Mac Mini Core Solo Success!

[elfurbe]

A friend and I finally got his Solo Mac Mini going. We're working up a step-by-step how-to, but at the moment, we've got a fully functional XP.

We made a driver zip that has all the requisite drivers in one easy download, and we've got a couple screenshots of the device manager so you can see the installed devices.

http://macxp.furbism.com/

Hope to have a full install guide ready to go in the next day or two. We've been scouring forums and reading the wiki and dancing all over the place for four or five days, so we thought it might be beneficial to put together a guide to our magic bullet. Hopefully this will pan out for some of you. We'll update the webpage when we get the guide done, and post an update here.

[elfurbe]

Alright, the excitement of documenting the process won over work today. Here's the first draft of our how-to. Now, it has a two areas where we believe we went a hard way when an easy way would have sufficed, but in both cases we documented the EXACT sequence of events that led to success, as well as our believed shortcuts. If you're testing this method from scratch, please do us a favor and try the shorter methods first and see if they work. We won't be able to do a reinstall until later in the week to verify every step, so right now this is mostly constructed from memory. If there are any glaring errors, post back to this thread and changes will be made asap.

http://macxp.furbism.com/#howto

We have no reason to believe this wouldn't work just as well on the Core Duo, but we don't have a Core Duo to try it on, so we only swear to success with the Solo. If a Duo owner using our guide makes a complete working install, then we can consider this a generic guide.

[jekaboom]

Good work, this will help a lot of users to get their mini rocking :) !

Lets see if this works for the core-duo too (should, i dont see why not)

[AmyO]

Great work. I tried to get my Mini up and running XP yesterday (with the Wiki instructions), but failed miserably. I think it was at the "Press F4 and then F7 at the boot menu" part. Does that mean press F4 with the Windows logo showing? At any rate, I'm starting over from scratch tonight and will print out your detailed instructions as a guide. And thanks for the driver bundle, too. :)

[compufix]

Excellent work...dont forget if starting over, or creating the CD you can use xomhelper to install the proper xom.efi file, and you can use it to burn the slipstream CD.

-Compufix

[elfurbe]

You want to push F4 while the the boot selector is on. It doesn't matter if you have Windows or Mac picked. It just hides the graphical display and opens the console. Then F7 puts the console into the video mode editor.

Hopefully you'll have better luck with our guide!

[AmyO]

Oh my goodness, elfurbe, you are my new hero.
I followed your directions, including using the original xom.efi file and using a resolution of 640x480, and I am now watching the Windows XP installer do its thing! I had to try with a few different install discs, but finally one worked.

Thanks for hosting such detailed installation notes. I guess perhaps the core solo and core duo are different. Seems enough of us have had problems with the Mini-specific xom.efi file.

[elfurbe]

Fantastic! Well, at least we know the first part works on Solos. Now, here's hoping all the drivers go as swimmingly. :D

[compufix]

Oh my goodness, elfurbe, you are my new hero.
I followed your directions, including using the original xom.efi file and using a resolution of 640x480, and I am now watching the Windows XP installer do its thing! I had to try with a few different install discs, but finally one worked.

Thanks for hosting such detailed installation notes. I guess perhaps the core solo and core duo are different. Seems enough of us have had problems with the Mini-specific xom.efi file.

I will add an entry to xomhelper to designate the core solo and core duo so the original xom.efi is used for the solo...

Thanks for the work!

-Compufix

[elfurbe]

Hopefully a Core Duo user will give the guide a try, eventually. I'd wager you don't need the custom xom for a Duo either.

[jbklahn]

I have a 2G dual core mini. Basically I used the directions from elfurbe to get XP running for the first time since the announcement day 1. Excellent work. I had tried every trick and idea before giving up.

Specifics follow:

Today I received a 'Tiger Direct' purchased copy of XP sp2 OEM edition. I used xom helper to build a slipstream disk. I switched out my Dell 2405 for a VGA 17' PC monitor. I downloaded the drivers of elfurbe's zip and burned then on a R/W cd. The WIKI mac mini V5 (graphics drivers, no ATI??) patch was used

I tried to follow elfurbe's instructions insofar as possible. I took the 'simple route' with the drivers.

step i.....I used the original XP CD, not the slipstreamed one..this should be made clearer.

step 9.b....this statement is confusing, there are a number of yellow exclamation point devices, there are a number of yellow question mark devices, none is called ethernet device (one is called ethernet controller).

step 9.d....this did not work, is this an .inf type file, or is INF the file name?? Any way I could find no such file. I am a really poor user and I need more help here.

At startup the system reports a missing 'wshirda.dll' file??

A final issue about the display. I restored the Dell2405 onto the VGA and set resolutions up to 1920xwhatever. All works fine as long as VGA. Changing to DVI goeas through text boot and then darkscreens at windows startup How does one transition the display back to DVI??

Anyway, thanks for your efforts. I am live on XP and one happy camper.

[jbklahn]

One other thing, upon restart the sigma tel audio driver/installer runs and reports 'The system does not support the driver you are attempting to install.'

[elfurbe]

Excellent! A Duo owner is mostly working! So, I assume that certifies that you don't need the custom xom.efi, even for the Duo. Money. Am I to also understand that you just ran the "old" Intel video driver installer and everything just worked? Cause that'd be super.

