MacBook Pro - Problems & Solutions

[TysonJ]

I had two problems that I was able to fix:

1.) Upside down logo. After installing, restarting, and pressing enter on the windows logo it turned upside down and froze. What I did is installed with a FAT format and it worked fine.

2.) Partition 2 didn't exist. What I did is installed the os on the unpartiioned space, restarted, went back into the installer again and Partition 2 is there and after installing on it again it worked fine.

[sud0n1m]

I can confirm that I had the same problem with NTFS and when I did it in FAT it worked fine.

[Speida]

i confirmed both solutions as well, eventho i installed again cuz i wanted a different version of windows and then NTFS option worked fine..

[hokutorii]

Hey everyone,

Just curious, but using FAT32 instead of NTFS, are there any disadvantages? I seem to remember that FAT32 only supports files up to 4gb or something like that, and I'm guessing that the size of the partition can only be so big vs NTFS? I'm not 100% but just curious. I'm getting MacBook Pro soon with the 100gb drive, so thinking I'd give 20gb to Windows XP which I think should be fine on FAT32. The reason I ask is because Mac OS X can read and write to FAT32, making it much better when running OS X then only being able to read NTFS. Thanks!

[inkhead]

How do I get it to reinstall? I had a french install which i stopped in the middle. Now whenever I put a WinXP cd in the drive to do a reinstall, it just turns the logo upsidedown... How can I make it try to reinstall!?

[rxcited]

Hey everyone,

Just curious, but using FAT32 instead of NTFS, are there any disadvantages? I seem to remember that FAT32 only supports files up to 4gb or something like that, and I'm guessing that the size of the partition can only be so big vs NTFS? I'm not 100% but just curious. I'm getting MacBook Pro soon with the 100gb drive, so thinking I'd give 20gb to Windows XP which I think should be fine on FAT32. The reason I ask is because Mac OS X can read and write to FAT32, making it much better when running OS X then only being able to read NTFS. Thanks!

I had a slightly different experience on my MBP than the instructions. Initially I didn't read the instructions carefully enough and made the 1st partition for OS X and the 2nd for XP. This seemed like it was going to work, but the FAT drive showed up as F: instead of C: - ultimately it just hung up after the initial phase and reboot. I surmise the EFI hack assumes (requires) C: and thus the 1st partition.

The second time around, I put the FAT partition first, but curiously the small EFI partition did not show up. All I saw was 1st unknown, 2nd unknown. I tried to select the 1st C: partition for the XP install (already different than the instructions), but the installer said it was not possible. So even though the instructions cautioned against it, I used the XP installer to DELETE the 1st partition, followed by "install in unpartitioned space."

I was surprised that it worked. Furthermore, when it came to formatting, it gave me the FAT option in addition to NTFS. I chose FAT and since it was larger than 2 Gb, it told me it was going to be FAT32 - fine by me. Note my initial partitioning scheme was 32 Gb for XP and the remaining 60+ Gb for OS X. I actually prefer FAT32, not because it is better than NTFS, but because I new that OS X would be able to access it. This was great in the beginning since I could download and copy drivers under OS X and drop them in the XP partition, ready to pick up and install after rebooting.

My understanding is that the XP installer doesn't like partitions greater than 32 Gb so that was where I got that number. This is odd because if you use the Windows 98 installer, you can set up a 250 Gb FAT32 partition if you like. Whatever, I am okay with 32 Gb on my MBP.

I haven't tried it yet, but MacDrive should let me access the OS X partition while booted in XP - TWO WAY communication. I have and use MacDrive for XP on my Dell laptop and it works great for mac formatted USB drives.

BTW, I had already migrated a bunch of stuff to my MBP (like my iTunes library and my e-mail archive), so I couldn't just wipe it. I booted from the OS X install CD 1 and used the Disk Utility to save a disk image to a USB drive before doing the re-partitioning. This worked fine. But later after re-partitioning, I was not able to use Disk Utility to restore the image back to the OS X parition. A long story, but essentially it refused to allow me to specify the destination partition.

After some head banging and googling, I discovered that the Disk Utility is a front end for a command line program "asr", the Apple Restore Utility. Booting from the same install CD, you can start a Terminal session (instead of Disk Utility), and run the asr command specifying "/Volumes/usb_vol/name.dmg" to grab the disk image from the USB drive, and blast it to "/Volumes/osx_vol" to restore onto the OS X partition.

Hope some of this is helpful to you.

-- Fuzz

[jann]

After some head banging and googling, I discovered that the Disk Utility is a front end for a command line program "asr", the Apple Restore Utility. Booting from the same install CD, you can start a Terminal session (instead of Disk Utility), and run the asr command specifying "/Volumes/usb_vol/name.dmg" to grab the disk image from the USB drive, and blast it to "/Volumes/osx_vol" to restore onto the OS X partition.

Wondering....

Does it work only with dmg's or will it work if i DD'd an image of the os x partition as well...

[Rayne]

After some head banging and googling, I discovered that the Disk Utility is a front end for a command line program "asr", the Apple Restore Utility. Booting from the same install CD, you can start a Terminal session (instead of Disk Utility), and run the asr command specifying "/Volumes/usb_vol/name.dmg" to grab the disk image from the USB drive, and blast it to "/Volumes/osx_vol" to restore onto the OS X partition.

Hope some of this is helpful to you.

-- Fuzz
Hmmmm. use the utility to copy your friend' windows partition on their intel-mac if install fails? I wish some of my friends had intel macs.:(

[Dr.Tech]

Hmmmm. use the utility to copy your friend' windows partition on their intel-mac if install fails? I wish some of my friends had intel macs.:(

This does not work so well. The xp partition gets split into 2 partitions (eg 0s1 - 200 Mb and 0s2 - what's left of the xp partition) and makes the osx partition: 0s3. The first partion is an EFI partition that asr will not clone as it is not mountable.

Are there any sector by sector terminal commands (or applications) that might work?

I think hard drive1 needs to be exactly mapped to hard drive 2 rather than partition by partition

DT

[cjag]

I'm having similar problems to this tread with my MBP...

I can go through the XP first stage setup, but when i reboots to go to the second, when clicked, the Windows logo flips upside down and nothing else happens.
After reading this and other treads i think the problem might be the partitions. I get three,

1) EFI 200Mb (Labled C: )
2) Unpartioned Space (30Gb roughly) (labled E: )
3) Mac partition (70Gb roughly) (labled F: )

Is the fact that the second parition is not labled as C: my problem??? I've tried installing as FAT and NTFS which made no difference. I also tried deleting Partion 1 and 2 with Xp installer and then installing - still no joy :( Please help!