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How To Install Windows Xp On Macbook Air



  1. Hi guys, I just purchased the new 13' macbook, and used bootcamp to install Windows Xp. Thing is, my Windows XP is the copy from Dell that I got; I figured it would work since it is a full version of Windows XP. I used bootcamp, and now that windows xp is installed, I've got 30 days to.
  2. Nov 16, 2006 Help! I just bought my first MacBook Pro. I’m trying to install XP Pro w/SP2 using bootcamp. I get to the point where XP install asks for the product keyI enter it (yes correctly), but I get an invalid product key message. Has anyone run into this. I’ve tried several different XP Pro w/SP2 product key with the same results.

I just tried to install Windows XP SP3 on my MacBook Air 13' 2010 and here I am with some question for you guys. Following your guide I'm able to install everything and all the drivers work nicely: the problem is about the GeForce 320M drivers. The only working video driver seems to be the 198.05 with the modified.inf file.

Replace OSX with Windows XP on Macbook Air without external optical drive

Summary: Install Windows XP (Sp2,Sp3 ) replacing OSX on Macbook Air without using external optical drive.

Warnings:

I must warn you that this method is cumbersome . If you are like myself and just can’t get a hold of an usb optical drive or usb to sata/ide adaptor to hook up a regular pc optical drive read on. This guide is for ADVANCED USERS who know how to use msdos commands and are comfortable with using dos tools to manage files, partition disk etc. and also know how a linux/unix shell behaves. For all the others happy reading and good luck.

No cd drive and apple firmware forbidding legacy os booting from usb drives made this guide so long.

Tools Needed:

  • WindowsXP machine with VMware installed. XP SP2 or higher installation disc.
  • USB PC Keyboard. Flashdrive (min ~2Gb).
  • Norton Ghost, Ranish Partition Manager (min 2.4 ), Hiew (dos version or any other dos hexeditor) .Nero Burning Rom. Nlite.Win98SE startup floppy image. optionally Norton Commander.
  • VMware Fusion, OSX install disc 1 BootCamp folder for XP drivers. rEFit application.

Action:

Part 1. Windows XP setup files preparation (Stuff done on the PC).

How to install windows xp on macbook air louder

1a. Slipstreaming AHCI drivers.

Get nlite and slipstream the AHCI drivers found in OSX Install DVD #1 In the BootCamp/Drivers/AHCI folder.Also check unattended install, and choose from the Unattended method fully unattended. Don’t slipstream the other BootCamp drivers! It borks the setup files and you will not be able to properly setup apple devices in XP after setup finishes.

1b. Creating Dos bootable CD (DosCD)

Create iso image with Nero (Cd-rom boot project, when writing select image writer and when “burning” pick .iso ). In its root copy: I386 folder from the XP setupfiles modified by nLite. Create a folder in the root named DOS and inside it copy the Ranish Partition,Norton Ghost, Hiew, Norton Commander. Make it bootable by loading the Win98 Se startup floppy(file>compilation properties>boot>image file). Save the DosCD project as we’ll need it later.

1c. Preparing XP files using VMware.

Inside VMWare create a new virtual machine. Load the iso into virtual cd drive . Boot it. Make sure it’s set to boot from the DosCD. What we are doing now its also a rehearsal of what will be doing later on the macbook air. After the VM(VirtualMachine) has booted run Part (ranish) and create a new fat32 partition. Set it Active and bootbable, save MBR and exit. restart the VM. now make the new vm disk partition bootable : a:>sys a: c: ;fix the mbr using fdisk /mbr . Using Norton Commander copy all the contents from the CD to the C: drive (or shutdown the VM load the virtual disk into host XP and copy them there–much faster). Optionally configure Smartdrive.exe (goto config.sys and add device=himem.sys . Get smartdrive.exe and himem.sys from the DosCD onto virtual drive’s partition root.) Disconnect DosCD and Restart the VM making sure it boots form the virtual hdd.

