MBP and Bootcamp, NEED HELP!!!

First, my specs:
I have a 15" MBP, 2.2 GHz with 2 GB ram. OS X 10.5. I have a 30gb partition with Windows XP SP2 running on it.

Now, the problem:
While running Windows in bootcamp, installing Anything installs at about 25% of the regular speed. I installed FEAR on my mac and it took almost an hour and a half! On my old PC as a comparison, (Pentium III 1.0 GHz Processor) I installed the exact same game, and it took 20 minutes! What is going on!!!
(I don't know if it means anything, but I noticed during the install, the fan and harddrive seemed to be doing hardly anything at all, occasionally speeding up, then quieting down almost imediatly afterwards)
Why is it that Mac in Bootcamp is so slow with the harddrive?!?!

Does anyone have an answer for this problem? Any help is greatly appreciated!

Did you format the Boot Camp partition as NTFS or FAT32? If the latter, be aware that FAT32 does not perform as well as NTFS (in general). In addition, it can only write single files up to 4GB in size. With that limitation, a large FPS game like Fear, might have issues since it may store data in file sizes that large or larger.

Also, did you install the Boot Camp drivers following the installation of Windows XP? Be aware that you must insert your Leopard disc (or the first disc of the System discs that came with your machine) and allow setup to install the drivers.

I have it installed on NTFS format, and also I did install the proper drivers with the Leopard CD1. I read somewhere just now that there is some sort of limitation on the write speed to the hard drives in bootcamp that might or might not be patched. I don't know, probably just a rumor.

Faeran said:

I have it installed on NTFS format, and also I did install the proper drivers with the Leopard CD1. I read somewhere just now that there is some sort of limitation on the write speed to the hard drives in bootcamp that might or might not be patched. I don't know, probably just a rumor.

Click to expand...

Unless Apple seriously flubbed the chipset drivers, I can't imagine that would be the case. In essence, Intel Macs *are* PCs. The major differences these days are the EFI (basically the next generation of BIOS, which hasn't been adopted in the Windows world yet) and the Mac keyboard layout. That's basically it, the chipset, processor, video card, memory, it's all the same.

All Boot Camp really does is two things:

1. Preps the EFI to emulate BIOS to allow Windows to run.
2. Supplies drivers that make some of the Mac specific functionality work similarly in Windows (alternate click, special keyboard keys, etc).

So, when you're running Windows "on" Boot Camp, it's really just running natively just as it would run on any other PC.

With that said, there's really nothing else I can think of that would impact your load times. I regularly run Half Life 2/Portal/Counterstrike: Source on my machine in Boot Camp and have never had this problem.

Just to confirm that it is indeed NTFS, in Windows, open a command prompt (Start => Run, type: CMD and hit Enter). Then, type the following command:

convert c: /FS:NTFS

It should come back with "Drive C: is already NTFS". Otherwise, it will convert your drive over to NTFS in just a few minutes.

In addition, another common mistake is that during the Boot Camp driver install, Windows will warn you about "unsafe or unsigned" drivers. Many times, the user inadvertently declines the installation of one or more of the drivers and thinks they have them installed. So, you may want to run the driver install again.