Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Windows 8 Pre-Beta Release on a Mac
- Thread starter markrox7
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
That's what I'm doing as we speak. Hopefully the Windows 7 bootcamp drivers will be sufficient.
MacBook Pro 13" 2010 2.66 GHz 8 GB RAM NVidia 320M
Just installed the 64-bit version on my Boot Camp partition with a couple of issues:
- Boot Camp won't install without modifying the launch conditions table using an MSI Editor, since Windows 7 is required for setup.
- The NVidia chipset drivers weren't installed automatically, but I was able to update them manually by pointing Device Manager to the appropriate setup folder (NVidia/NVidiaChipset64)
I also installed the latest NVidia display driver (285.27 Beta), which seems to be working just fine.
Of course, this is just a preliminary report, but so far the system is stable and all the Windows 7 Boot Camp drivers seem to be more or less compatible.
Last edited:
Just installed it. Whoa! I love how MS got rid of all the unnecessary crap. I'd like to see MS Office based on Metro.
Windows 8 is a fresh take on the UI, assuming you use the new UI. I like the competition it provides the OS X and iOS. I do admire MS's approach with the Metro design language, but I don't think they took it far enough.
I used a preexisting bootcamp partition. Since I put it on my older MacBook, I had to use the 32-bit version. The 64-bit version would not load.
I wanted to use VirtualBox, but neither version of Windows 8 would install. Perhaps better luck with Parallels or VMware?
Windows 8 is a fresh take on the UI, assuming you use the new UI. I like the competition it provides the OS X and iOS. I do admire MS's approach with the Metro design language, but I don't think they took it far enough.
I used a preexisting bootcamp partition. Since I put it on my older MacBook, I had to use the 32-bit version. The 64-bit version would not load.
I wanted to use VirtualBox, but neither version of Windows 8 would install. Perhaps better luck with Parallels or VMware?
Had no luck with Parallels 7. The Boot Camp installation wasn't even recognized when I tried to create a new virtual machine, so I had to force the program to open a previously created Windows 7 x64 VM in order to install Parallels Tools. Unfortunately, my original Boot Camp drivers were removed in the process, and I couldn't log in to the virtual machine (although it did start up successfully). I didn't try to install Windows from the ISO image, however, so someone may have better luck with that route.
To summarize, Windows 8 will install in your Boot Camp partition and the Windows 7 Apple drivers can be used to add the necessary NVidia chipset devices (on NVidia systems), but there is no Parallels support for this configuration and you'll be restricted to running Windows from the Boot Camp partition.
The Parallels Forum includes a thread where users have reported issues with Parallels Tools in Windows 8. Some have reported, however, that VMware Fusion 4.0.1 is working. I'll give it a try and report back on how it went.
OK, VMware Fusion 4.0.1 successfully created a virtual machine in the Windows 8 x64 Boot Camp partition and installed VMware Tools. So I would definitely recommend VMware over Parallels at this point if you're interested in trying out Windows 8.
OK, VMware Fusion 4.0.1 successfully created a virtual machine in the Windows 8 x64 Boot Camp partition and installed VMware Tools. So I would definitely recommend VMware over Parallels at this point if you're interested in trying out Windows 8.
Last edited: