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segv2 · Jan 3, 2007, 10:32 AM

I have a brand new Mac Pro 2.66 with a Gig of Ram with updated OS and firmware. I installed an additional 160GB hard drive to install XP on which is partitioned to use the minimum 32 GB for XP. I start boot camp assistant version 1.1.2 with a XP/SP2 cd in the drive and choose to start the windows installer, it reboots and goes straight to loading a gazillion windows drivers. Finally, it gets to a screen where it asks if I want to proceed with the installation, repair an installation or quit. Here's where it just hangs, my keyboard does nothing. I think I've noticed in some other posts that somewhere it should have asked me which partion I want to install on but it never did, it just goes straight to loading drivers and then hangs.

Has anyone seen this or have any idea what's going on here.

ghporter · Jan 3, 2007, 05:03 PM

Something is wrong and the best way to undo whatever it is is to remove the Windows partition and start over-it's not like you'll lose any data this way

. Yes, part of the Windows installation routine is that it shows you available partitions-and you MUST choose the one labeled "C:" or you'll overwrite something important to your Mac. If it's not giving you that choice, then something is wrong with the partition and dumping it and starting over is the best way to fix it.

segv2 · Jan 3, 2007, 11:19 PM

I took your advice and blew away the Windows partion on the second internal drive, then I tried this:

1) made the entire 2nd drive a windows partition
2) made it 32GB again
3) made a 32 GB partition on the boot drive.

Each time in boot camp assistant after choosing the how I want to partition it asks me to place a xp/sp2 disk in the drive and click ok. Afterwards after booting it always goes directly to loading xp drivers for about 2-3 minutes and then gets to the Welcome to Setup screen with three options. Then it hangs. This is killing me, I've gone through ten iterations of this and each time I have to boot with the apple restore cd and switch the boot disk back to the original internal to try again. It's crazy!

So do I understand right that after I click to install xp and boot camp reboots, and BEFORE it starts loading all the windows drivers I should be asked which disk I want to install windows on? It just doesn't do that for me.

wyatt · Jan 16, 2007, 04:55 AM

I don't care what they say they fixed in 1.1.2, I can only get the XP to install correctly on a HDD that is running a full install of OSX as the boot-up disk.

That is, install OSX, from the DVD, on the new hard-drive, boot from that, and then partition and install XP. I believe some people have had luck after that with removing the OSX from the HDD and booting from their normal system HDD, but I have not tried it.

ghporter · Jan 16, 2007, 07:10 AM

Originally Posted by wyatt

I don't care what they say they fixed in 1.1.2, I can only get the XP to install correctly on a HDD that is running a full install of OSX as the boot-up disk.

That is, install OSX, from the DVD, on the new hard-drive, boot from that, and then partition and install XP. I believe some people have had luck after that with removing the OSX from the HDD and booting from their normal system HDD, but I have not tried it.

What Mac are you using? And I do not think that Boot Camp is intended to make your Mac exclusively a PC-I'll bet that there are issues involved with OS X that BC doesn't account for, and thus it breaks when you eliminate OS X completely.

<personal opinion>And WHY would you want to do that? It's MUCH more expensive to buy a Mac than just about any PC, and it's easier to install Windows on PC hardware-buying a Mac to run Windows exclusively is like buying a Lotus to run to the corner store all the time.</personal opinion>

wyatt · Jan 17, 2007, 12:03 AM

Originally Posted by ghporter

What Mac are you using? And I do not think that Boot Camp is intended to make your Mac exclusively a PC-I'll bet that there are issues involved with OS X that BC doesn't account for, and thus it breaks when you eliminate OS X completely.

<personal opinion>And WHY would you want to do that? It's MUCH more expensive to buy a Mac than just about any PC, and it's easier to install Windows on PC hardware-buying a Mac to run Windows exclusively is like buying a Lotus to run to the corner store all the time.</personal opinion>

Who said I was running exclusively Windows? I probably should have reworded that to say "some people have apparently had luck removing OSX from the *additional* drive they installed specifically for XP, after Boot Camp installation." The implication that there was still a HDD running OSX was assumed.

