Boot camp won't install?

I had boot camp set up with Vista, which ran just fine. But I, like 95% of the world's population, not thrilled with it. I wanted to move back to XP for the greater speed (especially in VMWare Fusion). However, for some reason, I can't get boot camp to work with XP. I can partition the drive and set up XP, but after it copies all the files from the XP install CD, it just keeps rebooting and going through the installation process again. If I eject the CD between reboots it gives me some kind of "OS not found" error (don't remember the exact msg). Has this happened to anyone before?

I've used the same CD to create a virtual machine in VMWare without boot camp, and it works just fine.

Dartholomew,

During a normal XP install on a PC, XP will stop to re-boot either 2 or 3 times. Each time it asks " Boot from CD?" With a PC you just leave it alone, otherwise if you say "Yes," and hit enter, it will re-start the install process. When this happens with Boot Camp, you just have to ignore it and let it re-start itself each time. I'm surprised you say it re-starts the install process itself instead at these breaks; it should be just the opposite...

I'd try once more and let it do these re-starts either 2 or 3 times and see if it doesn't complete the installation. Don't remove the CD... As I recall, I may have hit enter during these breaks, even though I wouldn't have done that on a PC.

BTW, if you plan to use XP with Fusion, you can do that without using Boot Camp at all... just install Fusion first and then install XP into Fusion directly.

Noel

Try formatting as NTFS when in the windows install page.

Thanks. I'm indeed aware that XP will install normally during its routine setup procedure (I've installed XP maybe 60-70 times on various machines in the course of the last 6 years). In this situation, the Mac would reboot and just start back at the text-based setup screen, as if you were installing for the first time. It doesn't normally ask if you want to boot to the CD. I did get it to ask whether to boot to the CD, but if I don't press a key it then gives that "no OS found" error. When I hold down Option at boot, only the Mac volume (and the CD if inserted) show up.

I'll try NTFS, but I was hoping to get FAT32 working (as with VISTA) so I could access the PC volume from OS X. That's no big deal though...

Dartholomew,

Strange that it would act that way during the install. Is your copy of XP a retail version with SP2 on it and not an upgrade version? I'm sure it is, but just have to ask - the way it tries to install is really weird...

You could try hitting Enter when it asks whether to boot from CD, see if it acts any differently...

I used FAT32 for the transfer capability as well, but if NTFS works, so be it...

Good luck,

Noel

Thanks much. I've tried with my original retail XP disc (pre-SP1), as well as an SP2 slipstreamed install CD from my old laptop; same problem both times. If I hit enter to boot from CD at the startup prompt, it reads the CD and starts the XP install process as well.

I'm pretty happy with my Fusion setup (installed from the same CD too), and was just hoping to get boot camp working for some games. But I'll wait until there's some must-have game I can't live without and then try to tackle the problem again.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Dartholomew,

Glad you like Fusion, I also prefer the VM environment, tho I use Parallels...

I expect the Boot Camp problem is that it didn't like the slip streamed disk, it prefers retail version with SP2... SP1 disk was a non-starter. Some folks here have succeeded with slip streamed disk, but I guess it just depends...

Noel

This is exact same thing is happening to me? Did you ever get it working Dartholomew? I have XP SP2 OEM. It is an unopened copy I purchased and I know its the full version. What gives?

Very few OEM discs work. They tend to be 'customised' to stop people installing them on other machines.

You need a Retail XPSP2 or XPSP3 disc.

Strange, I used an OEM XP SP2 disc and didn't have a problem...

hrm when I did the bootcampy thing on my Mini, I had to make a slipstreamed SP2 CD from my trusty original XP Pro CD, worked with zero issues. Was an OEM Original CD, way back from 2002.....

Noels said:

Strange, I used an OEM XP SP2 disc and didn't have a problem...

Click to expand...

Strange? How?

I did say few......

OEM discs tend to be customised in varying degrees. From the extreme, unbootable to the mild rebranding. Some are customised or crippled to the point that they will only install on the intended machine or brand of machine they came with. Some however are just base build XP installs.

You can be lucky and get an OEM disc to install under bootcamp or not. There's no obvious way of telling.

In some cases you can extract the i386 folder, slipstream it with SP2 or 3, if required, and add a clean boot sector manually or with a tool like nLite. This tends to circumvent all but the most invasive form of customised installs.

A search of these very forums and a 'Google' around will show that most problems that people have with installing windows under bootcamp comes down to an inappropriate version of OS.

So I stand by my original post which was intended to assist the OP.

The OP's clearest route is to use a Retail version of XP. But I accept, not the only route.

I'll supplement that by offering links to nLite which can help to create a bootable SP2/3 disc that the OP can try.

I'll also suggest that when installing XP you must ensure you do a full format (FAT32 or NTFS) not a Quick format.

mrplow

I think you are confusing the OEM discs that come with a specific PCs with the OEM discs that you can buy separately, for use by people building their own systems etc. (I.E. http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss...=aps&field-keywords=windows+oem&x=0&y=0)?tag=.

These will all work fine in Boot Camp but can only be installed on one computer and cannot be transferred to another one at a later date.

mrplow,

I guess I also mis-interpreted the use of OEM in your post - I bought an OEM XP disc from Newegg, it was retail, not a computer specific OEM disc.

You're absolutely right that a computer specific OEM disc wouldn't work well with Boot Camp, and a retail copy of XP SP2 is the way to go.

Sorry about the misunderstanding....

Noel

There's a known issue with Bootcamp and OS X 10.5.4. If you try installing XP via Bootcamp AFTER doing a 10.5.4 upgrade it won't work. If it's already installed and you upgrade, there aren't any problems. Once you upgrade to it and try to do a Bootcamp installation it poops out at various points. Has to do with some of the "free" space on your HDD actually being used during/after the upgrade. I finally had to just install a Parallels virtual machine XP instead of doing a Bootcamp XP install and accessing it from Parallels. Bummer it still isn't fixed.

A while ago, I was doing a bootcamp install (it was probably after applying the 10.5.4 upgrade) and had some difficulties with the XP install. I just re-ran the install and selected to format the bootcamp partition to NTFS and it installed okay. Since then, I have done a number of post-10.5.4 bootcamp installs (each time formatting to NTFS) and have had no problems.