Early '08 MP + Vista Ultimate 64 = Yay!

[sturob]

Hi,

Amidst some of the doom and gloom (just when you thought it was safe to go to sleep again), I thought I'd post a positive about the Early '08 MP.

Yesterday I got an dual-3.2GHz MP and the first thing I did was install 16GB of RAM (OWC) and two 1TB F1 Spinpoints. Super easy.

Just now, in about 20 minutes, I installed Bootcamp/Vista Ultimate 64-bit. Could not have been easier. I kind of dreaded it, what with all the complaining, but I figured with this machine, I should give Vista a shot.

It was easy, and it looks great! Now, off to load VMWare Fusion so I can have Vista off in its own window.

Amazing. This MP is the finest machine I've ever owned, that's for sure, and it's the first time I've ever felt like complimenting a computer.

Stuart

 

[xraydoc]

Just out of dumb curiosity, what exactly do you do with 16GB of RAM and 2TB of hard drive space. And you aren't allowed to answer, "anything I want."

 

[elvisizer]

yeah . . .about vmware. it doesn't support booting vista 64 from a real disk. you'll get an error about running a 64bit OS in a 32bit virtual machine, and when you boot back into vista for real, your video driver will probably be hosed. mine was. and you might have to re-activate windows. i hadn't activated yet, so i can't verify that.
it's kind of strange, since vmware supports 64 bit versions of windows just fine from a disk image.
anyway, vmware is aware of it and a patch is coming. but their fusion patches have taken a long time in the past. i hope we aren't kept waiting too long now.


OT
also, why is vista so ugly? i'm trying to make myself use the new interface since i'm going to be supporting it soon at work, but geez, it's terrible. i never thought something would make me nostalgic for windows xp.

 

[contoursvt]

What part of it looks ugly exactly? Not saying you cant think it, just a little strange because most people actually think it looks quite good and definitly better than XP.

...also, why is vista so ugly? i'm trying to make myself use the new interface since i'm going to be supporting it soon at work, but geez, it's terrible. i never thought something would make me nostalgic for windows xp.

 

[Mr. Zarniwoop]

yeah . . .about vmware. it doesn't support booting vista 64 from a real disk. you'll get an error about running a 64bit OS in a 32bit virtual machine,

I think the Boot Camp VM defaults to a 32-bit Windows environment, have you tried manually setting it to a 64-bit one?

Go to ~/Library/Application Support/VMWare Fusion/Virtual Machines/Boot Camp

There you'll find a directory for each automagically detected Boot Camp partition. Go into the correct one, and then right-click on the appropriate VMware Virtual Machine file and select "Show Package Contents". Open up the "Boot Camp Partition.vmx" file in TextEdit (do not double click it), and change:

guestOS = "winvista"

to:

guestOS = "winvista-64"

VMware builds this file through autodetection, but you can manually change anything here. I don't think it can autodetect Vista 64-bit so it defaults to 32-bit.

 

[aLoC]

Yeah I purchased Vista Ultimate 64 for my Mac Pro yesterday, hoping to install it tonight.

Already had Home Premium 32 but it could only see 4 cores and 3.5G ram. Good to hear it works well.

 

[kirkbross]

I just got my new MP (2x2.8 / 500GB /8800GT):

I have a 150GB Raptor and I'm debating loading either Leopard onto it (and Windows onto the stock 500) or Windows on the Raptor, leaving Leopard as is on the stock drive.

Do you think either Windows or Leopard would prefer being on the stock drive? Leopard will be my main OS for Pro Tools soon so I'd like Leopard to be as snappy as possible, but then, I kind of hate to mess with this stock Leopard drive since it's running fine out of the box.

 

[sturob]

I'm ignoring the question about what I'm going to do with 2TB HD space and 16GB RAM.

As for VMWare, it does support booting 64-bit Vista off its own disk. No errors to speak of.

The problem, though, which you might be able to help me with is that Fusion totally bastardizes the video settings in Vista so that it'll run in the window. After running Vista off this HD as a virtual machine, the next time you BootCamp Vista, it's changed the drivers to be ones for a VGA adapter. So, it looks like crap (with the ability to display like 2 colors). I re-ran the bootcamp64 driver installation off the OSX DVD and then re-downloaded the most recent ForceWare drivers, but sheesh. It all worked like a charm then.

I wonder if Fusion has to do this? It makes it difficult to want to run Fusion any more.

Stuart

 

[carnacious]

Did you have any driver issues or did you just let vista and bootcamp do their own thing?

 

[Volante]

Question: Are you getting the OEM-versions?