holy crap, it took a bit of time but last night i was able to install windows xp x64 on my mac pro. i guess the first question is why do it? well for me it was pretty simple…
i like gaming every now and then… ok maybe a little bit more now than then. sadly, a couple of the games i like are not ported over to mac so since i have rid myself of pc’s over the years i run boot camp.
well, why xp64 then?
simple prior to last night i was running boot camp with xp pro sp2. but funny thing is i never seemed to have enough ram. well come to find out that even though my mac pro has 10gigs of ram (yes i said 10) windows xp only saw 1.9gigs. this isn’t caused by the windows cap of 4gigs, it is caused by a firmware issue with boot camp. the only way to get your mac to see any more ram is to install windows xp or vista 64 bit.
so should be simple eh? one would think.
well, apple doesn’t include any 64bit drivers for windows with boot camp (well the version i have and can get anyway) so here is what i had to do…
1. kill the current install of windows
i went into the boot camp assistant and killed the partition xp was installed on. thinking i could just reinstall… well it killed the partition but when i tried to repartition the drive (with the same size as the last one) it kept getting fatal kernal errors and i had to hard reboot. i rebootd but my drive now appears like it has way more used space that it did. [scratches head]
well i try to use disk utilities but since its the active drive i had to toss the leopard installer disk in reboot and use the disk utilities on there to fix the size issue. tada space comes back.
2. buy a copy of iDefrag
so i buy a copy of iDefrag and install it and decide instead of making a bootable cd i would just defrag drive #3 which is barely used at all. also if something goes south i don’t end up killing any important data. i run iDefrag in it’s default settings and it takes about 3hrs to compact the data on the drive. worked like a charm… and they say leopard does its on defrag and compacting – whatever ill stick with iDefrag from now on.
3. run boot camp assistant
now since i have 3 macs at home i wasn’t worried about finding the drivers for xp 64 bit since i could hop on one of two other macs. but before installing xp 64it i would recommend getting the 64 bit drivers for the following devices:
1. Network
2. Audio
3. Video
4. Intel Chipset
i tossed the drivers on a usb drive.
after you have them all start partitioning the drive you want to put windows xp64 on. it should take just a few minutes then prompt you to pop in the xp x64 install disk. run the installer as normal, just make sure you have a full version. about 30 mins later and two reboots windows xp 64bit will be installed on your mac pro.
4. install the drivers
this part took me forever since now is really when i started looking for the drivers since i had really no idea for sure what was going to work and what wasn’t. it took a bit of sniffing but i found everything. ill be posting some links on what drivers i installed later.
1. installed the intel chipset driver and then rebooted
2. installed the video driver (ati x1900 for me) then rebooted (actually before installing ATI Driver I would recommend installing .Net Framework 2.x for 64bit I had an issue and needed to uninstall the video drivers, install the framework and reinstall the video drivers.)
3. installed avast anti virus because i didnt want windows online without AV then rebooted
4. installed the intel network drivers and rebooted
5. then updated avast av and rebooted
6. next came the reltek audio drivers and rebooted
7. i went to windows update ad installed all the high priority updates (33 of them for me) and rebooted once again…
8. lastly installed windows xp x64 sp2 this took about 1 hour then again rebooted.
by now it was 3am and i needed some sleep…
after 4.5hrs of sleep – this morning everything seems to work fine, i don’t really care about bluetooth so i didn’t install drivers for that. i dont really need the keyboard drivers either as i use a logitech g15 gaming keyboard while in windows (just need to install those drivers). currently im installing one of the games i play online and that is going smoothly.
ill append this post shortly with links to the drivers i used.
Here are some links to the drivers:
Intel Chipset
ATI Video Driver (Software Suite)
.Net Framework (x64)
Avast AV 64bit
Intel Network Driver
RealTek Audio Driver
Matt is a Systems Development Director for a multinational franchise. Matt has lived and worked in Hawaii, Chicago, South Florida and currently resides outside of Atlanta. He enjoys his hobbies including Technology, Gadgets/EDC, Fountain Pens, Wetshaving, Clocks, Antiques & Coffee. He even roasts his own coffee weekly.
Thank you for your post! I am about to upgrade to XP64 and so far my boot won’t even detect the CD at start-up. Links to the drivers would be sweeet too!
Cheers
just popped some links up for you =)
As from this thread:
http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/macpro/topic4363.html
Drivers for the Airport card can be found in R140747.EXE from Dell:
http://support.us.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R140747&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=187881
so I don’t understand very well the procedure… If I understand I have to:
store all the drivers
install XP 64 SP1 in m hard disk
install all the drivers as you wrote
and lastly install the SP2 for XP 64 bit…
but if I already have a XP 64 bit SP2 what I have to do???
if you already have xp64 sp2 you can install it the same way. the copy of xp64 that i had was sp1.
basically on step 7 you will probably have a lot less updates, #8 is for people ho have sp1. so basically you are finished after step 7 and you reboot.
thank you very much Matt…
I’ll go and try to install it…
bye
best of luck!
Thanks a lot. Your links made my upgrade to XP64 bit sooooo much easier. 🙂
Do you happen to know any ways of restoring some functionality for the MacPro keyboard in XP64 (eg. like… eject button, volume button?)
thankx alot 🙂 i have been searching for the intel network driver… for like hours and hours. … till i found this site …
man keep up the good work 😀 u rule 😀
Yang –
not sure exactly, i think i have saw keyboard drivers somewhere but i cant be for certain.
kiekeboe-
glad it helped you!
Hi…
I installed xp 64 on my mac pro yesterday and was battling with the drivers when I gave up at 2 am. Now it’s morning and In found your great post. Do you think I’ll need to reinstall windows in order for your drivers to work? I tried a million different others without success.
Thanx!!
i would probably try installing the drivers first. if that doesnt work, at least you know what to do now 😉
Great Tutorial. thank you.
Hey, great post. But I have a question…
first the setup: I have the first model of mac pro (x86) and I have read in some threads that xp64 doesn’t want to install on them.
My question: What model is yours (pre or post leopard)? do you know of this situation?
chris…
mine is one of the original macpros – pre leopard.
i bought it on january 19th 2007…
hope that helps.
Thanks for your valuable Links.
WinXP x64 on a Mac Pro with RocketRAID+2,5” SAS drives without Bootcamp.
See
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=588452
for details.
I’m planning to XP 64, but I’m not sure if the drivers have changed from your Mac Pro to mine (early 2008). Would you know if they are different or if Apple has re-used the same components (likely)? Thank you for your efforts in this matter.
Im not 100% sure if this will work with the late 2008 MacPros, but at least its a starting point.
Just wondering if you know what driver I can use for the ethernet card on a 2009 MacPro4,1? I tried the one in the link above to no avail. I have searched extensively for other drives but am not finding anything that works. Any thoughts on how to find the correct driver?
I am not certain at this point as I have an older MacPro. First I would try and ascertain what nic card is installed in you MP. Once you have that, I would hit the vendors website and look for a 64b version of the drivers.
Hi
I have Late 2011 MacBook Pro and I want to install XP becuase I am telecom engineer and and some of my softwares can only be supported by windows XP servicea Pac 3. Kindly help me out in this regard. I tried VM but i could not work over there. Otherwise I have to go back for normal laptop. Thanks in advance. I read all the above comments but i m confused that how can i install it. Thanks
Ok, I haven’t been playing with this of late. When my MacPro bit the dust, I just got a new iMac and installed Parallels. It works for the one or two items I still need to use.