do i need bootcamp?

[shiunn]

hi ppl,
I have a macbook, and my hdd has two partitions, both of which are mac os extended journaled. one of partitions are basically empty. i tried to run bootcamp and it says "the startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition". so what can i do? do i need bootcamp to install vista? or can i just insert the dvd in and restart from it?

[Cromulent]

Why have you already got two partitions? If you want to use boot camp use the boot camp assistant to partition the drive for you. Then just follow the instructions.

[darkcurse]

Open Disk Utilities and erase the other partition. Then run bootcamp or if you format the other partition to MSDOS(i.e FAT32) then you can just boot of the install DVD and install Vista.

[shiunn]

oh, i should have mentioned. i made the two partitions myself when i bought a new hdd for the macbook.
so, what is bootcamp? is it just a collection of drivers for xp/vista?
how do i proceed now? just make the installation myself?

[shiunn]

Open Disk Utilities and erase the other partition. Then run bootcamp or if you format the other partition to MSDOS(i.e FAT32) then you can just boot of the install DVD and install Vista.

ok, will give it a try. so, just restart into the vista dvd huh?

[Cromulent]

oh, i should have mentioned. i made the two partitions myself when i bought a new hdd for the macbook.
so, what is bootcamp? is it just a collection of drivers for xp/vista?
how do i proceed now? just make the installation myself?

Boot camp enables you to repartition your hard drive (non destructively) and also is a collection of drivers for windows.

Why don't you just select the second partition (the one you made) in the boot camp assistant and tell it to use 100% of that partition (this will delete everything on the partition when you install windows)? Then it will just ask you to burn a driver CD and you are good to go.

[darkcurse]

Bootcamp is basically a graphical partition tool which helps you to resize the main partition so that you can install windows. It also helps to get rid of or mask the EFI partition or something like that. I can't really remember. But you can still go through the steps to install Vista.

Haha, crap.... Crom beat me to it again :P

[Cromulent]

Bootcamp is basically a graphical partition tool which helps you to resize the main partition so that you can install windows. It also helps to get rid of or mask the EFI partition or something like that. I can't really remember. But you can still go through the steps to install Vista.

It emulates a BIOS as macs use EFI which is incompatible with windows. At least that is my understanding.

[shiunn]

Cromulent: I can't even get the bootcamp assistant to get going beyond the "the startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition."

and now, disk utility won't let me format my second partition to fat32. i've only the option of macos extended/ journaled

[shiunn]

hey ppl,
bad news, i can't install vista. i've got to formatting my 2nd partition to ntfs, but then, it still says that windows can't install. the hdd is of gpt partition style.
what should i do?

[onebloodonelife]

According to the Boot Camp Setup Guide, you can't install Windows until you restore the disk to a single partition OS X volume. Once you do that, you should be good to go.

[shiunn]

According to the Boot Camp Setup Guide, you can't install Windows until you restore the disk to a single partition OS X volume. Once you do that, you should be good to go.

managed to do it last night. thanks!
funny thing is, when re-partitioning, i chose to take out 30gb for the windows partition, and somewhere down the line while bootcamp was trying to partiton my hdd, something went wrong. so i take the size down to 29gb and was good to go. i realised i'm not the only one with this problem.

but anyway, i've got the best of both worlds now. vista looks really nice. although i've not explored enough, i must say the windows media centre is much better than osx's front row. and its photo gallery can "watch folder", where iphoto can't. nice os!