11 Easy Steps to BootCamp

For people who don’t read manuals

Step One: Get IntelMac computer. Make sure you’re at Mac OS X Tiger v10.4.6. Update your IntelMac’s firmware.

Step Two: Get Microsoft Windows XP SP2 CD.
Buy, or slipstream Windows XP Service Pack 2 Network Installation Package for IT Professionals and Developers to a Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 0 XP CD. Directions at this link were useful.

Step Three: Download Boot Camp from Apple.

Step Four: Backup everything you don’t want to lose.
I’m still infatuated with Mike Bombich’s Carbon Copy Cloner.

Step Five: Install Boot Camp Assistant.

Step Six: Run Boot Camp Assistant. Make the Boot Camp XP drivers CD now.

Step Seven: Boot Camp Assistant will ask you to choose your partition size.
Don’t be fooled! 5Gb default isn’t big enough for anything you want to do. If you don’t like it you can always de-install later. You cannot necessarily RE-INSTALL after you have de-installed. Go big or go home!

Step Eight: Boot Camp Assistant will ask you if you want to install XP now.
Your choice, but I recommend you do. Put in XP SP2 CD and reboot your puppy.

Step Nine: You are now installing Windows.
You have now left Infinite Loop and are entering Redmond. I recommend a settling beverage of your choice, some good reading material, and a lot of patience with the usual annoying Windows installation procedures. I’ll leave you now, until after you’ve installed Windows.

Step Ten: You’re in Windows now, looking at the grassy Elysian Fields from Gladiator, I guess, minus the hazy flashbacks. Eject your XP CD (ask a Windows user if you don’t know how to do this yourself). Insert your Apple XP Drivers CD.
If it doesn’t run itself, run it. Do what the nice people say and no one gets hurt. It’ll ask you to install a load of stuff you might not recognize. Trust that Apple has provided everything that Microsoft will inevitably ask for, and just say yes to everything. It will be good in the end.

Step Eleven: You’re now running Windows.
Mac users, anything after this is Microsoft related and outside the bailiwick of these pages. Good luck. You’ll need it. Consider Microsoft’s new Antispyware software Windows Defender (free in beta), or their over all systems maintenance package Windows OneCare Live maybe, and a whole lot of patience. Run the Windows Update services in XP over and over again until you are up to date on every essential performance and security patch. More settling beverages of your choice might be required. Lay in a generous supply. You’ll be needing them.

Note: After this, Windows thinks it’s taken over your life (hasn’t it, already?) and your Mac, and will always automagically reboot your Mac into Windows. Hold down trusty “option-key” at startup, and a polite “choose your boot partition” selection comes up. Choose Macintosh of course, to return to your previously channel.

‘Useful’ Article:

With the idea in mind that a life without problems is a pretty dull one, I decided as soon as I had set myself to buy one of the then new Intel MacBooks to get Windows XP up and running on it as soon as possible.

I procrastinated just a little while after my initial purchase. Work interfered and the job I had actually bought the MacBook for was going to take a few more weeks. I read avidly everything while waiting on the early multiboot possibilities and had decided on a triple boot XP/Linux/OS X configuration from the OSx86 Project. It was going to be HOT!

By the time I’d finished the contract however, I found I didn’t really have to become a UNIX guru to set-up my machine. By then there was this perfectly responsible dual-boot solution out there for everybody.

Apple had mysteriously released Boot Camp.

Almost accidentally it seemed. Like the Infinite Loop crowd figured they’d better step in and go public with their in-house toy before too many more MacBook owners popped their new computers trying to make FrankenBooks from scratch.

Simple first, flash later, I decided to do this instead of the slightly (well, mind-numbingly, really) more involved OSx86 Project offering.

When I finally had the time to devote to this, there was just one tiny little hurdle to clear, namely making a successful Windows XP Service Pack 2 boot CD. I knew there was a way to take one of my existing XP licenses and combine Service Pack 2 with it. One of the more useful Windows tricks I’d studied and read about.

But I couldn’t find a live human being anywhere who had ever done this, make a bootable slipstreamed XP SP2 CD. So I Googled slipstream service pack 2 XP.

And eventually found some nice people who wrote out and published on the Internet how they’d done it. I had to wade through a few dozen who might have, but certainly couldn’t explain how they had.

The Elder Geek on Windows XP site seemed to have a workable, at least it worked for me, step by step on how to do this. Quick recommendation, bookmark the Elder Geek’s site. You’ll no doubt be looking for useful Windows tips and tricks for the rest of your life now and it’s a pretty keen place.

So, I wasted a couple days on and off slipstreaming SP2 onto one of my Windows XP Service Pack 1 OEM licenses, and then a couple more days after that figuring out how to burn it all onto a bootable CD. And that was the hardest part of the job.

I could have saved even this hassle if I hadn’t been quite so Scottish (Clan MacBean—same clan as Mister Bean, actually) and actually had bought a THIRD XP license, but how many copies of Windows does one Mac User need, right?