Boot Camp... installing XP from an external optical drive?
deano
down...
White 13" MacBook, Intel core duo, 2ghz, can't identify model on Apple
site, but number printed on base of unit is A1181.
System is running OS X 10.5.7 and all firmware is up to date.
Boot Camp installed and internal drive has been successfully
partitioned with 10gb allocated to Boot Camp as FAT32.
MacBook won't mount any of the XP installer discs I have.
Then again, neither will it mount any other discs I have tried, even
after using an IXOS lens cleaner, so maybe the internal optical drive
is knackered!
Connected up a LaCie, external FireWire, optical drive, to the MacBook
and the XP installer disc mounted successfully and appeared on the
desktop.
Ran Boot Camp, to proceed with install, using XP on external optical
drive.
Boot Camp judged all was well and restarted Mac Book into MSdos mode.
After a short time, the prompt "No bootable device -- insert boot disc
and press any key to continue" appears!
My take on this is that, while the Mac system recognises the LaCie
optical drive as a boot-up device, Dos doesn't!
How can I get XP onto the MacBook? Any ideas? Is there somewhere that
lists compatible external, bootable optical drive devices for Dos?
Thanks very much for any tips.
dean.
PGG
> Boot Camp judged all was well and restarted Mac Book into MSdos mode.
>
> After a short time, the prompt "No bootable device -- insert boot disc
> and press any key to continue" appears!
>
> My take on this is that, while the Mac system recognises the LaCie
> optical drive as a boot-up device, Dos doesn't!
>
> How can I get XP onto the MacBook? Any ideas? Is there somewhere that
> lists compatible external, bootable optical drive devices for Dos?
It's not strictly DOS. Instead your Mac is emulating a PC BIOS, or at
least enough of the BIOS interrupt calls to allow the Windows
installers to work. On a standard PC the BIOS is in the system ROM on
the motherboard, with some other devices (mainly video and storage
adaptors) also having their own BIOS extensions.
This allows XP to install itself on virtually any hardware without
having to go through the relevant device driver. The XP installer just
uses the BIOS to copy a minimal XP OS onto the hard drive, before
booting that system up and using that to install the rest.
In this case the BIOS emulation isn't seeing your external drive. It
may simply be that the emulation BIOS doesn't contain any support for
booting off Firewire CDs. Another possibility is that your CD drive
itself doesn't support bootable CDs, but it will have to be fairly old
if that's the case.
Chris Ridd
Does "BootCamp" support booting from USB sticks? If you can wedge XP
onto one of them...
--
Chris
Jon B
Quick google suggests this is generally a problem on any windows
machine.
> Thanks very much for any tips.
> dean.
I'd suspect it will probably end up a cheaper and easier task to replace
the internal drive, although the IDE drives fitted have now been 'end of
lifed' by Panasonic so stocks are now drying up.
--
Jon B
Above email address IS valid.
<http://www.bramley-computers.co.uk/> Apple Laptop Repairs.
deano
Hi again Chris ;)
Yes... that was one of my meandering thoughts this morning... or even
an old
USB zip drive... an old floppy would really be pushing it!
I hot-tailed it over to my dad's house, as I remembered I gave him an
Iomega
USB optical drive a while back, only to be told that he'd chucked it
away, after
buying a new LaCie firewire DVD drive!!
Aaaagggghhhh... old people and their house pride!!
May not have worked, but still would have been good to try!
Now looking for someone I know with an XP compatible boot device with
a USB
port, or sum-such-like!
Another thought... can XP be installed over a network, like OSX? I
have access to people with Windoze
boxes... could there be a way I can connect my MacBook up to one of
them, via a crossover cable, chuck
the XP installer in this box and netboot the MacBook that way... then
installing XP across the link?
hmmmnnnn
d.
deano
Thanks for the interesting info and putting me right on my DOS
ignorance... I really don't know "FAT32 all" when it comes to Windows
platforms and their hosts. I do get what you're saying though... in
mountaineering terms, it's like there being just enough of a finger-
hold on the emulated PC BIOS, for the windows installer to grab hold
and pull itself up and over the edge :)... long way down if it slips
though!
Ric Harris
>
> - Show quoted text -
Just go get yourself a USB CDROM, or a USB->IDE adaptor and borrow a
standard CDROM. It's non trivial to install Windows off USB or over a
network without the complication of Boot Camp etc.
Boot Camp is great when you use it as per Apple's instructions - you
are going to need a CDROM drive...
deano
I have a couple of G4 desktops to hand which have various faults with
them...
I could take the IDE CDROM out of either of these... would they go
into the
MacBook do you think? I'll have a trawl and see if they are compatible
but
in principal, could this work?
d.
Chris Ridd
Probably not - MacBook optical drives are SATA not IDE.
