Windows XP successfully booted on an Intel-based Mac

Pu7o · Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 1978 Location: Portugal

It appears that a guy named "narf2006" managed to boot Windows XP on an Intel-based iMac. A screenshot is available here

.

Booting windows on an Intel-based Mac was previously impossible because Apple's machines use the newer Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) instead of the regular Basic Input/Output System (BIOS), and because the graphics cards in the iMacs are ready for UGA graphics only, not VGA. So now the question is... when will instructions for running windows on an Intel-based Mac start showing up? Smile

Best of all, unlike running OS X on non-Apple machines, running Windows on a Mac is actually legal! Razz

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.0.2) Gecko/20060310 Camino/1.0.0+ (Pu7o)

Antony · *14 Mar, 2006 5:24 pm*

Any documentation on performing this? Or just two pictures?

Antony, the Ides of March MMVI.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/417.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/417.9.2

MozInfo701

| MacCentre701

| AntBlog701

| don't steal music.

Pu7o · Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 1978 Location: Portugal

The documentation will be released as soon as narf2006 collects his $12000 price (hopefully this week).

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.0.2) Gecko/20060310 Camino/1.0.0+ (Pu7o)

Antony · *14 Mar, 2006 5:34 pm*

Running ugly Windows on our beloved Mac is actually a good news for everybody... if it's easy to achieve. So more people would get real Mac.

Antony, on the Ides of March MMVI

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.0.2) Gecko/20060311 Camino/1.0.0+ (G4)

MozInfo701

| MacCentre701

| AntBlog701

| don't steal music.

Pu7o · Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 1978 Location: Portugal

Don_HH2K · Joined: 09 May 2004 Posts: 4738

Booting Windows on a Mac most likely wouldn't be enough to get people to switch. There's still the problem of whether or not you can easily boot XP, or whether or not people are actually willing to go through 'advanced' steps (as I assume are in order) to do it. If Apple decides to implement this fix in some sort of way, then it's a possibility that there may be some growth in the Mac user population.

Personally, I don't see why MS doesn't make their software boot on Macs, and why Apple doesn't make their software boot on regular PCs. They both know that, no matter what, people are going to do it eventually. Mac OS X 10.4.4-or-whateverversionitwas was hacked within a few days by maxxus, though XP took a bit longer seeing that actual technology needed to be implemented instead of technology being disabled.

I'm waiting to be able to boot whatever x86-based OS I want, from 16-bit DOS to Vista x64 to OS X x86 to Linux x64, from the same machine. When this new hack gets published, then technically any x64-capable system would be able to do that, which is part of the reason why Apple most likely should switch back to 64-bit chips sooner or later, and implement some sort of UGA-to-VGA bridge while they're at it.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060130 Donzilla/1.1PR1 (WML/1.3)

Laptop: Turion 64 X2 @ 2GHz, 2GB DDR2-667, 100GB HD, ATI Radeon X300, 15" LCD, Seven Ultimate RC

Antony · *14 Mar, 2006 6:19 pm*

Power Mac G5 users waited for a long time for Virtual PC to be available for G5 (Virtual PC for Mac 7).

If Microsoft is to make next Virtual PC for Mac (Intel), and can have a good speed, I am sure the sale of Virtual PC for Mac will be a hit.

Antony, on the Ides of March, MMVI.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/417.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/417.9.2

MozInfo701

| MacCentre701

| AntBlog701

| don't steal music.

beanboy89 · Joined: 16 May 2004 Posts: 1469

It now looks like "narf2006" has posted a video

of the installation of Windows XP on an Intel-based iMac PC. It also shows the opening of the Device Manager, System Properties dialog, and the Control Panel. Unfortunately parts of the video are too shakey or low-quality to decipher exactly what some text reads.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060130 SeaMonkey/1.0

...

DJGM · *16 Mar, 2006 1:49 pm*

And what seems weird about that video, is that a full colour Windows Flag logo appears in place of the
usual Apple boot logo when the system starts up. Would that mean if a Linux distro made for x86 is
successfully installed on a MacIntel machine, there'd be a big Tux instead of the Apple logo?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060130 SeaMonkey/1.0

SeaMonkey = Swiss Army Knife: It's versatile, reliable, and contains useful tools.
Windows Internet Explorer = Old Swiss Cheese: Full of holes, and it stinks!

Pu7o · Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 1978 Location: Portugal

No, that's part of the dual boot screen that narf and blanka created. The dual boot screen works like this: When you boot, you get the apple logo. If you press down, it changes to a windows logo, and you will boot windows.

NEWSFLASH: The solution has been posted. The method is mostly like this: You have to patch the CD, run a command in Mac OS X to set up dual booting, then boot off the CD and install Windows normally. This, of course, assuming that you already have separate partitions for both operating systems. See http://onmac.net

for more information.

BAD: Still no accelerated drivers for the included ATI X1600 Graphics card, and this only works on the 17" iMac, MacBook, and Mac Mini. There seems to be some incompatibility with the 20" iMac. That's being worked on, though.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ Trunk/20060227 (KHTML, like Gecko) Shiira/1.2.2 Safari/125

Antony · *16 Mar, 2006 5:15 pm*

DJGM · *16 Mar, 2006 5:21 pm*

What I'd like to know about this project is ... when XP is running on the MacIntel machine, is the Mac OS X
partition accessible from within Windows, and is the Windows partition accessible from within Mac OS X?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060130 SeaMonkey/1.0

SeaMonkey = Swiss Army Knife: It's versatile, reliable, and contains useful tools.
Windows Internet Explorer = Old Swiss Cheese: Full of holes, and it stinks!

Don_HH2K · Joined: 09 May 2004 Posts: 4738

Seeing that Mac OS X uses HFS+, which XP can't read, and XP uses NTFS, which Mac OS X can't read, I'd wager that seeing those partitions is nearly impossible from the other OS.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060130 Donzilla/1.1PR1 (WML/1.3)

Laptop: Turion 64 X2 @ 2GHz, 2GB DDR2-667, 100GB HD, ATI Radeon X300, 15" LCD, Seven Ultimate RC

Antony · *16 Mar, 2006 5:24 pm*

Pu7o · Joined: 06 Jan 2005 Posts: 1978 Location: Portugal

	Forum Index > Windows (and Microsoft talk)	All times are CST (GMT -6)
page 1 of 2	page 1, 2 next