Boot Camp on Mountain Lion (XP full version to Windows 7 upgrade)

[noromaru]

I did a search with no success, but what I'm looking to do is the following:

I have a full copy of Windows XP and an upgrade version of Windows 7 64-bit. I know that Lion/Mountain Lion dropped Boot Camp support for installing XP, but I was able to get XP to install while running Lion, which I then upgraded to Windows 7 (I don't remember exactly how I did this). I recall I initially tried installing from the Windows 7 disc first, which allowed me to download the drivers, but of course when I did the first boot it informed me it was an upgrade only. I'm not sure if I then used the partition to install XP and then upgrade to Windows 7, but I feel like that's what occurred.

I'm planning on purchasing a retina MacBook Pro in the immediate future, and I would like to use Boot Camp for some light gaming. Of course without a disc drive I'll have to create an .iso for each disc to even attempt to install, but I'd rather not just try it blindly. Would I be able to partition my 16GB USB drive to have multiple .iso images on the same drive, or would that just cause problems?

Any suggestions would be helpful, and if I'm talking out of my ass, feel free to call me out and point me in another direction.

If there's some way to just install from the Windows 7 upgrade and just type in the CD key for the full version of XP, that would be ideal, but I recall looking and finding nothing.

 

[anaren]

Hello,

not sure how helpful this would be, but you may benefit from my experience - since I purchased the new retina MacBook Pro and upgraded to Mountain lion.

I have full version of Windows XP Pro and and upgrade version of Win 7 Pro x64.

1. As you already know Lion / ML does not support installing Win XP. I even tried to use bootcamp for starting off as Win 7 and then on reboot installing Win XP. This works up to the point where all Win XP drivers are loaded but just before the <format hard disk for NTFS" screen it given an error on blue screen (don't recall the exact error - but it was essentially a system error indicating unable to recognise the partition)

2. Trying to do a full install using the Win 7 upgrade key does not work. It will not activate the windows. Yesterday, I even tried calling Microsoft and explaining the situation, after listening to everything they said, send an email.

3. Currently I am in the process of installing XP on VMWare 5.0 and then upgrading it to Win 7.