Sep
9
Posting from my Mac Pro running Vista RC1 x86 (not Parallels)…..
Updates below….
Update: Shorter and more concise version of what I did….
See the bottom of this post for my system config. I can’t promise anything else will work (or based on feedback even that the same config/process will work for you)
What you’ll need:
- A new, unformatted SATA drive. You’re going to dedicate this entirely to Vista.
- In addition to your Vista RC1 DVD and PID, you’ll need a stock XP install disk (SATA slipstream not required; I used an SP2 disk but an SP1 disk would probably work too). You won’t need a PID for XP.
- You’ll need a non-mighty mouse mouse for the XP install. Mighty mouse works fine once you’ve finished the installation.
1) While still booted into OSX, burn a Boot Camp driver CD, eject it, then insert your Windows XP install disk. Shut down the computer.
2) Remove ALL of your peripherals, save the keyboard, monitor and non-mighty mouse mouse. I only have one, stock Nvidia 7300 in my system, so any other video card config may not work properly (dual cards, 1900xt, etc).
3) Remove ALL of the other hard drives in your system and install the new, clean one that you’re going to dedicate to Vista. I put mine in Bay 4.
4) Boot the machine with the Option key, and select the CD that says Windows.
5) Proceed with the XP installation. When you get the Hard Drive/Partition screen, select and delete ANY and ALL partitions on the disk. Then proceed with installation of XP on the single, large unformatted partition.
6) Wait 45 minutes while XP does a full, low-level format of the drive.
7) Finish installing XP and allow it to fully boot.
Eject the XP installation CD (open My Computer, right click on the CD and eject). Put in your Vista RC1 DVD and push the drive door closed.
9) Vista installation screen should automatically start, but if it doesn’t just open the DVD and run autorun.
10) Proceed with installation, making sure not to select Upgrade, but a Full Installation.
11) At first reboot, your system will blue-screen. Shut the machine down manually (button method), restart, then proceed with the Windows install. It will bluescreen like that a couple of times as installation proceeds.
12) If the Gods are with you, you’ll finally boot into Vista proper. Vista should have installed a usable WDDM NVidia driver and you should be able to set your resolution to 32-bit color, native resolution of your display. You can now reconnect your Mighty Mouse if you like, and probably any other peripherals you might have.
13) Eject the Vista DVD, and insert the Boot Camp driver CD. Run the install. You’ll see errors galore, but just click OK. This will get sound working.
14) Reboot. Your system will bluescreen again on the way down.
15) Go get the NVidia beta driver from here and install it. It will want to reboot again, but say no.
16) Run Windows Update. It should find at least one ‘optional’ driver update, which you should install.
17) Open Device Manager, and look through the list for anything that has an exclamation mark. Select, right-click and disable. The Big One is Microsoft Watchdog Timer (which has been causing those blue-screens)
18) Now reboot. It may blue-screen one last time (can’t remember) but on future reboots it won’t.
19) Enjoy.
The full story……
I’ve been following reports of the convoluted steps people were taking to get XP running well on the Mac Pro (specifically SATA support), and it just isn’t something I’m super interested in doing. I just don’t want it that bad. However, I started to see a few scattered reports that pre-RC1 Vista had the SATA support out of the box and I got interested.
When RC1 released, I upgraded the sacrificial Dell at work I’ve been using to test Vista builds for the last 6 months. RC1 was like a dream– speedy, stable.. in short Vista as it is intended to be.
I liked Vista RC1 so much that I decided had to run it at home, on my beautiful bad-ass Mac Pro / 30″ Cinema Display rig. I’ve installed Vista dozens of times over the last 6 months playing with various builds, and I figured myself qualified to give it a go. So I burned an ISO DVD at work and on the way home picked up a 250GB drive to dedicate to Windows in my system.
The plan was simple: pull out all the OS-X drives and unplug all the peripherals, throw in the new unformatted drive, boot off the Vista install DVD and hope it all acts just like a commodity Windows box.
No joy. The installer reported that my system wouldn’t support installation onto that drive. I tried formatting, reformatting, deleting and adding partitions. Nothing worked.
Plan B: OK, let’s try Boot Camp (yes, I’m running 1.1). I put the OS-X system drive back in and used Boot Camp assistant to ‘prepare’ my clean drive for Windows. I also burned a driver CD just in case.
When I booted back into the Vista install, there was a little 230 meg partition (I assume some sort of Boot Camp thing) and a large Fat32 partition. No dice again. Vista wouldn’t install on the Fat32 partition, and wouldn’t let me delete either partition or reformat to NTFS as I’d hoped.
Plan C: Get medievil.
I pulled out my XP SP2 install disk, and fired it up (Note 1: there’s a very strange bug with the XP install and the Mighty Mouse. I plugged in a standard USB mouse for this part). At the partition screen, I deleted all the partitions and made the entire drive NTFS, wiping away any trace of Boot Campness.