I was saying I had to install and boot OS X off the same drive that I ran boot camp and created the XP (NTFS) partition onto before I could get the XP installation to work correctly. For me that is no big deal, I keep a large 750 HDD split evenly between OSX and XP for both operating modes, my original HDD is used as a scratch disk for both systems. I was merely saying that, if one wanted to run XP on a separate HDD, they would have to install OSX to the drive first and boot off of that. After that, I have no idea of whether the XP on that seperate dirve would still work if you switched back to your normal OSX boot drive.

I couldn't imagine buying my Mac Pro to use solely as a XP workstation, but it works damn well as one when i need it to. I have no preference for either operating system, I have used both macs and PCs since the mid '80's and find each about equal these days, so I like to have both options.

ghporter · Jan 17, 2007, 07:34 AM

Originally Posted by wyatt

Who said I was running exclusively Windows?

I misunderstood your post. Sorry. As far as I can see, Boot Camp should NOT make you install Windows on any specific internal drive-that was one of the upgrades in 1.1.2: allowing Windows to boot from ANY internal drive.

MaxPower · Jan 17, 2007, 09:19 AM

To further add to the Mac Pro/Boot Camp mystery...

I have a PATA HD in the lower optical drive bay that I attempted to install XP on via boot camp (originally chose pata due to the slow SATA IO problems under XP). Boot camp only provided the two SATA HDs that had OSX installs on them as a valid choice. So I reformatted the PATA drive to contain a small OSX install. Boot Camp still wouldn't allow me to chooose it as an install location.

So I figure, why not just install XP by booting up the install disk? Works great until that initial reboot. Then I get a 'system disk error. abort, retry, fail?' So I decide to blow away the FAT32 partition & the small OSX partition using the XP installer. It only gives me the option of using NTFS. Fine, fine. XP installs, Boot Camp drivers install, everything is good.

But! Paralells, in it's new beta will boot using a boot camp partition. YAY! I fire up the beta and it does not 'see' that Boot Camp was used, and therefore just greys out the Boot Camp option on the OS setup screen.

So other than installing XP + the Apple drivers, there is more going on there to make it a 'Boot Camp' partition.

wyatt · Jan 17, 2007, 01:15 PM

Originally Posted by ghporter

I misunderstood your post. Sorry. As far as I can see, Boot Camp should NOT make you install Windows on any specific internal drive-that was one of the upgrades in 1.1.2: allowing Windows to boot from ANY internal drive.

That's what I read too. But it didn't work for me. I got a boot error when trying to boot XP until I redid the process and had OSX installed (and booted) on the XP target drive; it worked fine. YMMV.

segv2 · Jan 17, 2007, 09:05 PM

Originally Posted by wyatt

I don't care what they say they fixed in 1.1.2, I can only get the XP to install correctly on a HDD that is running a full install of OSX as the boot-up disk.

That is, install OSX, from the DVD, on the new hard-drive, boot from that, and then partition and install XP. I believe some people have had luck after that with removing the OSX from the HDD and booting from their normal system HDD, but I have not tried it.

Yea, I tried that. I tried ignoring my new drive completely and putting a 32GB partition on my boot disk. After rebooting windows starts loading all its drivers and then hangs.

goMac · Jan 18, 2007, 01:24 AM

Originally Posted by segv2

Yea, I tried that. I tried ignoring my new drive completely and putting a 32GB partition on my boot disk. After rebooting windows starts loading all its drivers and then hangs.

Could it be a bad CD? I've loaded Windows on numerous other Macs (but not yet a Mac Pro), and have never run into an issue. For all intensive purposes, running under Boot Camp is the same as running under a PC. There are no Boot Camp drivers running in the background to screw things up. Just a standard BIOS emulator, which is pretty common among a lot of PC's today. My PC has a BIOS emulator it uses for running Windows too.