Filed under: Hardware, OS, Software, Macbook Pro
What to do if you followed the "Other" dual-boot instructions?
I'm fortunate to have two MacBook Pros here at Pourhadi Labs. Yesterday I jumped on the opportunity to load XP
on one of them with Boot Camp. But when OnMac.net announced their Windows/Mac
dual-boot solution a little while ago, our first instinct was to install right away and give it a whirl. Five hours,
six Cokes and a severe case of Post-Progress Bar Stress Disorder (PPBSD) later, we had a working Windows OS slowly
sucking the life from one of our MacBooks. That was all well and good at the time...but then Apple introduced Boot Camp
and a BIOS-enabling firmware patch and we were stuck with a copy of XP without all the bells and whistles of a
functioning Windows installation (like, uh, graphics support).Attempting to install the firmware update on a machine with the OnMac.net hacked-up bootloader doesn't work. Dunno why -- we'd get the loud beep noise, indicating the MBP recognized an update was ready to install. But instead of loading it, OS X loaded instead. So hmph.
Turns out the only solution (that I found, at least), unfortunately, is totally formating your drive. Again. Then re-install OS X, load the firmware patch, and run Boot Camp. A good afternoon worth of tedious, PPBSD-inducing work.
Of course, I probably missed something that would've made the whole process easier. And I guess if you don't feel like going through the hassle of doing the installation The Right Way, you could get a Macintosh Drivers Disk (produced by Boot Camp) from a friend with an (a) equivalent and (b) firmware-patched machine. If you do go that route, let us know how it worked.
In fact, if you've installed the OnMac.net solution, let us know in the comments how you feel about the Boot Camp thing -- and what you're going to do.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Gene said 8:08PM on 4-06-2006
I installed the OnMac way a few weeks ago, so I was also a bit bummed that an easier way showed up. But all is cool now, because here's what I did: using Pacifist, I pulled the file "DiskImage.dmg" from the BootCamp installer. I burned this onto a CD using Disk Utility. Then, I booted up into Windows and used that disc to install all the drivers that Apple provided!
Now my Windows installation is working just like Apple's BootCamp allows -- eject button, sound, display -- all stuff that wasn't working properly using the OnMac solution.
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TK2K said 8:30PM on 4-06-2006
I used the original boot loader, and now i have boot camp on my macbook pro.
I have to say, Boot Camp is far better, far far better. For one, you can set a default os to boot to. for two, its more stable. sometimes the boot loader woul 'crash' and give me a command line interface and i had to type "g" to get it to work.
lastly, boot camp firmware update gives us a LOT! it unlocks the virtualization build into the yonah cpu, without the update, VT is dissabled on the intel chips.
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Aaron Tait said 9:47PM on 4-06-2006
I installed the OnMac solution on my 20" Core Duo iMac and unfortunately the solution suggested in the article did not help me with getting the firmware to work again correctly. In fact, since I installed 10.4.6 on the iMac the OnMac bootloader no longer works. The firmware restore CD only works if your firmware is completely screwed, otherwise it doesn't work at all. For the time being it looks like I am stuck. No problems though, I have a nice 250GB Lacie hard drive I can back everything up on before I repartition.
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Brandon Hays said 9:55PM on 4-06-2006
I thought I'd bricked my mac when I repartitioned using the Restore disk trying to switch to Boot Camp from XoM on my MBP.
I ended up having to do a command-line GPT repartition, but that was the most terrifying Mac hour of my life! Thank goodness for the onmac.net community!
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milkmage said 10:32PM on 4-06-2006
we'll call this
cross-switching.
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Bruce Taylor said 11:07PM on 4-06-2006
I, like you, jumped at the winonxp solution, however I followed instructions over on osx86project.org on disabling the earlier xom which enabled me to install the latest firmware upgrade without trashing the existing OSX install.
After screwing around for some 4 hours I realized that there was no way to take advantage or in fact delete the existing partition created by windows during the earlier install process (winonxp). My solution ended up being to create an image of my osx via another machine, with my MBP in Firewire Mode, delete the existing parition structure, restore the image and only then run the bootcamp partition manager. Many hours later (still maybe less than the winonxp option) I had the new partition and OS installed.
Why? Heaven knows the answer. I use windows maybe once per month. It's cost me more in virus scanning software, macdrive compatibility and
more time than I care to think about. Just makes me a hateful person. I LOVE OS X and would rather never have to use Windows, period. I rely on OSX, I can't say the same about XP.
The end result, I have to agree. Moving to Bootcamp is worth the experience and, in my shallow opinion, will position me better for virtualization and leopard, when it arrives.
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xSmurf said 4:33PM on 4-08-2006
"And then it just went bleep bleeep bleeep... and my paper was gone. It was a really good paper. It's kind of... a bummer"
Miss Feiss, will you ever stop having the right word?
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