Alright, to the problems.

From step 1:
You used an unmodified Windows XP SP2 CD to do the install?.. I think that might qualify as a miracle. :D Interesting info, though. If anyone else can confirm that it works without mucking with the CD, that'd be excellent.

From step 9:
Sorry about the mis-wording. Ethernet Controller is your mark. I updated the page to be more specific with the exact path where the Lenovo drivers end up, so check that out and see if it gets your Airport working.

That wshirda.dll problem is interesting, as that's the windows component for printing over Infrared... We didn't have any luck getting the infrared to work, so you're in new territory, it looks like.

As to the DVI. There was a different driver that enabled DVI support, if I recall properly. The problem was that if you enabled DVI support, VGA didn't work. I'll see if we can track down the DVI driver and work out some steps to getting DVI support. Since our monitor was VGA, that's pretty much where we focused. You can try and make some sense out of this (http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Mac_Mini_DVI), as many people seem to have DVI working via the various methods on that page. I'm not sure how to have you proceed, since you already have the VGA working and most of the info on that page pertains to a freshly installed XP Mini.

[elfurbe]

That's wierd with the audio. My friend with the hardware is out of town until next week, so when he gets back, I'll ask him if he remembers any voodoo steps to make the audio work. At the time of writing, he seemed to think it was a zero-voodoo process.

[Snub_Fighter]

Ok i've got modifyed and mixed the intel and dell drivers that fix the setup error where it claims the driver isn't the right one.. i need a place to host it how ever.. never mind.. I should be able to host it on my office live site...

Edit heres the link: http://snubfighter.com/Intel Desktop Boards.rar

I still needed the dell drivers from the site posted in this thread. Why because you need to start the dell setup first and let it extract the files to the default location, then you need to cancel that setup and run mine and follow the rest of these instruction... because a new hardware window popped up for the sigmatel high def codec.. I did the searched for the driver option and in the default dell extraction C:\dell\drivers\R114282\WDM and installed the codec from there the install finished and then the control panel installed fine and such.. and the sound comes out the mic port... sadly didn't fix that problem... I'm not sure this will work 100% for everyone.. it worked for me and maybe i just lucked out but it won't hurt to try.. but i do hope it works and if so let me know... thanx

[elfurbe]

So, what you did was run the Dell setup and then cancel it, which extracted the drivers. Then you ran the Intel setup which kicked along until it asked for a driver for the "High Definition CODEC", at which point you pointed it to the dell folder and it installed, and now it's all hunky-dory?

[Snub_Fighter]

Yeah, but the link to my site is to download the intel drivers which have 3 files copyed over from the dell drivers to make it more easy so I don't have to explain the whole copying bit...So you can't use the orginal intel drivers from their site, but the one I packaged in a rar that I linked. It worked for me... The 3 files were just the tray and control panel and one setup file...

[elfurbe]

Oh! Excellent. So I can just roll that in with the drivers package as the audio driver and people just run the setup program and it all goes smoothly?

[Trombone_Bob]

Hello,
Great install guide. I used it only for the video driver and it worked wonderfully. However there is one driver that you forgot. The TPM chip. It is listed as one of the "Unknown Devices" in your Device Manager. http://support.samsung.de/fileview.aspx?modelcode=NP-X60&fileid=849990&fileType=DR
This is the location of the driver. The way to install it is manually. rt click one of the Unknown devices and click update driver and point it to the place that you extracted the file that you downloaded. Now we are down to 2 devices without drivers. Again Thank you for your wonderful guide.

[Snub_Fighter]

Oh! Excellent. So I can just roll that in with the drivers package as the audio driver and people just run the setup program and it all goes smoothly?

It should I've only tested it on my duo, I haven't heard from anyone else who has tryed it... I would like if others who try the drivers and instructions on provided would confirm the results. You can add the zip and the instructions to your set of drivers as an alt. to the ones that are already a part of the set so people will have a secondary choice to try...

[DeathChill]

I have a question: I used the original xom.efi and it worked great with the video drivers (as with the Mini specific one it screwed XP up), BUT I have to manually change my resolution in Windows after every boot, which is quite annoying.

Is there a way to fix this? :O

EDIT: As well, the Intel drivers don't actually start working until I set my resolution to 1024x768 either. Any known fix for this?

[Eric]

SORRY
the original xom.efi can not set resolution on my mac mini core dou:(

[d0nut]

Well, the mini specific xom file will not allow you to change resolutions under DVI, but I have heard that if you are connected with VGA everything should work.

I'm using the mini specific xom file and and connected with DVI. I have had little to no issues (except for the one resolution issue) since getting it working.

For what it's worth, I had problems with the steps in this thread. I used the steps in the official wiki about installing video in a mac mini. Everything went smoothly.

Berndt

[DeathChill]

Well, the mini specific xom file will not allow you to change resolutions under DVI, but I have heard that if you are connected with VGA everything should work.

I'm using the mini specific xom file and and connected with DVI. I have had little to no issues (except for the one resolution issue) since getting it working.

For what it's worth, I had problems with the steps in this thread. I used the steps in the official wiki about installing video in a mac mini. Everything went smoothly.

Berndt
I have everything working, but it's just a pain to have to manually switch resolutions every time I boot it up. It's really odd, as the Intel video drivers don't activate until I set my display to 1024x768.