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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Notebooks > XP hack on a MacBook Pro

XP hack on a MacBook Pro
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ibook_steve
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Mar 16, 2006, 08:20 PM
 
I would be very interested to hear any reports of anybody who has tried or will try narf's hack to run XP on an MBP. I don't have one, so I can only live dangerously through all of you who do!

Steve
     
Enigmaaron
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Mar 16, 2006, 08:25 PM
 
I have it running one mine. Working on drivers now.
     
ryanbrown345
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Mar 16, 2006, 08:27 PM
 
Originally Posted by Enigmaaron
I have it running one mine. Working on drivers now.

hey did you equally partion the your hd? I was thinking of putting more space on my OS x then XP. How many gig's is xp alone?
     
inkhead
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Mar 16, 2006, 08:31 PM
 
I used iPartition, but it's really tricky to do it this way. Trust me, better to backup your data, and start from scratch. My question is this. If I use disk utility to make a disk image of my entire hard drive. Can I use disk utility and click Restore, to have it restore from the disk image as well? What happens to use accounts and such? Or do I boot from the Mac OS X disc, run disc utility and then restore from a disk image?

Any suggestions? I want to backup my current "machintosh hd" then reformat with the proper partitions and restore my "machintosh hd" onto the mac partition rather than manually copying over apps, preferences and such. Is this going to be easy, or should I just suck it up and manually copy back applications and preferences?
     
Spliffdaddy
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Mar 16, 2006, 08:32 PM
 
You should allow at least 4GB for Windows. Windows files will use approx 1.2GB - but it needs room for the virtual memory (768MB, typically), and room to temporarily backup files during service pack upgrades.
     
jhonizzle
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Mar 16, 2006, 08:48 PM
 
does anyone know if the airport card will work?
     
Enigmaaron
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Mar 16, 2006, 08:50 PM
 
I had originally partitioned my hard drive with a 20gb partition in fat32 and the rest in hfs+ in anticipation of loading windows. Works fine, shows 19.9gb of space with 16.7gb free after the install.
     
ibook_steve  (op)
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Mar 16, 2006, 09:02 PM
 
Originally Posted by jhonizzle
does anyone know if the airport card will work?
Good question. What hardware works and doesn't work? So far, I've only read that games have a problem because of the Mac-specific graphics chip firmware, and there's no way a Windows driver could overcome that. I would think most hardware would work fine with the Airport card looking like a regular wireless network connection, but I could be wrong.

Steve
     
mduell
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Mar 16, 2006, 09:32 PM
 
Originally Posted by jhonizzle
does anyone know if the airport card will work?
Assuming Apple is using Pro/Wireless 3945ABG from Intel, it should work.

Originally Posted by ibook_steve
Good question. What hardware works and doesn't work? So far, I've only read that games have a problem because of the Mac-specific graphics chip firmware, and there's no way a Windows driver could overcome that. I would think most hardware would work fine with the Airport card looking like a regular wireless network connection, but I could be wrong.
Huh? Since they switched to EFI instead of OpenFirmware, the video card firmware should be the same as in EFI PCs.
     
Drakino
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Mar 17, 2006, 04:51 AM
 
I have it running on mine, still need to get all the drivers sorted out. Right now, Bluetooth, sound via the speakers, and graphics drivers are the hurdles I am trying to get past. The sound drivers load, but only produce sound via the headphone port. Bluetooth, I can't find a driver to work with the card Apple used, and graphics I'm not sure what is wrong.

Speed while though is what one would expect on this type of laptop. It's pretty impressive to see it running. As long as the driver situation for the video card gets worked out, I can toss the Dell brick I currently use for mobile gaming and instead use the MacBook.
<This space under renovation>
     
pete
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Mar 17, 2006, 08:22 AM
 
I know this is premature, but do you guys think it will eventually be possible to run Dragon Naturally speaking 8 on XP on macbook pro? The 'requirements', besides a basic pentium CPU and RAM, is a "Creative® Labs Sound Blaster® 16 or equivalent sound card supporting 16-bit recording"

Thanks for any input. I'm not sure if I understand how all this is working and what is missing...
     
Eug Wanker
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Mar 17, 2006, 08:25 AM
 
Originally Posted by jhonizzle
does anyone know if the airport card will work?
Driver FAQ

For some reason they list wireless drivers being available for the MacBook Pro AND the MacBook. Hmm...

Oh and the wireless drivers for the iMacs are from Dell.
     
geraldartman
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Mar 17, 2006, 12:06 PM
 
Installed on my MBP 1.8 this morning after repartioning last night.

1- you cannot r/w to intel partition it is locked. Will have to share via alternative
2- the shut down windows doesn't appear to rebook the computer

Working on the wireless card install and net connection now.
I installed Professional Home Design - Platinum and it zipped along no problems including the install of acrobat reader for the manual. We'll see if I can get TroopMaster up and running- my ultimate goal.

Sharing files through is a disappointment. Haza for USB drives.

Jerry
     
Eug Wanker
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Mar 17, 2006, 12:20 PM
 
1- you cannot r/w to intel partition it is locked. Will have to share via alternative
What do you mean exactly?

You can install software to that partition but you can't save documents to it? How does that work?
     
geraldartman
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Mar 17, 2006, 12:47 PM
 
Its a locked drive without write privileges. It appears in Finder - mine shows as "untitled". Get Info allows read only. No options to change settings which would indicate that the disk is write locked outside the user/groups schema.
     
Macola
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Mar 17, 2006, 01:14 PM
 
Edit--Never mind...was thinking of virtualization
I do not like those green links and spam.
I do not like them, Sam I am.
     
Eug Wanker
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Mar 17, 2006, 02:50 PM
 
Originally Posted by geraldartman
Its a locked drive without write privileges. It appears in Finder - mine shows as "untitled". Get Info allows read only. No options to change settings which would indicate that the disk is write locked outside the user/groups schema.
Oh so you mean unwritewable from within OS X. OK, that's fine by me.

BTW, is your Windows install partition using NTFS? If so, OS X does not support NTFS writes anyway AFAIK. Perhaps if you formatted your Windows partition to FAT32 it would work.

P.S. A year ago I never would have guessed I'd be talking about troubleshooting Windows installs on a Macs in 2006.
     
mintcake
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Mar 17, 2006, 03:18 PM
 
All this talk of tweaking drivers and fixing partitions... Isn't this why we switched?

But yeah, get the games working, I'll sign up.
     
wilsonng
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Mar 17, 2006, 05:33 PM
 
I'd love to see some games working on this but I guess I'm quite happy with the xbox and gamecube in the living room.
     
mintcake
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Mar 17, 2006, 05:40 PM
 
Well I'm also more than happy with my Cube and my PS2, which is why it wasn't a wrench to give up the PC, but there are a couple of games that I would dearly love to have access to...

I'm thinking about putting a partition on my mpb when it arrives in preparation.
     
drpepper
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Mar 18, 2006, 10:45 AM
 
Originally Posted by geraldartman
Its a locked drive without write privileges. It appears in Finder - mine shows as "untitled". Get Info allows read only. No options to change settings which would indicate that the disk is write locked outside the user/groups schema.

So this makes me wonder...If you install MacDrive on XP, would that allow it to see, r, and w to the Mac partition?
     
das
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Mar 18, 2006, 07:08 PM
 
You can format the Windows partition as FAT32 instead of NTFS and the OS X environment will be able to write to it just fine. Also, yes, MacDrive works within the Windows environment to read/write to the OS X partition regardless of how the Windows partition is formatted.

Also, it's not Intel wireless in the MacBook Pro, it's Atheros 5424 802.11a/b/g wireless.

All devices and functions work, except:

- IR receiver
- Backlit keyboard
- ExpressCard slot
- iSight
- Accelerated graphics (but disabling hardware acceleration with the generic driver works just fine, and everything is plenty fast for any non-intensive (read: non-gaming) use)
- Bluetooth (except via a convoluted procedure some have gotten to work)

And yes, ethernet and wireless DO work. Just see the driver wiki for more info.
     