I might have been able to stop there, but I went all the way through to install XP. (Note 2: I did not do a SATA slipstreamed install, since I was just going to immediately do a clean Vista install anyway).
With the machine booting XP, I put the Vista DVD back in, and this time the install took. Again, I chose to do a clean install, not an upgrade of XP.
Things were looking good until the first reboot: Blue Screen and core dump. I was 3 hours+ into the process so I decided to just keep going.
The install picked back up and kept going, blue-screening a couple more times on reboot. Again, I forged ahead. Low and behold, up came Vista.
I logged in and poked gently around. It seemed to be speedy and stable. I changed the monitor resolution (Windows installed a very functional NVidia driver by default) and was soon running at glorious, full res on the Cinema Display. Basically everything but sound was working (even the Mighty Mouse which I plugged back in). As rumored, the drive is running at full speed (Ultra DMA mode 6)- no SATA hack required.
I went for broke and installed the Boot Camp driver CD. Errors galore, but it did manage to get sound working properly. Finally, I went to the NVidia site and downloaded their beta Vista driver which installed without complaint (update: link here).
I rebooted, and again blue screen and core dump, saying something about WD.sys. I was a little bummed, but decided that as long as it didn’t blue screen while I was actually using it I might be able to live with it til things get properly sorted out.
Once it finally came back up, I went into device manager, hunting <!> exclamation marks.
I saw errors on a few USB devices, a boat-load of “Other devices”, none of which I will assume are critical for the moment.
Under System devices, I found the following were not installed properly:
- Intel(R) 5000 Series Chipset PCI Express x4 Port 3 – 25E3
- Intel(R) 5000 Series Chipset PCI Express x4 Port 5 – 25E5
- Intel(R) 5000 Series Chipset PCI Express x4 Port 6 – 25E6
- Intel(R) 5000 Series Chipset PCI Express x4 Port 7 – 25E7
And this one, which I believe is responsible for all that blue-screening during installation and at shutdown:
- Microsoft Watchdog Timer (also known as WD.sys)
I downloaded these drivers from the Intel site (these were referenced in the XP / SATA instructions) and found a Vista folder embedded in the zip file. I tried to update the PCI port drivers and while the install seemed to work, it reported an error about the hardware not being able to start.
Finally I simply decided to disable everything in device manager with an exclamation point (right-click on the icon, Disable) and see how it goes.
Update: pic of my device manager here (right-click download for the full-res)
I haven’t seen any more bluescreens since disabling all of that hardware, and everything seems largely to function as expected. Few minor annoyances so far:
- When booting Vista, the machine will seem like it’s hung- 2 or 3 minutes of black screen before the loading indicator comes up. This is NORMAL for Vista RC1 by the way- every machine I run it on does this. It’s still really annoying for a dual-boot setup.
- Vista only recognized 2 of my 4 Gigs of ram, but I believe that’s because Vista x86 only supports 2 Gigs.
- The CD Open/Close button on my Mac Pro keyboard doesn’t work, which requires me to right-click on the CD Drive in My Computer to eject disks and manually push the door closed. The Boot Camp Apple Keyboard drivers for XP will not install under Vista.
- External/Firewire ISight doesn’t work (don’t really care).
- The performance of the stock NVidia 7300GT sucks for gaming, and the PCI bus driver problem may be further compounding this. Until I can get an upgraded card (ATI 1900XT on order) I won’t know whether it’s the card, PCI bus or both. Update: However, the 7300 plays Half Life 2 very well at 1600×1080- I’ve cancelled my order for the 1900xt in the hopes that a cheaper, 3rd party option becomes available at some point.
- Rebooting the machine is a little touchy still. It seems to want to ALWAYS boot into Vista (even if I select OSX in the System Drive control panel in OSX). I have to hold Option whenever I reboot and it will occasionally hang even then. However, Option does allow me to properly select booting from Mac or Windows. Update: This seems not to be an issue now. If I restart from OSX, it boots into OSX. Rather than restart the machine when I’m in Vista, I’ll always shut down then use Option Key to select the OS I want.
I hope others who know more about this stuff will find better, faster and cleaner ways to do this.
Update: I’ve had a few questions from various folk, so in no particular order:
–Do you have the 32 bit or 64 bit version of RC1 working?
I’m running the x86/32-bit version. I’ve not tried x64
–What bay is your Vista HDD in?My Vista/NTFS drive is in Bay 4
–Does it have its own separate HDD or is it partitioned?
It’s on its own separate drive, on a single NTFS partition.
–How is your system configured?
This is a fairly basic, stock machine; full specs are:
- 2.66Ghz
- 4GB Ram (4×512k Apple Ram in upper riser, 2×1G OWC in the lower)
- 4x 250GB HDs (Bay 1- OSX system, Bay 2 and 3- HFS+ Mirrored Raid, Bay 4-Vista formatted NTFS)
- A single, stock NVidia GeForce 7300GT
- 30″ Apple Cinema Display
- I do NOT have the Apple bluetooth or airport modules installed
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