At least they are nowadays - use System Profiler.app on each machine
and look at Hardware>ATA and Hardware>Serial-ATA to see what they
actually have. www.lowendmac.com is a good place for looking at machine
specs as well.
--
Chris
deano
> On Wed, 1 Jul 2009 04:17:15 -0700 (PDT), deano
>
> <d.heighing...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> >Another thought... can XP be installed over a network, like OSX?
>
> demo of VMWare fusion and an ISO image of the XP disc.
>
> I.e., a virtual machine can be used as a stepping stone to get
> a non-virtual XP installation running.
>
> The method is a little intricate, so I hesitate to describe it.
> --
> R
Please could you attempt to describe it? Or point me somewhere
I can learn more?
d.
deano
> On Sat, 4 Jul 2009 00:34:07 -0700 (PDT), deano
>
> <d.heighing...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> >Please could you attempt to describe it? Or point me somewhere
> >I can learn more?
>
> A new virtual machine is created that will boot off the Windows ISO.
> 'vmware-rawdiskCreator' is used to map that real hard disk partition
> to the virtual disk of the virtual machine. And XP is installed on the
> virtual machine. Finally, you need to do some tidying up to make sure
> that Windows will boot properly when not running in a virtualized
> environment. That means making sure that the correct SATA drivers
> are picked up when booting, or else Windows will bluescreen. You'll
> also want to make sure your keyboard and mouse are working.
>
> As I said, intricate. But it does work.
>
> --
> R
Hmmmnnn... not so easy is it!
I have a demo of Fusion and an ISO of my XP disc.
There's already a FAT32 partition on my HD, that was created using
BootCamp, is this OK to leave as the final partition that I will
transfer the permanent version of Windows on to?
When creating a Virtual Machine, using Fusion, do I use the Windows
Easy Install and select my ISO disc image as the Installation Media?
Or, do I create a custom virtual machine and then boot somehow into
that, using the ISO?
I'm not having much luck at the moment, as the setup process for
installing windows, is tripping out and is telling me that VM tools
need to be installed, which I can't do, until the guest system is
running.
A bit lost... can you help?
cheers
d.
deano
> On Sun, 5 Jul 2009 04:43:49 -0700 (PDT), deano> Not particularly!
>
> Not too difficult if you've done it once before and understand
> the process, but I wouldn't recommend this method to most
> people.
>
> >I have a demo of Fusion and an ISO of my XP disc.
> >There's already a FAT32 partition on my HD, that was created using
> >BootCamp, is this OK to leave as the final partition that I will
> >transfer the permanent version of Windows on to?
>
> Windows.
>
> >When creating a Virtual Machine, using Fusion, do I use the Windows
> >Easy Install and select my ISO disc image as the Installation Media?
> >Or, do I create a custom virtual machine and then boot somehow into
> >that, using the ISO?
>
> method is problematic, though.
>
> >I'm not having much luck at the moment, as the setup process for
> >installing windows, is tripping out and is telling me that VM tools
> >need to be installed, which I can't do, until the guest system is
> >running.
>
> do it without the easy install?
>
> >A bit lost... can you help?
>
>
> Sorry, couldn't resist :)
>
> Good luck!
> --
> R
Great, I needed a new compass ;)
I found my way again and now have XP running as a VM, under Fusion
(good bit of software this BTW, I'm tempted to buy a copy and run XP
that way... I used to use virtual PC many moons ago and this is like
that, but so much better... love that Unity!).
Meantime, just to take up the challenge, I will endeavour to get XP
onto a raw disk (the Bootcamp partition), as you described above.
Think I can crack that, using VM Rawdisk-creator (yet to try), but
could do with some guidance on how to "tidy up" (as you put it)
afterwards... what do I use to do this, and should I definitely format
the bootcamp volume as NTFS? Using what, from the Mac side or PC side
of things?
Thanks for sticking with this,
d
Flavio Matani
> On 2009-07-03 07:34:10 +0100, deano <d.heig...@btinternet.com> said:
>
> > On 1 July, 14:02, Ric Harris <infobub...@gmail.com> wrote:
<snip previous>
> > I have a couple of G4 desktops to hand which have various faults with
> > them...
> > I could take the IDE CDROM out of either of these... would they go
> > into the
> > MacBook do you think? I'll have a trawl and see if they are compatible
> > but
> > in principal, could this work?
>
> Probably not - MacBook optical drives are SATA not IDE.
>
> At least they are nowadays - use System Profiler.app on each machine
> and look at Hardware>ATA and Hardware>Serial-ATA to see what they
> actually have. www.lowendmac.com is a good place for looking at machine
> specs as well.
IDE (or, rather, ATAPI) on G4 here.
