Is it possible to install ONLY windows on a Mac?

jbg232 · Feb 24, 2008

As the title suggests, is it possible to install JUST windows? I was thinking it might be possible to boot from a windows xp cd, format the hard drive and just install windows and then use the drivers from the leopard dvd that comes with the mac. Is this possible?

And please, I don't want any responses of why it's stupid to do this or why I would be getting a mac when I want a windows machine, the question is purely philosophical so save the rants for other posts. Thanks.

Hankster · Feb 24, 2008

No, it is not. The system is configured for a Mac OS. Remember, Apple is not "open source" like a PC is.

Eidorian · Feb 24, 2008

On current Macs you can install Windows XP or Vista right out of the box. On older Macs (pre-2007) you might need to upgrade the firmware.

Just make sure to wipe all the partitions and set them up the way you want.

blackstone · Feb 24, 2008

It should be possible with Vista (which is EFI-aware out of the box), but you'll run into some difficulties down the road if Apple ever issues a firmware update for your computer...

jbg232 · Feb 25, 2008

So I got three different responses:

1. No
2. Yes - with vista only
3. Yes - with vista or xp

Can anyone clear this up?

georgeoommen · Feb 25, 2008

jbg232 said:
So I got three different responses:

1. No
2. Yes - with vista only
3. Yes - with vista or xp

Can anyone clear this up?

YES, absolutely possible with no problems. For intel based macs, all you need to do is to run Bootcamp once so that the EFI gets updated with the necessary information. Once this is done, create the drivers disk with bootcamp as well. Thats about all you need bootcamp for.

After this, just put the XP or vista or whatever disk u want in the drive, press C during startup to start from the optical drive, and away you go. if u continue with bootcamp, then you might be forced to keep atleast 5gb on the OSX partition. so after creating the drivers disk, kill bootcamp.

once u're done with the installation, put the bootcamp drivers disk in and install all the necessary drivers..

there is no way a future apple EFI firmware update would affect this. Any software update would have to make sure bootcamp works fine and therefore this would continue to work without any problems..

chrono1081 · Feb 25, 2008

windows may work but its a safe bet to say your drivers wont.

Cromulent · Feb 25, 2008

Hankster said:
No, it is not. The system is configured for a Mac OS. Remember, Apple is not "open source" like a PC is.

Completely wrong. You can have Windows as the only OS on your Mac with no problems at all.

blackstone said:
It should be possible with Vista (which is EFI-aware out of the box)

No it is not. Microsoft removed the EFI compatibility from Vista quite a while ago. Vista still uses the BIOS which is included in the EFI for compatibility reasons.

Windows XP SP2 would be fine to install as well.

chrono1081 said:
windows may work but its a safe bet to say your drivers wont.

Also wrong. You just install the drivers from the Leopard install disk. No problem at all.

jbg232 · Feb 25, 2008

georgeoommen said:
YES, absolutely possible with no problems. For intel based macs, all you need to do is to run Bootcamp once so that the EFI gets updated with the necessary information. Once this is done, create the drivers disk with bootcamp as well. Thats about all you need bootcamp for.

After this, just put the XP or vista or whatever disk u want in the drive, press C during startup to start from the optical drive, and away you go. if u continue with bootcamp, then you might be forced to keep atleast 5gb on the OSX partition. so after creating the drivers disk, kill bootcamp.

once u're done with the installation, put the bootcamp drivers disk in and install all the necessary drivers..

there is no way a future apple EFI firmware update would affect this. Any software update would have to make sure bootcamp works fine and therefore this would continue to work without any problems..

Thank you for this, a few questions though:
1. So the steps would be:
a) make drivers cd
b) install bootcamp
c) boot from cd and format hard drive partitions (including the bootcamp and mac partitions, but NOT the "proprietary get windows to work on mac partition" (how would I know which one that is?)
d) merge all partitions aside from proprietary one
e) install windows on that main partition
If my understanding is correct, this procedure would delete both bootcamp and mac os and use only a natively installed version of windows. Is this the correct procedure and will a native windows installation be the result?

2. How do I make a drivers cd? I thought all the drivers were on the leopard DVD.

balamw · Feb 25, 2008

chrono1081 said:
windows may work but its a safe bet to say your drivers wont.

jbg232 said:
use the drivers from the leopard dvd that comes with the mac.

So, chrono1081, why would the Apple supplied Boot Camp drivers not work as the OP expects?

jbg232 said:
2. How do I make a drivers cd? I thought all the drivers were on the leopard DVD.

You don't they are on the Leopard DVD, only Tiger Boot Camp required this step.

B

UltraNEO* · Feb 25, 2008

I think YOU should try,
or attempt to install Windows on your Intel Mac.

