I’m trying to install Windows XP on my intel mac. I’ve done it before so I know how the process works. I started up Boot Camp and partitioned my drive and then restarted my mac and held down ‘c’ to boot from CD but then my mac just spit the disc out.
I tried holding down the option key but it won’t show the CD.
I know this disc is good because I’ve tested it on other computers.
How am I supposed to get this to work?
anyone?
I figured out the problem. Apparently Macs don’t like to boot from CD when you have USB devices plugged in.
Almost all Mac peripherals are USB, including the mouse and keyboard on most systems. You certainly don’t need to unplug all USB devices to get it to boot from a CD. In fact, you NEED a USB keyboard to install boot camp, since the bluetooth ones don’t work during the install.
Further, you don’t need to hold down “C” at any point during the process – that’s for booting from a Mac disk. It’s ejecting your disk when you hold down C because it’s not a valid Mac boot disk. Once you’ve created the boot camp partition, the boot camp installer will automatically start up in windows and read your disk.
It is a little finicky about exactly what disks it will read: retail ones usually work a lot better than slipstreams, MSDN, or TechNet disks, and some (like Enterprise and volume licenses) don’t work at all. I can see it being confused by a USB flash drive formatted for Windows, I suppose.
All I know is when I unplugged my USB mouse the Windows CD showed up. I’m also using a macbook if that makes any difference. I had stopped using the "C"method at that point was holding down the option key. Usually bootable discs will show up before hard drive partitions. Before I unplugged my mouse the CD wasn’t showing. I unplugged it and it showed up.
However I do see your point. An official Windows disc probably would have booted up on its own.
As an aside, do you know where I can get the windows drivers for a macbook? I left my OSX cds at school which have bootcamp for Windows on it as well as the drivers.
No. Apple’s site doesn’t seem to have them any more (beta versions of boot camp would burn a CD with them for you as part of the boot camp install process). I’d find someone with a store-bought Leopard CD (i.e. someone who has an older Mac) – that disk should have system-agnostic drivers.