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pedroperez80 · Jan 23, 2006, 02:12 PM

THERE'S A CONTEST AT winxponmac.com FOR THE PERSON WHO CAN GET WINDOWS RUNNING ON MACTEL HARDWARE.

CHECK THE CONTEST RULES AND THE PRIZE AT: winxponmac.com

baw · Jan 23, 2006, 02:34 PM

I'll tell you why XP isn't going to boot on the new Macs. The new Macs do not support MBR, which Windows requires. Your best bet is when a new Vista comes out that supports EFI.

His Dudeness · Jan 23, 2006, 03:31 PM

If I put my Dell running XP on top of my iMac running OS X, do I win?

demibob · Jan 23, 2006, 04:24 PM

Originally Posted by His Dudeness

If I put my Dell running XP on top of my iMac running OS X, do I win?

only if its an intel imac

Drakino · Jan 23, 2006, 06:07 PM

Once people figure out how to modify EFI on the Macs (without turning them into bricks like what is currently happening), it is only a matter of time.

XP 32 bit is already booting on EFI enabled machines that have the CPM backwards compatibility mode.

Right now it seems most people were looking at the EFI empty partition on the new Macs. Once they either figure out how to load something properly out of there, or modify the flash memory part of EFI, booting any x86 OS will be pretty easy.

With the pace the people out there are working at, I expect people will have XP running on an Intel Mac as a bootable OS in the next 1-2 months tops. There are some very talented people working on this, and the effort will only get larger as more people get the new iMacs.

Saying it will never happen is a bit premature. Similar to saying Apple will never switch to Intel processors before the announcement last year.

mduell · Jan 23, 2006, 06:15 PM

Originally Posted by baw

I'll tell you why XP isn't going to boot on the new Macs. The new Macs do not support MBR, which Windows requires. Your best bet is when a new Vista comes out that supports EFI.

You're confusing terms.
AFAIK you can boot 32-bit WinXP on EFI hardware if it supports the legacy compatibility mode, or with a third party bootloader like grub. Installing WinXP it may be more difficult and/or need to be done on another machine.

baw · Jan 23, 2006, 08:24 PM

And I've also read that the new Macs do not have this compatibility module installed as well.

phoenix78 · Jan 23, 2006, 10:32 PM

It may not be as simple as getting it done via software alone... possibly looking at some hardware fudging may be necessary also.

If virtual pc development is going to be continued, then i would expect that it would be made to run close to native-like poerformance since there is more hardware compatibility. So it may be a waste of time trying to dualboot or have a windows OS on it alone.

but i guess people just want to do it because they want to regardless of the practicality of it. If you put restrictions then people will rebel against them... if apple just left it possible to do then why woudl it matter??? they still sell their hardware and software and if people want to spend more money on xp then let them... it may even increase sales of mac hardware

cheers and have fun!
robM

Big Mac · Jan 23, 2006, 11:19 PM

People say the PC edition of VPC has an incurred speed hit. The best bet for virtualization will likely be VMWare, if and when it is brought to the Mactels. But even then people will continue working to attempt to boot into Windows.

B Gallagher · Jan 24, 2006, 04:45 AM

"My MacBook is shipping on the 15th of February. I told my boss that this would replace my IBM desktop and I could boot Windows XP on it."

^^^

That's a little presumsuious don't you think?

phoenix78 · Jan 24, 2006, 07:27 AM

You actually can use xp with it at the moment... there was a little article on the macnn homepage that discusses an application called "Wintel 2.0.something_or_other" (company called openOSX http://openosx.com/ ). its emulated but they claim that it works great since the x86 instructions are identical for any os that uses that hardware.

so i suppose it has already been solved

.....but not in the way that some want. let them waste their time lol.

be excellent!

robM

harrisjamieh · Jan 24, 2006, 10:45 AM

If you look around these forums, people have had bad experiences with Wintel. It is slow and no where near lives up to expectations. They have just this week released Wintel 2.0.1, which is suppost to greatly increase performance, and they now claim you can boot windows 98 in as short a time as 15 seconds. This is a free upgrade for those with Wintel 2.0, so we will have to see what the people who already have it think of it. There are initial reports that some guy on this forums tried installing Win 98 and said the installer seemed pretty quick, however it then hung saying it needed 16MB RAM, even though he had given it 64MB RAM. The guy then said he had no more time to play around with the app as he had to go to work, but I hope to see further reports on the quality of the upgraded product soon.

ViktorCode · Jan 24, 2006, 02:43 PM

I think it will take a boot manager like LILO or grub with EFI support to allow dual-booting into OS X and Windows XP (EFI will load boot manager and boot manager will load Windows XP which knows nothing about EFI).

However I don't see any easy way installing any version of Windows on Mac. We already know that one cannot just put a CD in and tell Mac to start from it. At least it will take partitioning HD before trying to install.

Eriamjh · Jan 27, 2006, 06:18 AM

I'm actually impressed. Apple jumped so far ahead with EFI that I am surprised that no one has gotten Windows installed by this time. It's been, what, almost two weeks? What's the matter with those Mac and XP nerds? They can't figure it out!

It could take months for this to happen. I think that reward is going to go unclaimed.

michaelb · Jan 28, 2006, 09:43 PM

Getting closer...

http://neosmart.net/blog/dual-bootin...-on-a-macbook/

The above is theoretical as the author doesn't have a Core Duo Mac to test on. But someone here may...!

(It also sounds a bit too easy, but it may offer a good lead.)

RodriCO2000 · Jan 28, 2006, 10:17 PM

I do not think that will work since the Vista DVD will not boot the Mac. Or does it?

macintologist · Jan 29, 2006, 03:04 AM

It does not

Todd Madson · Jan 29, 2006, 10:28 AM

Apparently that Wintel 2.0 is a total dog in terms of functionality and speed.
And who's going to want to run Windows98 anymore? Nobody except for a
curiosity. It's XP or Vista that people want. Anything older chuck it.

mrplow · Jan 30, 2006, 01:46 AM

Originally Posted by michaelb

Getting closer...

http://neosmart.net/blog/dual-bootin...-on-a-macbook/

The above is theoretical as the author doesn't have a Core Duo Mac to test on. But someone here may...!

(It also sounds a bit too easy, but it may offer a good lead.)

I don't believe this is possible, solely because of step 9:
Use the Bootable Vista DVD to boot on the MacBook.

You *cannot* boot from the Vista DVD... it's been tried over and over again.
I could be wrong, perhaps some of his previous steps somehow enable this to work... but I highly doubt that as nothing he does touches the Mac's firmware, only files on the hard drive-- which won't be read in the event of booting from DVD anyway.

macintologist · Jan 30, 2006, 01:56 AM

Eventually it will be a simple process for the Layman.

Horsepoo!!! · Jan 30, 2006, 08:13 AM

Originally Posted by macintologist

Eventually it will be a simple process for the Layman.

Was this a dream you had last night? Or did you see this in a crystal ball?

Big Mac · Jan 30, 2006, 08:34 AM

In creating an Intel machine that has frustrated attempts to boot Windows thus far, Apple is a bit more competent than I had assumed.

imitchellg5 · Feb 1, 2006, 07:56 PM

You Cannot Mix The Two! The Ship'll Explode!

Drakino · Feb 2, 2006, 04:32 AM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

In creating an Intel machine that has frustrated attempts to boot Windows thus far, Apple is a bit more competent than I had assumed.

Apple isn't competent in stopping Windows, Apple is competent in designing exactly what they need and no more. Apple is shipping a completely legacy free Intel machine. They have no BIOS compatibility since they didn't need it, and they also shipped a legacy free video solution using UGA instead of VGA.

The rest of the PC industry shipping Intel boxes are barley even getting EFI out the door. And with their requirement on Microsoft for Windows, they are likely at least 2-3 years away from even thinking of offering an EFI legacy free system for sale. Windows still has many hooks into how the old PCs work, requiring things like a VGA compatible video solution and BIOS based disk access to not only boot the system, but also for the installer to function. OS X doesn't have this legacy cruft holding it back.

Vista is trying to go to a full EFI based installer and bootloader, but it's not certain right now if this will be EFI legacy free compatible, since existing betas don't even have full EFI support.

On the front of people getting Windows working on a Mac, some good progress was made last night with people getting the Vista boot loader to start loading drivers. People have a good understanding now how these Macs want to boot. Now they just need to figure out how to deal with the missing legacy support on both the EFI/BIOS front and the UGA/VGA front. Based on the progress being made, I still stand by my statement that it should be possible in the next 1-2 months. As more people get their iMacs or MacBooks, things will accelerate.