How To: Get Vista Up And Running On Boot Camp

Posted by Alec Feld on 02/9/07 in Articles

So you might be hovering your mouse over that Boot Camp Assistant icon, wondering if you should dare enter the Wonderful World of Windows. Vista, the new box out of Redmond, includes new features, like search. However, it’s not completely compatible with the current release of Boot Camp. In this article, I will walk you through all the steps to get a working copy of Vista on your Mac.

Step 1: Go out and buy a copy of Windows Vista. Any version will do, but Home Premium is what you’re aiming for (unless you need to connect to Active Directory Domains, in that case, go with Ultimate). It includes Aero and all that stuff that will make Windows Vista shine. Why not Ultimate? It’s overpriced, as well as includes few features that Home Premium doesn’t (such as advanced recovery and BitLocker). Be sure to get the Full Version as well. If you buy the Upgrade Version, you can try using this method to get a full Vista install.

Step 2: Download Boot Camp. Boot Camp is Apple’s bootloader for BIOS operating systems. After installing Boot Camp, launch the Boot Camp Assistant. Burn a Macintosh Drivers CD and set this aside. Partition your disks accordingly. Keep in mind that Vista takes up approx 8-10 GB alone.

Step 3: Install Windows. I can’t give you many tips here, as it’s pretty much to-the-point. However, when the Windows Installation asks you what partition to install on, make sure to choose the one that matches the size of the partition you just created.

Step 4: After installation and the setup wizard, Vista will check your computers performance.

Step 5: Welcome to Windows, but there’s a few things we need to do to get this thing up and running. Pop in your Macintosh Drivers CD. If you try running the setup, it’s not going to work, so we need to extract the drivers and manually install them. Hit Apple+R (your Apple key is now the Windows key). This will launch the Run window. Browse to your Macintosh Drivers CD and click on the install file. Then click OK. This should produce a line in the run window. Something like:

“D:\Macintosh Drivers for Windows XP.exe” (replace D with your drive letter, quotes included)

Now you need to add an extra command to this line to tell the installer to not install the drivers, but to just extract them. To do this, add /A /v to the line. The Run window should now look like this:

“D:\Macintosh Drivers for Windows XP.exe” /A /v (replace D with your drive letter, quotes included)

Hit OK. The installer may take a while to launch, so be patient. Once launched, hit install and it will instead extract the files to C:/Program Files/Macintosh Drivers for Windows XP.

install

Step 6: Go through the “C:/Program Files/Macintosh Drivers for Windows XP” folder.

Install the SigmaTel driver. This will give you sound. Install the Apple Keyboard driver as well. This will enable the eject key and more.

Step 7: Go to the Start menu (or orb?), right click on Computer and hit Properties (if you don’t have a right click mouse on hand, click on Computer, and on the toolbar above, click System Properties). Open Device Manager.

In your Device Manager, you should see a Network Controller with a question mark next to it. This is your Networking Hardware. You’ll want to double click this device. Click Reinstall Driver. Windows will now ask you if you want your driver to be automatically found or if you know where it is. Tell it to manually find it, and point it to the C:/Program Files/Macintosh Drivers for Windows XP Folder. If it asks you if you want to check your CDs or removable media, tell it not to.

If you already haven’t, remove your Drivers CD. Click search in the Install Driver window and it will find your driver. If it tells you that the driver is unsigned, continue to install it anyway.

Your wireless driver should be installed. We’re going to install a newer wireless driver later in the process to remove the choppy sound in the system.

Step 8: Do not install drivers for the iSight or USB Device yet. The iSight driver installs but the iSight won’t generate an image, and the USB Device is the IR Sensor for your Apple Remote. We’ll work on that later. Performance Counter does not have a driver so do not even bother. If you haven’t already, restart your computer.

Step 9: Almost everything should be installed. Wireless, sound, graphics, and more should be working. However, the sound is a bit choppy. To fix this problem install a new set of wireless drivers from here. Setup is self explanitory.

Step 10: There’s one more thing we want to get working, and thats the Apple Remote. There are some beta drivers that can be found over here. Just follow the instructions in the file and the remote should work. (Note: at the time of writing this article, this driver simply emulates the up, down, left, and right keys, as well as a few more. So, any app that uses these keys for control can be controlled via Apple Remote on Vista.

That’s about it! We’ve partitioned the disk with Boot Camp, installed Vista, went through setting up drivers, and even added a few extras. You should now have a fully functional setup of Windows Vista with most of the drivers installed. In the upcoming weeks, look for the final version MacDrive 7, a program for Windows that lets you transfer files from your Mac partition (MacDrive 6 is incompatible with Vista). But for now, you can use the MacDrive 7 Beta.

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24 Comment(s)

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Josh said on

February 9th, 2007 at 10:23 am

thats good. Macs allowing other OS’s (all the more reasons I want a Mac)

Rennervater said on

February 9th, 2007 at 2:05 pm

It makes you wonder how long before we can do things the other way round, mac on vista :O Please no !!

Sherb said on

February 9th, 2007 at 9:58 pm

I played with vista in the store today…it defiantly did not “WOW” me.. matter ah fact, I like XP more (I Think - I only used it in the store.) OS X FTW

-2

Pierce said on

February 9th, 2007 at 11:48 pm

Thanks a lot man, this was very well done and non-confusing. I wanted to try running it on boot camp, but I didnt really know how. I now know that there is nothing special about Vista, and we’re all better off with OS X.

Steffan Williams said on

February 10th, 2007 at 9:49 am

This actually didn’t work for me. I was trying to follow it step by step, however as soon as I reached the part about the sound driver it all went wrong.