You can't damage it by messing about with the partition map, though you might get a little lost cause you can't boot into windows after... But being a Mac it won't ever forget how to boot the MacOS DVD's. Period.

I suggest, once you've boot up into the windows configurations screen, just before you install windows, you are shown drive partitions... Perhaps you'd like to try deleting all existing partitions and create a new one, big enough to install windows and all your applications. I'd suggest a minimum of 30Gb? Or create a 32Gb (or bigger) partition whilst in Bootcamp.

Once your inside windows, you can remap the HD and delete all the Mac partitions if you so desire.

Oh.. with MacOS Leopard, you don't need to create a Windows driver disk like you did with Tiger. All the BOOT CAMP drives are on the Leopard Installer Disk!! But they're only 32Bit drivers suitable for Windows XP and Vista. However, NOT the 64bit version. Just insert it when once windows finish installing.

i'm playing CS:source finally.. lol...

balamw · Feb 25, 2008

jbg232 said:
So the steps would be:

For anyone seriously considering this, I would add one step above these.

Procure external HDD
Install OS X to external HDD using OS X install disc
Boot from external to make sure you can

If nothing else, you know that any future firmware updates will only be released for OS X, so you may want to be sure you can boot the Mac in its native OS once in a while.

B

chrono1081 · Feb 25, 2008

Hm...just tried using a windows driver on a mac for a logitec camera. No dice.

yellow · Feb 25, 2008

balamw said:
If nothing else, you know that any future firmware updates will only be released for OS X, so you may want to be sure you can boot the Mac in its native OS once in a while.

QFT.

Now a days you can update the drivers through Vista/XP, but any firmware updates will be Mac OS X only. If I were going to do this, I would make sure I had just a tiny bit of my drive still dedicated to OS X so I could be sure I had some recourse for tools should something go wrong.

chrono1081 · Feb 25, 2008

Oh I see, your talking about the default drivers that come on the mac.

I would say just try, it. The worst that could happen is you need to reinstall.

gnasher729 · Feb 25, 2008

You basically follow the normal instructions for installing Windows using Bootcamp, with slight changes:

Bootcamp tells you to create two partitions, one for MacOS X, and one for Windows. You don't do that, you just create one partition.

Then, in the installation process when you install Windows there is a point where you need to format the Windows partition. At that point the instructions have dire warnings to make sure that you don't format the MacOS X partition (because if you do that, MacOS X is gone). Here you do exactly what the instructions tell you _not_ to do: You format the part that used to be the MacOS X partition.

From then you just follow the bootcamp instrctions. At some point you have to use your Leopard DVD, because it contains all the drivers.

I think if you then want to run MacOS X as well, you can just buy an external hard drive and install MacOS X on it. You can boot from it by holding the option-key down while restarting the computer as usual. That should work without problems. People tried to do the opposite thing: Install Windows on an external disk and leave the internal one unchanged with MacOS X. That seems to be really, really difficult.

Neil321 · Feb 25, 2008

Following on the same sort of lines of this thread a mate has asked to me to
install a new HD in his MBP. Would it be possible for me while the old drives
still in Mac to install XP just say leave a tiny amount for OS X.Then swap drives
put the old one in a enclosure and be able to run XP & all the apps etc from
that and then delete the OS X partition from within XP.Would this be bootable?

UltraNEO* · Feb 25, 2008

chrono1081 said:
Hm...just tried using a windows driver on a mac for a logitec camera. No dice.

Why you wanna use a 3rd party camera when the MBP/MB has a superior built-in webcam? If you gonna use Windows devices on a windows mac, you need windows drivers. However, if you wanna use Windows cameras on a Mac, in OSX then try ioxperts.

http://www.ioxperts.com/products/webcamx.html

UltraNEO* · Feb 25, 2008

gnasher729 said:
You basically follow the normal instructions for installing Windows using Bootcamp, with slight changes:

Bootcamp tells you to create two partitions, one for MacOS X, and one for Windows. You don't do that, you just create one partition.

Then, in the installation process when you install Windows there is a point where you need to format the Windows partition. At that point the instructions have dire warnings to make sure that you don't format the MacOS X partition (because if you do that, MacOS X is gone). Here you do exactly what the instructions tell you _not_ to do: You format the part that used to be the MacOS X partition.

From then you just follow the bootcamp instrctions. At some point you have to use your Leopard DVD, because it contains all the drivers.

I think if you then want to run MacOS X as well, you can just buy an external hard drive and install MacOS X on it. You can boot from it by holding the option-key down while restarting the computer as usual. That should work without problems. People tried to do the opposite thing: Install Windows on an external disk and leave the internal one unchanged with MacOS X. That seems to be really, really difficult.

Thanks for rewording everything - maybe they'll understand the second time? lol..

