Vista & Boot Camp

[Zorn]

So who has loaded Vista on Boot Camp? Reports from the Apple forums say that build 5342 works, how's the driver support if you've tried it? Let's make this the Boot Camp/Vista thread.

[92GTA]

I have 5342 and I will be installing it on a 20" iMac. I was able to install MCE 2005 perfectly.

Why would drivers be an issue? XP drivers work just fine in Vista if you know how to install them. HOWEVER the video driver will be a HUGE problem. It will work mind you, but I don't think Glass will be functional, basically it will be Areo Express. Also why? You can't play games, Vista is DX10 only now, sure if you REALLY know what you are doing you can hack DX9c onto it but even then gaming performance is not as good as XP and without full Aero I see no point whatsoever.

[NeoRicen]

Vista isnt Direct X 10 ONLY, that would be market suicide as it would force ALL gamers to buy a new GFX card with DX10 (they don't even exist yet).

It requires (for glass, games etc.) at least DX9, not DX10, with Video drivers Vista should work fine with a Mac, I'm guessing by the time Vista is out Leopard/Bootcamp will fully support it.

[McoreD]

Would really be intersted see how Vista goes with iMac guys...!! :)

[92GTA]

Vista isnt Direct X 10 ONLY, that would be market suicide as it would force ALL gamers to buy a new GFX card with DX10 (they don't even exist yet).

It requires (for glass, games etc.) at least DX9, not DX10, with Video drivers Vista should work fine with a Mac, I'm guessing by the time Vista is out Leopard/Bootcamp will fully support it.

Dude, chill for one second and get your head out your ass. I'm referring to the current build. For example, 5342 is being discussed here, not Vista RTM with DirectX 9L ok. Of course 10.5 will support the new graphics driver model, AGAIN, I was referring to functionality in current builds.

[raduma]

Dude, chill for one second and get your head out your ass. I'm referring to the current build. For example, 5342 is being discussed here, not Vista RTM with DirectX 9L ok. Of course 10.5 will support the new graphics driver model, AGAIN, I was referring to functionality in current builds.

So I was finally able to get Vista fully bootable and runable on a MacBookPro. However in order to do that you have to nix your OSX partition entirely. Vista gets confused by the partitioning scheme. Here's quick and dirty instructions:

- boot from an >>XP<< cd.
- go through the setup until you get to the partition screen.
- delete all partitions.
- create a partition (or 2 if you want XP and vista installed at the same time)
- if you want XP, finish the install process, otherwise just go to the next step

- reboot from the Vista CD.
- do everything as it asks.


Driver support:
The built x1600 driver for Vista had full hw support with Glass enabled and running with no problems.

The Mac driver CD fails to install because of stupidness on apples part. The apple installer tries to install Ati drivers right at the beginning. It obviously can't because the drivers it has are for XP and not Vista. It then quits entirely w/o installing anything else.

However. Messing around by watching where it extracts temp files you can get your hands on the real drivers. I did that and I got pretty much everything that works under XP working under Vista as well, except:

- eject key/brightness: these aren't drivers, just apps the apple installer installs. Unless I can trick it into skipping the ATI drivers, and doing its regular thing, I don't know how to make it install these.

- Sound. The sound driver installed works, but it has the old problem that the internal speakers aren't enabled. I'm assuming that under XP after the driver is installed, the installer goes ahead and changes the default port mapping. Not quite sure where thats saved, I'll keep looking. Sound out trough headphones works fine, the control panel gets installed as well.

Right now I'm trying to get OSX installed as well by installing XP & Vista first, and leaving room for an OSX paritition, then restoring my OSX backup from a firewire driver onto that partition, blessing boot.efi, and seeing if I can get it going as well.

[92GTA]

Good, I was hoping that the built-in vista driver would work! That's good to hear! After reading the Omega drivers work on the Apple's I had hope. I knew the Apple ATI driver wouldn't work.

You should be able to extract the entire .exe from the Apple driver cd to get all the driver files and individual installers so you can do it all manually. That way things like the monitor brightness can be run in compatability mode.

