Windows Vista without Boot Camp

[Tyrven]

This may be old news, but most web sites suggest that Windows must be installed on the last (and, consequently, the slowest) partition of the primary hard disk and that it must be created using Apple's Boot Camp or Disk Utility (since it creates a hybrid EFI/MBR partition). This is probably true of most versions of Windows. I have found, however, that this is not true of Windows Vista x64, which has EFI support. Vista x64 can be installed on any partition without any upfront configuration in OS X (outside of making sure there is unpartitioned space, of course). I posted details about this on My blog (http://blogs.ignia.com/Jeremy.Caney/archive/2007/12/04/Windows-Vista-x64-without-Boot-Camp.aspx).

Note: Apple does not officially support 64-bit versions of Windows. This means that you cannot install Apple's drivers. On a Mac Pro this has been a minor issue; everything works except for the eject key and Blue Tooth. Your mileage may vary.

[htdefiant]

That link did not work for me. Do you have another I could use?

[Tyrven]

So, this is terribly embarassing, but I didn't factor in a piece of the equation. After trying to reproduce this on a second machine I realized my findings were bogus. Windows Vista x64 can install on any partition (even the first partition, with OS X on the second partition) but that partition must be created by OS X as a FAT32 partition. When this happens two things occur:

OS X creates a MBR.
OS X updates both the MBR and the GPT.The latter point is important. Technically, you can create a FAT32 partition to generate the MBR and then delete it, recreating the partitions you want to install on using the Windows setup. However, Windows will only update the MBR and therefore OSX will a) not be able to see your Windows partition and, in fact, will b) see it as unpartitioned space (and thus may easily override it). Therefore all Windows partitions must first be created in OSX to make sure they are referenced in both MBR and GPT. These partitions can later be reformatted as, for instance, NTFS but they shouldn't be recreated outside of OSX.

Tyrven

[djrobx]

Actually, bluetooth works fine. Use the old HID2HCI trick discovered in the XOM days, and just pick the generic CSR Radio driver.