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is bootcamp free, and does it work perfectly with vista?

T

TheNorthWaves

macrumors 6502
Original poster
I have boot camp on my mini with leopard - is it free to use, and are there any driver/hardware conflicts with vista home premium?

Background:
I have a mac mini already and want to sell my med school-required Lenovo thinkpad on ebay to buy a macbook. The problem is, 3rd year, we need to use windows mobile PDAs to sync - and the 3rd party mac/pda sync software sucks- so I basically need to install windows on my mac laptop for those stupid times when I have to use it. It's gotta work right or this plan won't work.

Any help is appreciated,

Thanks
 
yes free with leopard and will work with vista assuming you have a copy

although i would still reccomend xp over vista atm
 
yep I have a fully legal copy of vista, I bought it stand-alone. I was going to use it for another project but it's been sitting. That's when the light bulb came on 🙂
I just can't spare the time to do this if it has issues/doesn't run well.
 
Yes its free if you own Leopard. And yes apple provides a driver CD which you burn during the bootcamp process that has all the drivers you need for any version of vista or windows XP.
 
Better question - I assume bootcamp will partition the drive into a separate section for MS Windoze. So if it does this, will I be able to read/write the same data from each platform? This is pretty crucial for me.
 
trainguy77 said:
Yeah the bootcamp utility will resize your partitions however you want them to be. One for windows one for mac. As long as you leave you windows partition in FAT32 then yes mac OS X can write to your windows partition. But to get windows to write to the mac side you will need this: http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/
Click to expand...

except vista im pretty sure requires ntfs right?

what you could do is just use a thumbdrive to transfer files between sytems if truely necessary or have an external hard drive in fat32 so both os's can access it.

but as i said the vista partition will need ntfs. xp on the otherhand doesnt fyi
 
So is there an option in bootcamp to make three partitions?
One simple partition in Mac OS format just for the OS, one simple partition in NTFS just for the Vista partition, and then a shared data partition in FAT32 or whatever... so there are no read/write issues sharing the same data? Duplicate data would complicate this. I want to be able to use OSX to access my stuff when I want to, and then use windows when my institution forces me to - accessing the same data. Perhaps using disk utility first would do this? But I know disk utility doesn't natively make NTFS partitions.
 
TheNorthWaves said:
So is there an option in bootcamp to make three partitions?
One simple partition in Mac OS format just for the OS, one simple partition in NTFS just for the Vista partition, and then a shared data partition in FAT32 or whatever... so there are no read/write issues sharing the same data?
Click to expand...

not in bootcamp.

try this. make the vista partition in bootcamp

then to get the fat32 partition, go to disk utility and try to make a third partition that way.

if this doesnt work i dunno what to say then as i havent done it

as far as read/write issues, fat32 can only support up to 4gig files iirc
 
not worried about the filesize - thanks though - I'm just trying to make sure this will work before I sell a computer and buy another one entirely. It would be worth it, if I know it works.
 
it will work just fine. i forgot to ask but this would only work if you have an intel mini, not a ppc one

the only issue i see is to find a common fat32 drive between the two os's but that can easily be solves with an external. its just tricky having a 3 partition machine imo
 
TheNorthWaves said:
So is there an option in bootcamp to make three partitions?
One simple partition in Mac OS format just for the OS, one simple partition in NTFS just for the Vista partition, and then a shared data partition in FAT32 or whatever... so there are no read/write issues sharing the same data? Duplicate data would complicate this. I want to be able to use OSX to access my stuff when I want to, and then use windows when my institution forces me to - accessing the same data. Perhaps using disk utility first would do this? But I know disk utility doesn't natively make NTFS partitions.
Click to expand...

This is not possible using the BC assistant, but when you are installing Vista, you should be able to split the windows partition into one large NTFS and one smaller FAT for the "swap" area.
 
robert.j.strain said:
This is not possible using the BC assistant, but when you are installing Vista, you should be able to split the windows partition into one large NTFS and one smaller FAT for the "swap" area.
Click to expand...

Good to know - has anybody done this?
I was thinking, make 3 partitions total, with disk util - then choose one during boot camp and set it up... yeah it's an intel comp
 
I haven't done it, but it should work. Unless the vista installer doesn't let you create a FAT Partition - in which case create it as NTFS and then reformat it in Vista once running ...
 
trainguy77 said:
Yes its free if you own Leopard. And yes apple provides a driver CD which you burn during the bootcamp process that has all the drivers you need for any version of vista or windows XP.
Click to expand...

Minor point. With Leopard, the drivers are on the Leopard Install DVD, and don't need to be burned. (at least for retail Leopard, dunno about pre-installed).

B
 
the boot camp 2.0 drivers arent "perfect" as the screen brightness is too dim unless on full brightness. the backlight keyboard comes on with the macbook pro in low light conditions even though its turned off. the ATI drivers make my games choppy and cause my cinema display to flicker. installing the new catalyst drivers fix this. Also the isight drivers dont install properly in vista on my macbook pro core duo.

apart from this it works pretty well and is very stable.
 
I've had my copy of XP Pro for many years. I went to look through the BootCamp read me that it made me print as I started (26 freaking pages, I want my ink back) and it said I cannot use my copy of XP Pro!!!! It want's the SP2 version. What the heck? I paid out the wazoo for XP Pro and it is useless. (moreso than normal!)

Anyone ever done the XP Pro SP1 workaround install?
 
you cant use XP SP1... ive tried and when you get to the intstaller the keyboard doesnt work.

you can slipstream the XP SP1 and the SP2 updater disc together and then it will work. this is what i did originally before i used vista.
 
If you're going Vista, be prepared to lose FPS on games. Also, if you intend on running Vista through Parallels or Fusion, you'd better hope you have 4gbs of ram.
 
The only problem I have with slipstreaming is that the windblows desktop upstairs only has a CD burner, not a dvd burner, so I might be boned there.
 
Use nLite to make the slipstreamed disc and lose all the unnecessary junk. It'll fit on CD just fine.

B
 
Against my wishes I am now on Windblows. Leo killed my Photoshop Elements and I paid good money for it so I wasn't going to buy another photoshop.

I got http://hem.bredband.net/catacombae/hfsx.html to transfer from OS X to Windblows, but it doesn't work silkie smooth. When I start it, it says it can't find a .dll file..... yet it starts anyway after I click ok to the error. Seems to work though...... buggy as it is.

God I hate windows........ At least BootCamp and Slipstream went smoothly.

I set aside 13gb of my 80gb. I have about 6 gb left, more than enough.
 
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