Congrats!!!

A little tip for Vista. Apple has Bootcamp set up a "C" partition for XP because it must have that. Vista on the other had doesn't care, E, F, or whatever can be the partition. The reason is because when it boots, whatever partition it's on will become the C drive as far as Vista is concerned. It does this for application installations.

[raduma]

Good, I was hoping that the built-in vista driver would work! That's good to hear! After reading the Omega drivers work on the Apple's I had hope. I knew the Apple ATI driver wouldn't work.

You should be able to extract the entire .exe from the Apple driver cd to get all the driver files and individual installers so you can do it all manually. That way things like the monitor brightness can be run in compatability mode.

Congrats!!!

A little tip for Vista. Apple has Bootcamp set up a "C" partition for XP because it must have that. Vista on the other had doesn't care, E, F, or whatever can be the partition. The reason is because when it boots, whatever partition it's on will become the C drive as far as Vista is concerned. It does this for application installations.

It's not the boot letter that screws it in a standard install. crcdisk.sys fails to initialize. You get a blue screen with the UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME error. That's why I tried it with no OSX parition present. I think the standard GPT partioning scheme is whats confusing. Vista expects an MBR partition scheme.

Also, regarding the installer. I can extract the msi from the exe. After that, the only tool I found to extract files from an MSI package doesn't extract any path info, just flat files. Which doesn't really help when there are about 100 files. Also, the msi obviously has install scripts embedded in it for how to tweak certain component installs since obviously the basic component install isn't enough. Re, the sound driver. I can get the basic driver installed, but the installer obviously tweaks some more registry settings, which I don't know how to monitor.

[Krevnik]

Vista is supposed to support GPT, which is why I think Vista specifically has isues... it knows that it is GPT, but doesn't have the support in the build yet.

[nevermind13]

i read that someone got vista dual booting with osx simply by deleting the efi partition.

so i tried it, with build 5342.

install started good. upon restart got an error that winload was missing. no big deal, recovery options on the dvd fixed it.

so then the install goes for a while, finally goes black and freezes. i can only assume its not finished.

i could boot into safe mode each time every time, but whenever i booted normal, it froze at setting up your desktop, except for one time where it booted but was too damn slow to do anything.

safe mode could do very little. i managed to point device manager to the beta ati driver, but that didnt help.

also tried vista 5308, but the mouse pointer wouldnt show so i couldnt start the install..... wierd.

anyway, not sure if it was just my disc or not (it was kinda dirt, i had to clean it to make it boot in the first place).

ill probably try again after ive properly backed up xp with a different copy.

just thought id share my experience.

(also, xp with vista windowsblinds skin looks pretty good, theres hardly a gui difference.

[jimd]

also tried vista 5308, but the mouse pointer wouldnt show so i couldnt start the install..... wierd.



Same thing happens to me with this disk -- anyone have a solution?

[egil]

So who has loaded Vista on Boot Camp? Reports from the Apple forums say that build 5342 works, how's the driver support if you've tried it? Let's make this the Boot Camp/Vista thread.

Works ok after few trials/errors. Now works fine. Remember to delete that 200mb partition and maybe startup repair is needed after 1st install. Most critical drivers are found from MS update. Net, wlan, display etc. What I'm missing are audio drivers... Anyone have succeed with those ? XP drvs not working...

[egil]

Sorry. I forgot to mention - it's 5384 version. Works ok, but only after that 200mb partition is deleted and startup repair is done after install has finished / you get thet winboot black page. (DVD startup / recovery...)

ps. You need to fully install XP sp2 from Bootcamp first and then start Vista install (DVD startup not from XP gui) and format the XP partition before continuing Vista install...

I got some help from here:
https://blogs.msdn.com/hans_vb/archive/2006/06/02/614799.aspx

Still I like my OSx better...

[inkhead]

Vista 5536 Rocks, no screwing around with deleting EFI partitions, just install bootcamp, and put in the Vista disk. Vista reboots several times during the install, so make sure when it does you, hold option after reboot and select for it to continue booting off the disc, so as to finish the install.