Trying to get Vista RC1 working on my Mac Pro... (Please Help!)

[sammyo021]

I know there are a lot of people out there that are smarter than me with these things, so please help me out if you can. =)

I have been testing Vista since the Longhorn M3 days on Windows boxes, so I thought I'd try RC1 on my Mac Pro. (see specs below)

I must have installed both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions at least eight times apiece, and of those sixteen combined times, Vista has succesfully booted into account customization (after install) twice total, and only once has been able to boot into Vista more than one time after the installation. (I have also tried both clean installs and upgrade installs from Windows XP Pro)

After the initial bluescreen of death (wd.sys) after the installer copies/expands files and reboots, the installation proceeds normally.
After it completes the installation and attempts to reboot, another bluescreen, and this time with a memory dump. I expect this is normal when Windows reboots.

Now, when it unsuccesfully tries to boot after installing, the boot screen goes for about 15 seconds, then I just get a black screen, but it is not the black of the monitor being off, it is the black of no video, unsuccesful boot etc. On these black screen, unsuccesful boots I gave it about twenty minutes to see if it would finally boot, but it didn't.

When it succesully booted twice everything was great (and beautiful on the 30 inch ACD with Aero Glass, as you have experienced.) But one of the times when I rebooted it couldn't boot back up and the other time it booted in 4 bit colors then failed to boot after that. During one of these succesful post-install boots, I disabled devices, but it made no difference.

If anyone has gotten this working, can you answer some questions for me?

Do you have the 32 bit or 64 bit version of RC1 working?
What bay is your Vista HDD in?
Does Vista have its own seperate HDD or is it partioned?

Finally,
Do you have any tips for me?
Can you give me an outline of your installation?

Thanks,
Sam

My Mac Pro specifications:

Quad 2.66 Intel Xeon
2GB RAM
500 GB HDD Mac OS X 10.4.7 (Working)
300 GB HDD Vista RC1 (Not Working)
250 GB HDD XP Pro x64 (Working)
2x NVIDIA Geforce 7300 GT
Airport Extreme
Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
Superdrive
30 Inch Cinema HD Display

 

[miker51]

Hi Sam -

I have had basically the same problems that you have, with the exception that I have been unable to get Vista past the memory dump stage at all. This is doing both a clean install and an upgrade from XP. It will always dump at the same place. I do get it to continue, however the only thing that it will offer to do is restore my previous version of Windows XP. It will not continue the install.

I'm also unable to install Vista directly (as opposed to over a pre-existing XP install) as it refuses to accept my drive as suitable for installation.

My Mac Pro is the 2.66 GHz model w/2 gig of RAM, 250 gig hd, a 320 gig Western Digital hard drive, Bluetooth/Airport extreme. I do also have the ATI X1900 video card.

If you are able to make any progress, please let me know.

 

[Eodchop]

Vista on a mac pro

Hello,

I have vista running (in 4ibt) color is all. It no longer gives me memory dumps or the wd.sys screen of death. I just cannot get the nvidia driver installed on my stock 7300 GT graphics card. I have tried everything to get it working but it ust wont. I followed the updated instructions found here to get it working.

http://andrewlocke.wordpress.com/2006/09/09/geek-post-running-windows-vista-rc1-on-the-mac-pro/

I have 2 hd's. One for OSX and one for Winblows.

If you get stuck along the way feel free to email me and i will help the best i can. This gentleman is the only one i know of so far that has everything working.

good luck!

Ryan

 

[miker51]

If you get stuck along the way feel free to email me and i will help the best i can. This gentleman is the only one i know of so far that has everything working.

good luck!

Ryan

Thanks! I'll try it again without the slipstreamed XP install and see if that goes any more smoothly.