Neil321 · Feb 25, 2008

neil321 said:
Following on the same sort of lines of this thread a mate has asked to me to
install a new HD in his MBP. Would it be possible for me while the old drives
still in Mac to install XP just say leave a tiny amount for OS X.Then swap drives
put the old one in a enclosure and be able to run XP & all the apps etc from
that and then delete the OS X partition from within XP.Would this be bootable?

Anyone able to answer this for me please?

Cromulent · Feb 25, 2008

chrono1081 said:
Hm...just tried using a windows driver on a mac for a logitec camera. No dice.

Well if you are running Windows then it should work fine. If however you are trying to install it under Mac OS X then obviously the Windows driver will not work.

UltraNEO* · Feb 25, 2008

neil321 said:
Following on the same sort of lines of this thread a mate has asked to me to
install a new HD in his MBP. Would it be possible for me while the old drives
still in Mac to install XP just say leave a tiny amount for OS X.Then swap drives
put the old one in a enclosure and be able to run XP & all the apps etc from
that and then delete the OS X partition from within XP.Would this be bootable?

Honestly... I don't know why you'll need two HD's...
and since i've not tried it myself, i'm not whiling to say either way..
If your about to upgrade your HD anyway.. why not give it a try.

I would of thought, that most advice given here are from people who've taken a moment to experiment with their macs... So why don't you give it whirl?? Perhaps you can teach us something.

Neil321 · Feb 25, 2008

UltraNEO* said:
Honestly... I don't know why you'll need two HD's...
and since i've not tried it myself, i'm not whiling to say either way..
If your about to upgrade your HD anyway.. why not give it a try.

I would of thought, that most advice given here are from people who've taken a moment to experiment with their macs... So why don't you give it whirl?? Perhaps you can teach us something.

Ok i'll give it a go but the reason for asking was that its not my MBP,the reason for two HD is that he would rather not have XP on his Mac so this seemed a good idea

gnasher729 · Feb 25, 2008

neil321 said:
Following on the same sort of lines of this thread a mate has asked to me to
install a new HD in his MBP. Would it be possible for me while the old drives
still in Mac to install XP just say leave a tiny amount for OS X.Then swap drives
put the old one in a enclosure and be able to run XP & all the apps etc from
that and then delete the OS X partition from within XP.Would this be bootable?

People have attempted to make a bootable external hard drive that boots into Windows, and it seems to be more than tricky.

jbg232 · Feb 25, 2008

gnasher729 said:
You basically follow the normal instructions for installing Windows using Bootcamp, with slight changes:

Bootcamp tells you to create two partitions, one for MacOS X, and one for Windows. You don't do that, you just create one partition.

Then, in the installation process when you install Windows there is a point where you need to format the Windows partition. At that point the instructions have dire warnings to make sure that you don't format the MacOS X partition (because if you do that, MacOS X is gone). Here you do exactly what the instructions tell you _not_ to do: You format the part that used to be the MacOS X partition.

From then you just follow the bootcamp instrctions. At some point you have to use your Leopard DVD, because it contains all the drivers.

I think if you then want to run MacOS X as well, you can just buy an external hard drive and install MacOS X on it. You can boot from it by holding the option-key down while restarting the computer as usual. That should work without problems. People tried to do the opposite thing: Install Windows on an external disk and leave the internal one unchanged with MacOS X. That seems to be really, really difficult.

From my own experimenting with bootcamp on a mbp when you create a bootcamp partition there is a small partition that also has to be created to allow bootcamp to run on a mac. I'm not sure if this is just a "bootcamp+leopard" thing or a "required to use windows on mac" thing. My main goal in this is to make a 200GB (the full size of the HDD) NTFS partition to run windows. Obviously we all know that I could install bootcamp and keep a 5-10GB leopard partition. But if I did that I would be running windows using bootcamp support - not a bad thing in itself. My question though is whether windows can be installed WITHOUT boot camp.

Can a mac boot to a windows disc during its startup (EFI on macs) AND allow a windows installation from that bootup? I assume that during the windows installation when it gives me the hard drive map I would be able to delete everything from there and start from scratch. I'm not so sure of this though because of the problem in bootcamp where it creates an extra partition which may be required to run windows on a mac in the first place.

Basically when you install bootcamp with leopard you wind up with these partitions:
1. Leopard
2. Weird unused windows partition (that I think is required for booting windows but may only be needed if you want to use windows + leopard at the same time) - this partition can only be created by bootcamp I think
3. Windows partition

If you delete partition #2 windows will not run in bootcamp, this is a fact.

Would you still be able to install windows if you didn't have this #2 partition that bootcamp creates - ie. is it proprietary and necessary to run bootcamp first to install windows on a mac?

Is it possible to install ONLY windows on a Mac?

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