Inside the VM from msdos run xp setup: c:>c:i386winnt.exe /s:c:i386 /t:c: . If you did not configure or load smartdrive.exe setup tells you to load smartdrive anyways continue with it (should copy files slower). Depending on how fast you pc is ,this portion will last as long as 1hr and at times it may look as if it has hanged, don’t panic, just wait. Let the installer copy the files, and after completion you will get the ” Dos portion of windows setup is complete . restart the pc removing floppies.” . Don’t restart! Shutdown the VM.

Create 2 new batch files (Will be aded to the new CD to be used in macbook air).

1. pre.bat with following contents

ren $WIN_NT$.~BT WIN_NT$.~BT
ren $WIN_NT$.~LS WIN_NT$.~LS

2.post.bat

ren $WIN_NT$.~BT 2WIN_NT$.~BT
ren $WIN_NT$.~LS 2WIN_NT$.~LS
ren WIN_NT$.~BT $WIN_NT$.~BT

ren WIN_NT$.~LS $WIN_NT$.~LS

del c:$WIN_NT$.~BTbootsect.dat

copy c:2WIN_NT$.~BTbootsect.dat c:$WIN_NT$.~BT

echo use hiew to edit c:$WIN_NT$.~BTbootsect.dat offset 41 make and turn it to 01

Mount the VM virtual disk.

Using Nero, we’ll modify DosCD project to include all the files we would need to setup xp on macbook air. Just load the DosCD project, and add in the cd root: pre.bat, post.bat and from the virtual disk mounted partition $WIN_NT$.~BT , $WIN_NT$.~LS folders. Also copy The BootCamp folder from the OSX Installation Disk #1 . Save it as WinCD.iso

Copy WinCD.iso to flash drive.

Part 2. Actual Install of XP ontop OSX ( Macbook Air stuff)

2a. Preparing the BootCamp partition too boot msdos

Copy WinCD.iso to OSX desktop from the flashdrive. Install VMware fusion. Install rEFit.

Run BootCamp Assistant (Finder>Applications>Utilities). Follow the wizard and create the BOOTCAMP fat32 partition. It will ask for XP cd to continue installer. Just quit it.

Open a terminal window. We enable rEFIT to always show up at boot.

/efi/refit/enable-always.sh type your admin password. that’s it.

Make sure you removed the flashdrive and Restart OSX. If you’ve run properly the /efi/refit/enable-always.sh the rEFit menu will show up. Choose the partition tool. And Modify the MBR structure of the disk with the suggested settings by typing y. You can now test to see if macbook is able to boot the BootCamp partition. It should give an error saying missing operating system. Just push the power button and turn it up again and go to OSX.

Open a terminal window, we”ll create a virtual disk for VMware that will map the physical BOOTCAMP fat32 partition:

mkdir/Virtual

cd /Virtual

/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vmware-rawdiskCreator create /dev/disk0 3 xp ide

should have created 2 files xp.vmdk and a xp-pt.vmdk. Fire up VMware Fusion. Create a new virtual machine. And at the disk prompt choose using existing virtual disk. Go to machine settings and load the /Virtual/xp.vmdk as the only drive! .For CD drive load WinCD.iso. Save your VM.

2a1) Now start the VM and make sure it boots from the WinCD.iso .Try to change the drive to c: a:>c: . If you are able to change to c: transfer the system from a: using a:> sys a: c: . Now disconnect the virtual cd drive, restart VM. If you successfully transfered msdos to the virtual disk it should boot showing up the c:> command line prompt. Poweroff VM. Close VMware fusion.

2a2)OSX can read iso files and mount them as Virtual Disks. Open WinCD.iso from the desktop. and DRAG all the files from the iso to the BOOTCAMP partition maintaining the structure.

2b.Booting macbook air into msdos partition (actual Xp install)

Connect the USB keyboard

Important: always hold Hp 8610 software mac. Alt (Option) Key when powering on the macbook! Until the xp setup finishes and bootcamp control panel is installed and configured to boot from the windows partition this is the only way to boot the msdos partition.

