pretty sure Vista won’t run on a FAT32 file system, so you need some way to exchange files between Mac OS X and Windows. I think the best way to do this is to create a third partition. This post (read it all) has lots of details on this. On my MacBook with a 100GB drive, I used this command to shrink my Mac partition and create a 5GB partition for shared data and a 20GB partition for Vista:
sudo diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 72842723328B \ "MS-DOS FAT32" Data 5368709120B \ "MS-DOS FAT32" Windows 21474836480B
- Next, I rebooted, opened a Terminal, and ran this command to create a FAT32 file system on the Data partition (please check the output of
diskutil list /dev/disk0to be sure you are operating on the right partition first or you may wipe out important data!!!):sudo newfs_msdos /dev/disk0s3
- Once I finished these steps, I inserted the Vista DVD, and rebooted the Mac. I held down the Option key as it was starting, and selected the Vista DVD as the boot media.
- I went through the Vista installer as normal, and all was fine. The only oddity was that when it rebooted, it went into Mac OS X. I opened up System Preferences/Startup Disk and told it to boot from the new Windows partition.
- I rebooted and setup continued as normal.
One drawback of this is that Bootcamp Assistant won’t run if you have these three partitions, which make it hard for you to burn new driver CDs. However, you should be able to Control-Click on the BootCamp Assistant app, choose Show Package Contents, and find the driver disk .img file that way. I’m sure there will be other annoyances involved with using a non-standard configuration, so I’m prepared to have to delete these partitions and start anew at least a few more times…
September 5th, 2006 at 2:52 am
Just a heads up - I installed Vista RC1 5600 on my Macbook last night:
You don’t have to delete any of the partitions in OS X, simply restart, hold option, select the Vista dvd, format your Windows partition from the Vista installation, and you’re flying.
That’s assuming you’ve already got a Windows partition.
September 5th, 2006 at 7:54 am
Thanks, Fin! I only needed to delete/create partitions for convenience: I had my Windows XP partition originally set up as FAT32 because I wanted an easy way to exchange files. But I would rather have had my Windows partition formatted as NTFS (I think Vista requires this), so I wanted a third FAT32 partition for exchanging files.
But as you say, if you’re happy with your current partitioning, it’s quite easy to get up and running.
September 6th, 2006 at 9:40 am
Hey Fin, Out of curiousity, how does it run? I’ve been running 5384 on my MBP with some glitches here and there..Does RC1 resolve some of the annoyances?
September 8th, 2006 at 1:00 am
I’ve installed it too. Runs very nicely. Only problem is that I cannot get the display driver to work correctly. Any one out there running Vista RC1 5600 AND getting Aero Glass?
September 8th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
Hi,
I’ve got the rc1 5600 running on my macbok with full aero glass. Worked right out of the box without any display driver installation.
I cannot get the sound working though. Most other websites recommend unpacking the “Install mac…” file with /A /v switches, but it just doesnt do it with the two computers i’ve tried it on. For some reason it just starts the installation program normally. Very strange.
The camera shows up in device manager as “built in iSight” but it doesn’t work in live messenger.
So far not much other problems, i installed office 2007 beta and it works great too.
September 11th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
Timo, Take the main executable and change the name to macdrivers.exe.
Copy the file to the root of the c:\ drive. Open a cmd window, type “cd..” twice to get to the root (or type “cd c:\”) once your there, type macdrivers.exe /A /v
It should prompt you for the location to extract. Once its done extracting close out of all windows. Open the device manager and right click (select:update driver) and the let windows search for the driver in the location you specified (including the sub folders)
It’ll find it I promise.
Ive got 5600 running flawless on my MBP 2.2..
The only other thing is, Dont try installing the Chipset drivers. Performance drops to almost unusable..
September 14th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
I have a 2.0 MB Pro - does the wireless card work in Vista? Does it use the drivers from the Bootcamp CD?
Appreciate any info on the above.
Thanks!
September 15th, 2006 at 3:04 am
Sorry for the delay, I never checked this website again
Trev, I see you got 5600 running! Aero Glass runs perfectly on my MacBook (-pro) too, though the ram usage is pretty high. No other drivers or anything needed.
Timo, do as Trev says - it looks like it’s installing, but it’s actually extracting. Only some of the drivers seem to work though - I haven’t been able to get my right click working at all.
Pocono, as far as I know, the wireless card should work straight away, no need for drivers. It worked for both XP and Vista for me, anyway.
And one final thing Brian - perhaps you should mention the install size of Vista? I can’t really afford (only 60Gb) to create a 20Gb partition, so I created a 10Gb, and Vista uses around 8.5Gb of it =O
Mad stuff.
P.S. - Brian, I’ve changed my email address, (just so you know it’s still me!) the previous one I entered was fin@fin.fin
September 24th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
Fin,
I have not been able to get my MacBook Pro to even boot to the Vista Install Disk completely without Blue screening to a “acpi” error message. I understand this message commonly refers to a problem with the BIOS.
After the “Windows Loading Files…” page, I see the Windows logo loading bar and then it immeditely blue screens. Any suggestions????
October 12th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
Has anyone else head problems with the Mobile Intel 945GM drivers running vista on a 13-inch macbook? I’ve been reading all over the place, and it seems like everyone’s running macbook pros and not having this issue. For the most part I’ve gotten everything else working, but I’m running without a graphics card, and Aero isn’t working. If anyone has any ideas let me know, Thanks
October 20th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
I havent had any problems at all with my macbook (2ghz 2gb ram). do you have 2gb of ram installed? i heard thats the only way that it will work. also, the extraction thing didnt work with my macbook. vista rc1 seems to work pretty darn well. dunno what so say otherwise =\
February 6th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
HI i have installd vista on my macbook, have got everything working, but the disply driver is
defult or something pnpp monitor, and icant change the brightness. my problem is when iam
playing world of warcraft in vista after 1min the screen goes black, just like you have turnd down brightness the game and everything is still on, do any one now some tool or a way to intall the monitor kontrol that was in xp?
January 26th, 2008 at 4:40 am
pls help me out to resolve the issue with macbook isight camara not working in windows vista