Morn
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Mar 19, 2006, 12:50 AM
 
And does the macbook whine with XP or is it only OSX that it whines about?
     
michaelb
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Mar 19, 2006, 07:26 AM
 
I'm seriously thinking of going out tomorrow and buying a MacBook Pro, simply because of this.

I've been running XP on my iMac Core Duo 17" all day and I'm so impressed by the result - it simply is a PC - that I think the holy grail of dual platform use has been reached.

Many of us dual platform'ers have a PC in another room and use Windows Remote Desktop to control it when we need the use of a PC (Virtual PC simply didn't have the performance). But this is so much better.

It's fast, looks fantastic, as if the iMac was made for running XP (I suppose that's a sort of insult - "dull little boxes"). Sandra benchmarks for Drystone and Whetstone put it just shy of an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+. That's almost a 4GHz P4 in raw performance sitting in front of me, and far faster than the PC I built last year. 3D acceleration is missing, but as XP is a very flat 2D interface relative to OS X, it doesn't depend on graphics acceleration to nearly the same extent. Highly usable. Scrolling through this page in Firefox under XP is as smooth as I need. Windows-only mapping software works well, and its USB drivers installed flawlessly.

It's also the quietest PC I've ever used (even though I built mine with Zalman coolers) and even though it's only been feasible for the past few days, the community effort of finding Windows drivers to support Mac hardware has been incredible: most important things on the iMac are working - Ethernet, Wi-fi, Bluetooth, Intel chipset features, just missing 3D video and external sound (which is kinda an advantage for Windows - don't have to listen to the silly sounds it makes popping up speech bubbles). I'm even sure before long the adventurous hackers will have the iSight camera and infrared working.

For me to buy a MacBook Pro what I'd really like is for Apple to hurry up and announce the 12/13" MacBook Pro, because that is why I'm really waiting for, but now I'm thinking it might be better to get the 15" because...

With all the energy going into ferreting out drivers for it (everything on my iMac Core Duo is working apart from 3D acceleration and external sound), the Windows PC capabilities of the 15" will be far ahead of newer models.

If someone works out X1600 drivers within the next 48 hours, my decision's made, no question!
     
das
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Mar 19, 2006, 02:40 PM
 
Originally Posted by Morn
And does the macbook whine with XP or is it only OSX that it whines about?
Believe it or not, it doesn't whine under Windows.
     
Nuks
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Mar 19, 2006, 03:25 PM
 
So if you want to switch over to XP quickly (to check website compatibility or something) do you need to shut down the computer, and restart it to get into XP? Or can you switch into it right from OSX?
     
das
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Mar 19, 2006, 03:32 PM
 
Originally Posted by Nuks
So if you want to switch over to XP quickly (to check website compatibility or something) do you need to shut down the computer, and restart it to get into XP? Or can you switch into it right from OSX?
This is a dual-boot solution. Only one OS can be booted at a time, and yes, you have to reboot into the other OS to use it.

What you describe is a "virtualization" or "virtual machine" solution, where Windows (or another OS) is running at near-full-speed alongside Mac OS X.

This type of solution will no doubt come at some point, but this isn't it, and this can't be modified to behave in that way.
     
Ryknow215
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Mar 20, 2006, 01:31 AM
 
I'm indifferent to dual-booting between XP and OS X but I found this ebay item to be quite funny. So now the "Holy Grail" of dual-booting has been accomplished and you can now buy MacBook Pros on Ebay with XP preloaded on them! This guy wants $2500 for the 1.83 GHz version....I wonder how many suckers are willing to pay that.

My dual-booting days have long passed....and that was between Fedora Core 1 Linux and WinXP. These days, it's OS X for me
21.5" iMac | OS X 10.6.4 | 3.06 GHz | 4GB DDR3
Motorola Droid | 2.2 Froyo
Playing together nicely!
     
   
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