--
flavio matani
guitar tuition
http://www.flaviomatani.co.uk
http://fflavio.com
R
> I found my way again and now have XP running as a VM, under Fusion
> (good bit of software this BTW, I'm tempted to buy a copy and run XP
> that way... I used to use virtual PC many moons ago and this is like
> that, but so much better... love that Unity!).
Pleased to hear it!
> Meantime, just to take up the challenge, I will endeavour to get XP
> onto a raw disk (the Bootcamp partition), as you described above.
> Think I can crack that, using VM Rawdisk-creator (yet to try), but
> could do with some guidance on how to "tidy up" (as you put it)
> afterwards... what do I use to do this, and should I definitely format
> the bootcamp volume as NTFS? Using what, from the Mac side or PC side
> of things?
A few pointers:
(1) When you have created the mapping using vmware-rawdiskCreator,
you must add the disk to your virtual machine. Be sure not to copy it.
You want to install to the original partition, not a copy.
(2) NTFS is the best choice in most cases.
(3) Before you boot from your real partition without virtualization, you
may need to make the partition active. The OS X command line utility
'fdisk' can be used for this purpose.
--
R
(3)
Jon B
The unibodys are SATA, earlier models are IDE, however the laptop bus
will not provide sufficient power for a desktop drive (and you'd need
adapter cables from the smaller connector used.
deano
> Flavio Matani <flavio_mataniTAKETHISBIT...@mac.com> wrote:
> > Chris Ridd <chrisr...@mac.com> wrote:
>
> > > On 2009-07-03 07:34:10 +0100, deano <d.heighing...@btinternet.com> said:
>
> > > > On 1 July, 14:02, Ric Harris <infobub...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > <snip previous>
>
> > > > I have a couple of G4 desktops to hand which have various faults with
> > > > them...
> > > > I could take the IDE CDROM out of either of these... would they go
> > > > into the
> > > > MacBook do you think? I'll have a trawl and see if they are compatible
> > > > but
> > > > in principal, could this work?
>
> > > Probably not - MacBook optical drives are SATA not IDE.
>
> > > At least they are nowadays - use System Profiler.app on each machine
> > > and look at Hardware>ATA and Hardware>Serial-ATA to see what they
> > > specs as well.
>
> > IDE (or, rather, ATAPI) on G4 here.
>
> The unibodys are SATA, earlier models are IDE, however the laptop bus
> will not provide sufficient power for a desktop drive (and you'd need
> adapter cables from the smaller connector used.
> --
> Jon B
> Above email address IS valid.
> <http://www.bramley-computers.co.uk/> Apple Laptop Repairs.
Thanks Jon (and Flavio),
I guess I was grasping at straws... having changed my career from
graphic design (pre-mac & post-mac) to design and build (hands-on
construction, plumbing, wiring etc), I made the mistake of treating
technology like a brick! You can re-use a brick from a 20 year old
wall, in a new wall... not so for comp/tech... as if a CD/DVD drive
from a 10yr old desktop mac would work in a 5yr old laptop! What was I
thinking???
Perhaps more annoying, in the past, I have owned several USB CD/DVD
drives that would have solved my problem, but either gave (or threw)
them away, to be replaced with the latest firewire devices!
However, thanks to "R", my eyes have been opened to the abilities of
VM_Fusion, which can install Windows from a ISO disk image, negating
the need for a physical CD drive, AND with the added bonus to then be
able to map the virtually installed Windows, to a raw/real disk/
partition, which then doesn't need the Fusion app to function... great
if you don't want to shell out for a registered version of VM-Fusion!
You can do the above using the 30-day demo version.
Another obstacle overcome... thanks mainly to "R" and others, who have
willingly contributed to this thread.
It's why I love NGs and Google Groups!!
d.
deano
Now I have XP running under VM, and want to get this system (as is)
onto the BootCamp partition, do I have to install a completely new
copy of XP on the BootCamp partition, or do I just prepare the
BootCamp partition and then migrate the 'already functioning' XP out
of a virtual environment (disk) and onto the Physical one?
Just trying to get to grasp the dynamics of what I'm trying to achieve
here.
R
> Now I have XP running under VM, and want to get this system (as is)
> onto the BootCamp partition, do I have to install a completely new
> copy of XP on the BootCamp partition, or do I just prepare the
> BootCamp partition and then migrate the 'already functioning' XP out
> of a virtual environment (disk) and onto the Physical one?
>
> Just trying to get to grasp the dynamics of what I'm trying to achieve
> here.
Hopefully it should already be installed to the physical partition.
That's the point of the 'vmware-rawdiskCreator' step: what you
write to the virtual hard disk ends up on the mapped physical
hard disk partition. If it all goes according to the plan, that is.
Can you see lots of Windows files on that partition in Finder?
Cheers.
--
R