2b1) Restart OSX and hold the Alt (Option) Key. The default apple firmware boot menu appears. Aiseesoft mac blu ray player 6 5 120. Choose Bootcamp Partition (Sometimes appears as Windows). If all went well with the msdos sys command inside Fusion, now you should be at the msdos c:> prompt. skip ahead to 2b3) if not goto 2b2)

2b2) If it does not boot, restart macbook and go back to OSX INSIDE VMwareFusion and use Part to reformat the Bootcamp partition(the third one, don’t touch the first two). Reboot the VM and try again to transfer the msdos to c: using 2a1) step. Repeat 2b1) step to test if 2b2) was successful.

2b3)Warning !!!!! Make sure your macbook boots into msdos before proceeding to the next step!


There are three major problems that we must workarround:

  • a) macbook hangs almost always when certain msdos applications ask you for keyboard input. This is the case with winnt.exe (dos xp install portion) . To workaround it we need to run setup completely unattended. That’s the reason why we chose nLite to create the unattended mode (winnt.sif) file. (It is possible to slipstream AHCI drivers by hand and edit yourself winnt.sif I do not cover that)
  • b) msdos xp setup doesn’t allow us to do a unattended mode clean installs without having any previous versions of windows nt installed. That’s why we did the rehearsal at Part1 on PC with VMware. To work arround this issue. We use the temporary setup files created at Part1 together with pre.bat, post.bat and Hiew (hexeditor) and Norton Commander
  • c) xp setup will bitch about bootcamp fat32 partition having issues that it cannot correct. We will use Part (ranish partition manager) to delete first OSX partition and the second fat32 partition specified by the EFI firmware standard( that apple just doesn’t use)

Start part.exe and delete the first two partitions. Leave only the 3’rd fat32 one created by BootCamp assistant. Save and close part. It will hang on exit. It is normal (the hang bug described above manifests itself). Hold Power for about 10secs and macbook will shutdown. Power it up again.

Notice that MBR is now modified and the osx partition is not reflected anymore. If the system is powered up without the Alt key pressed it will display a blinking folder with a question mark on it.

1.

c:>pre.bat

What this batch does is to rename the temporary xp installation files we generated earlier inside xp vmware.

2.

c:>i386winnt.exe /s:c:i386 /t:c: /u

Starts xp setup in msdos mode unattended. Leave it running until you don’t see any files being copied (and it appears as if it is hanged). Power off the macbook. Start it again.

Now you will be greeted with by ntldr os choose menu. Don’t select install/upgrade. Choose Microsoft Windows or Earlier Version (it’s the first option) This should get you back to the msdos prompt.

3.

These steps are necessary to workaround the unattended clean install issue with not having any previous Nt OS installed.

c:post.bat

this renames current temporary setup files generated by unattended mode setup. In their place it puts the vmware rehearsal generated ones that you copied from the WinCD.iso. c:$WIN_NT$.~BTWinnt.sif gets replaced and now it does not contain any reference to a unattended mode being used. It deletes the c:$WIN_NT$.~BTbootsect.dat file and replace it with C:2WIN_NT$.~BTbootsect.dat because the boot sector from the vmware doesn’t match the apple hdd one generate with the unattended install!

Open hiew.exe and navigate to c:$WIN_NT$.~BTbootsect.dat and hexmode, F3 to edit and go to offset 41 (the 41’th byte in the file) It should read 00 change it to 01. Press F9 to update. Exit the editor.

Reset the macbook (power off and then power it on again as it has no reset button). Select Upgrade/Install from the ntldr menu. It should go ahead until it reaches the destination drive install. Create a new fat32 partition from the setup menu. After it creates it. Just reset the macbook, go back to msdos.

ghost.exe -noide

start norton ghost using the -noide parameter so it would not hang looking for ide controllers. From the Partition menu choose clone partition. Clone the current partition to the xp setup created one, exit ghost.

part.exe

make the first partition active save mbr and and reboot macbook.

If all went well you are now booting from the fat32 partition created by the xp installation menu. Choose the Install/Upgrade. And let setup continue. At xp setup partition prompt delete the second partition (that was created by bootcamp inside OSX). And For installation choose create new one in that place. Select it as the destination. If prompted to convert choose no. From now on XP continues with his regular install.

