MacBook Pro (early 2006)

[suren1987]

Hi, my friend asked me to help her re-install mac os x and if possible windows onto her macbook pro 2006.
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo
2 GB 677 Mhz Ram
500GB hd

The problem is that the CD-ROM is broken.

Since the apple usb cd-rom works only with air and mini, i decided to purchase an individual cd-rom from transcend, and well unfortunately no success, if i leave it plugged in after i restart the computer, it just freezes on the white screen...

The reason i need the Cd-rom is because i tried to install XP onto it from usb flash drive and so for without any success. The windows blue setup screen does appear from the flash usb, (although before it appears it takes me through a very weird screen i never seen before, and i have installed xp lots of time even from usb flash. a screen that has an option of first and second installation, and if i choose second it just freezes, yellow screen, if possible i will upload screen shots later on today). The blue setup screen allows me to format the bootcamp drive to ntfs, copies the setup files (but VERY slow, the slowest copy of setup files ive seen so far), after it is done and i restart the computer and load the bootcam drive with the setup files, it gives me a black screen with a message, can’t remember it exact, but can’t boot hd, contact manual, hardware malfunction... smth like that.

I tried installing it on 10.5 and 10.5.8
now i am going to give a try to do the same on snow leaopard, maybe there will be a difference.
i will add more detail later on today.
but if anyone has any ideas, on how to install xp, maybe someone has a clone back up somewhere? lol

 

[suren1987]

Windows XP installation

Well i just tried installing it with Snow Leopard, i knew there would be no difference really, but since i have been with computers for a while now, i know that sometimes if you try smth 3 times the 4th time might just work, but not the case here.

Again the usb cd-rom didn't load. in the end i got a grey screen with a folder, and a ? ( i have a picture i will upload)

i rebooted, and inserted the usb flash drive, and booted from it.
First of all a black screen appear (like the terminal)
and says the following "try (hd0,0): FAT32:"

after that i get a light blue screen
GRUB4DOS (which i never used before) with the option
Windows XP/2000/2003 Setup- First and second parts

next screen has
First part of Windows Xp professional setup
and
Second part of Windows Xp professional setup (this one never works)

i chose the first one, and it takes me to the blue windows setup screen, where i format my drive quick to NTFS, and copy the setup files (which takes from 20-25 minutes, which I personally find a bit to long).
Then the computer reboots, I boot from the bootcamp hd and get this message

Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem.
Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware.
Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your reference manuals for additional information.

Why?
Maybe I should make a new usb flash drive with xp files? Maybe this one is bad?

i have images. just not sure how to upload them into here

 

[suren1987]

Ok, something tells me, that there can be two problems, first bad flash usb copy of windows, or maybe bad boot.ini file?
Anyone have anye suggestiongs on what the boot.ini should say?

 

[suren1987]

Since this was urgent and i did not get any reply,
i decided to take apart the apple super drive for macbook air usb cd rom,
since it was to big for the macbook pro, i left the keyboard un attached and the cd-rom sticking out from under the keyboard. installed xp, installed windows bootcamp, and placed back the broken drive..
lol this is prob the most messed up way,
if anyone finds a way share it with me, now im curious lol if there was a more simple solution.
I took pics, if i'll have time ill put them up

 

[Interstella5555]

I had this same problem (well, similar enough) last year when I purchased the iPhone 4. SL was required but, like your friend, my superdrive was shot. Long story short, I called up the Apple store near me, explained the situation, and they offered to let me come into the store with my MBP and they loaded up SL onto it from a USB drive. YMM (certainly)V on this, there was a slight disagreement when I went in about what they had told me on the phone, but give it a shot.