XP without Boot Camp?

[bgd]

Provided that you update the EFI firmware on the Mac and that you have the BootCamp driver disc, can you simply install Windows XP directly on the Mac just like you would on any PC, in other words without the Boot Camp bootloader utility or dual-boot setup?

My understanding from reading the Boot Camp news at MacRumours is that it's the EFI firmware upgrade that enables the BIOS support needed by XP, not the Boot Camp bootloader which is more or less an ordinary dual-boot manager. In other words, it should be possible to install XP without Boot Camp, right or wrong?

As for the reason why one wouldn't want the Boot Camp bootloader, there are lots of Windows utilities that need to install their own bootloaders which would conflict with Boot Camp. Also, there are people who (like it or not) want to run only XP on their Macs making the OSX partition unnecessary...

So, has anyone tried to install XP directly on their Mac after the EFI firmware upgrade as a single boot partition without Boot Camp and OSX?

[teamhot]

interesting, I like the sound of this if it turns out true...

[noeyesee1]

Tried.

partition with [DiskUtility], 1 HFS+ and 1 Dos
get firmware updated.
Boot with [option] key, and choose to boot from a bootable xp disc
Installed.



(boot camp only produce the drivers)

[WandaLust]

I think in essence it should work, not going to go down the road of why buy an OSX to install windows ... cause we all wan't different things from life.

The firmware updates installed the BIOS/VGA capabilities I believe and in theory that should be enough to boot and install windows XP. However not knowing how apple have implemented the EFI makes it tricky. EFI implementations will look to boot a .efi file to start up. Whether or not there is support to boot the MBR using BIOS if the efi is not found or whether the current apple implementation would allow this MBR reading or not I am not sure. This may be implemented within the boot.efi or maybe in the firmware...

short and long of it is I see no reason why not but someone is going to have to try it to find out...

But don't be suprised if it doesn't work as apple may have written into the firmware to fail if no Apple OS is installed....

:confused: