How To: Get Vista Up And Running On Boot Camp

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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