After setup completes go to the c:BootCamp folder and run the bootcamp installer. This sets up all the necessary drivers and the control panel module. Restart windows so the drivers get loaded and from the bootcamp menu either from taskbar or control panel choose as startup disk windows. This will change macbook air to boot directly from the msdos partition so you won’t have to hold Alt (Option key anymore). That’s it all.

Notes

These are basic guidelines to give you solutions to problems that await ahead of your xp setup. If you fail at any step just try to workarround the issue before yo proceed to the next one.



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Mac vs Windows. Windows vs Mac. Why choose if you can get the best of both worlds by dual booting? Install Windows on Mac so you can jump back and forth from one operating system to another on the same computer.

By now, the practice is well-established and Windows can work on Mac well. In this article, we’ll have a deep look at installing Windows on Mac. Don’t worry, we’ll have your back the whole way through!

Boot Camp for Mac vs virtualization software

If you want to install Windows on your Mac, you have two options. You can either use Mac Boot Camp, a native feature of the macOS operating system, or you can use a third party virtualization program. Both methods have their own pros and cons, so let’s dive in.

Boot Camp is built into the operating system of all Macs. If you go to your Applications > Utilities folder, you’ll see the Boot Camp Assistant app. It makes the separate partition on your hard drive for installing and running Windows. Once Windows is installed in Boot Camp, every time you turn on your Mac, you will be asked to choose the operating system you want to run. This means that in order to switch from macOS to Windows, you need to reboot your computer.

Advantages

  • built into your operating system
  • easy to use — Boot Camp Assistant guides you through the installation process
  • puts less strain on your Mac’s memory and processing power
  • completely free (not Windows of course)
  • easy to update

Disadvantages

  • you need to reboot your computer to switch between the systems
  • transferring data between operating systems isn’t easy

Virtualization programs are third-party applications that allow to install a separate operating system on one machine. They run like any other app on your Mac, so you can see the entire Windows desktop within a window on your computer.

Among the most popular virtualization programs are VirtualBox, Parallels, and VMware. Each one has its peculiarities, but we’ll try to sum up what they have in common.

Advantages

  • you can run both operating systems at the same time
  • easy file integration between systems

Disadvantages

  • you need at least 8 GB of RAM for Mac to run smoothly
  • virtualization apps are not cheap
  • updates are not free

Depending on your specific needs, you can choose the option that works best for you. But we suggest using Boot Camp. It’s a free native feature of your operating system, running directly on your hardware. Therefore, it will be faster than any other method. And below, you’ll find all information on how to run Boot Camp on your Mac.

How to use Boot Camp: Preparing your Mac

1. Check the system requirements

Image retouching software free download. Some versions of Windows require a certain processor and more hard drive space than the others. Therefore, you have to check the documentation that came with your copy of Windows to learn what you need.

You also need to make sure that your Mac is compatible with the version of Windows you want to install. For instance, Windows 10 is supported on these models:

  • MacBook (2015 and later)
  • MacBook Pro (2012 and later)
  • MacBook Air (2012 and later)
  • iMac (2012 and later)
  • Mac Mini (2012 and later)

2. Clean up your hard drive

You need to have at least 55 GB of free disk space on your startup drive for installing Windows on a Mac. And if you don’t feel like spending the next several hours cleaning your Mac manually, you can use a powerful utility CleanMyMac X to find and remove all the junk from your startup disk.

CleanMyMac has everything to finish the 3-hour task of cleaning your hard drive in less than 5 minutes. It will scan every inch of your system and remove gigabytes of junk in two clicks. By the way, CleanMyMac finds about 75 GB of junk on average — more than enough for a smooth Windows installation.

Here’s how to clean your Mac with CleanMyMac X:

  1. Download CleanMyMac here.
  2. Run the app and click Scan.
  3. Click Run.

That’s it! Gigabytes of junk are gone from your computer forever.

3. Back up your Mac

Finally, you should also perform a backup of your Mac in case something goes wrong. Although, it happens very rarely, it’s always better to back up your important data. There are a few methods of backing up your Mac, so choose the most convenient one for you.

You can make automatic backups with Time Machine — software that comes with your Mac. It backs up all data, so you can recover individual files or your entire system from your backups. You may also store files in iCloud and access them whenever you need. iCloud comes with 5 GB of free storage but you can upgrade it any time. If you have an external storage device, you can copy some files and folders on it.

We do recommend you to back up your Mac before installing Windows as it minimizes the chance of losing important data.

How to Install Windows with Boot Camp

Here’s how to install Boot Camp. The installation can be a little time consuming, but it is by no means difficult. Check out the details below.

Step 1: Get a Windows disk image

First of all, you need to get the Windows disk image (ISO file) from the Microsoft website. Here’s how to download it:

  1. Visit the Windows 10 disk image download website.
  2. Go to the Select edition menu and choose Windows 10.
  3. Click Confirm.
  4. Choose the language of installation and click Confirm.
  5. Click 64-bit Download and then click Save.

The ISO file now will be downloaded to your Mac.

Step 2: Open Boot Camp Assistant

Boot Camp Assistant guides you through installing Windows on your Mac. You just have to follow the onscreen instructions. To launch the Boot Camp Assistant, go to Applications > Utilities folder. Click continue and Boot Camp for Mac will automatically locate the ISO file on your system.

Step 3: Create a partition for Windows

When you are done with the Assistant, your Mac restarts to the Windows installer. When you are asked where you want to install Windows, choose the BOOTCAMP partition and click Format.

*Note that this step is only required if you’re using a flash drive or optical drive to install Windows. Sims 4 3d lashes skin detail. In other cases, the right partition will be selected and formatted for you automatically.

Step 4: Install Windows

Installing Windows 10 On A Macbook Pro

To finish the installation, you have to follow the onscreen instructions. Take a long breath — the next 12 steps may seem like climbing Everest, but it’s much easier than you think. Here’s how to install Windows on a Mac:

Install Windows Xp Cd

  1. Choose your ISO file and click the Install button.
  2. Type your Password and click OK. You will see the Windows Setup screen.
  3. Select your language.
  4. Click Install Now.
  5. Type your product key if you have it. Otherwise, click 'I don’t have a product key'.
  6. Select Windows 10 Pro or Windows Home and then click Next.
  7. Click Drive 0 Partition X: BOOTCAMP.
  8. Click Next. Windows 10 will be installed.
  9. When the Setup screen appears, click either Use Express Settings or Customize Your Installation. We recommend you to choose the Customize button and disable most, if not all of the switches.
  10. Then you’ll be asked to create an account. Type a username. You can also add a password if you want.
  11. Click Next.
  12. Choose whether you want to use the Cortana personal assistant or not. You can disable it by clicking Not Now button.

Windows will boot fully so you can use it normally.

On the Welcome to Boot Camp Installer box, click Next and accept the terms in the license agreement. Then click Install to proceed. When the installer completes, click Finish to reboot your machine.

Step 5: Restart your Mac

By default, your Mac will still boot to macOS. To access Windows, you have to turn your Mac off and then turn it on while holding the Option (Alt) key. You will be asked from which drive you’d like to boot.

Note that while in Windows, the Mac’s Command key functions as the Windows key, while the Option key functions as the Alt key. If you have a Touch Bar, you’ll see a complete set of buttons, similar to the Control Strip in macOS.

How to remove Windows from your Mac

If for some reasons you don’t need Windows anymore, you can permanently remove it from your Mac. Follow these steps:

  1. Boot into macOS, launch Boot Camp Assistant and click Continue.
  2. Choose 'Remove Windows 7 or later version' or 'Remove Windows 10 or later version'.
  3. Click Restore when you see the Restore Disk to a Single Volume option.

The Boot Camp Assistant will automatically remove Windows from your Mac.

Warning: All data, including software and files, stored on the Windows partition will be deleted, so make the backup copies first.

That may seem like a lot of steps, but it doesn’t take all that long to install Windows on a Mac. Now you can enjoy two operating systems and switch between them right when you need. Cheers!

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How To Install Windows Xp On Macbook Air
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