The SigmaTel sound driver won’t actually install for me. The only way I can get sound working is to install the Realtek drivers. My network also was working out of the box, so I didn’t have to go through that Network Controller step (no complaints there, though).

Anyway, after installing the new wireless drivers to get rid of the choppy sound - it didn’t work. The sound is still as bad as it has been.

Any suggestions? Anything would be great! I just want to get rid of the horrible sound. I’ve tried reinstalling Vista three times now - no difference.

I’m using an iMac 24″, nVidia 7600GT to run Vista.

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Indraneel said on

February 10th, 2007 at 1:03 pm

no matter what, i still think xp is better. more time tested, and you really don’t get a lot of spyware if you know what you’re doing

Alec Feld said on

February 10th, 2007 at 1:13 pm

Stefan: try the following things:

Are you running the final version of Vista?

Do you have the latest version of Boot Camp and the latest drivers?

If installing the drivers wont work for you, right click the installer and try installing as administrator.

Steffan Williams said on

February 10th, 2007 at 4:21 pm

I bought Windows Ultimate, so yes.

Yes, I have the latest Boot Camp and Macintosh drivers…

And I can install other drivers fine.. it’s just this one that won’t install. It errors and says that the device is not installed (I assume it means my speakers).

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Paul Stamatiou said on

February 10th, 2007 at 10:10 pm

@Steffan, I’ve got a 24-inch iMac as well and my sound is great with the RealTek drivers.

Chris said on

February 11th, 2007 at 6:44 am

Very good article… however, you never addressed the proper installation of iSight drivers after saying “we’ll get to that later” - it’s the only thing I still don’t have working.

(on an iMac 20″ Core Duo 2ghz with 2gb RAM)

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Connor Cimowsky said on

February 13th, 2007 at 5:05 pm

When I browse to the installer and type the /A /v at the end, iit gives me an error that says “Unspecified Error”. Anyone want to help?

Matt Waltner said on

March 1st, 2007 at 7:42 pm

I followed these instruction and it works brilliantly - no problems with the partition, and Vista works great.

jeremy said on

March 6th, 2007 at 7:21 am

please help. had problems installing network drivers.
Everytime I restart or shutdown and power up again it always boots in vista… how do I boot OS X again. I’ve tried hitting the option button when its at the grey screen but it always boots vista. please help

Brady said on

March 7th, 2007 at 4:22 pm

Great walk-through… simple, and easy to understand; however, for some reason I have no sound whatsoever in Windows Vista (Ultimate Edition). I even went as far as hacking onto the DELL website to retrieve the new SigmaTel Audio Codec driver (considering the Macintosh Drivers CD doesn’t work for me when I follow your walk-through), which installed properly, and shows the sound decibel meter going up and down and everything (i.e. recognizing sound), but no sound is being produced AT ALL! What’s the problem here? I UPGRADED from XP on bootcamp to VISTA. Is that what everyone else did? Please reply… I want some sound! Haha. Thanks.

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Tom said on

March 19th, 2007 at 12:42 pm

I installed ultimate 64-bit, and I can’t get anything to work, not even the keyboard (eject button doesn’t work so I know that ones not working) driver. When I try and install the network controller, it can’t find the appropriate driver when you ask vista to locate in the drivers folder. I can’t do a admin install because I can’t even right click. I think Vista is beautiful, by the way. Way better looking than xp.

Alec Feld said on

March 24th, 2007 at 10:44 pm

Jeremy,

Hold down the option key when your computer begins to restart, that way you are almost guaranteed the drive selector.

If that doesn’t work, you probably accidentally deleted your OS X partition.

Alec Feld said on

March 24th, 2007 at 10:45 pm

Tom,

32 bit drivers don’t work on 64 bit OS’. Sorry.

Brady,

I would do a clean install if I were you.

Quill said on

March 26th, 2007 at 7:52 am

“The SigmaTel sound driver won’t actually install for me. The only way I can get sound working is to install the Realtek drivers. My network also was working out of the box, so I didn’t have to go through that Network Controller step (no complaints there, though).”

This issue was bugging me for ages, till I did just that, installed the Realtek drivers. Works!

Still need to get blue tooth and iSight to work. I am using Ultimate 64bit.

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Alec Feld said on

March 27th, 2007 at 10:21 am

Quill,

The drivers are mainly compatible with 32 bit only.

Nemonic said on

April 15th, 2007 at 5:09 am

Ops! I stupidly erased OSX partition. Is there anything to do for recovery ?

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ExcitedMe said on

September 18th, 2007 at 9:06 pm

I have installed Vista Ultimate 64-bit on my MacBook Pro and it runs smoothly! Even better than my Fujitsu S6410! But one problem, the drivers are all not working, except for RealTek and SigmaTel (which is both for sound). My sound is great but I couln’t install the NVidia graphics driver, Network Control and Human Interface USB.

Alec Feld did mention something about clean install. How do you do that?

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Larcik-wh said on

January 19th, 2008 at 7:31 pm

aol greating cards

-1

s said on

March 19th, 2008 at 7:37 am

leopard works fine on std intel(and now amd) core duo systems and runs faster than on mac hardware

no need for overpriced, limited apple hardware(and a mouse without a right click) anymore

-1

Naji said on

August 6th, 2008 at 12:27 pm

I have now been using vista on Macbook for about 9 month with no issues. two days ago,I powered my PC and it was running on Mac (normally the windows is launched when i power my pc). I have no idea how to fix this problem. I tried booting from the vista CD rom but I was not able to do so.

Can anybody please help????

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