My weekend with Boot Camp and Windows

So I've got a friend who just purchased a shiny, new MacBook. It's packed with RAM and beautiful (she went with the classic white). She's a long time Mac user, and has been happy with her G3 iBook since she bought it. Recently, however, she had been charged with using some proprietary Windows-only software for work (sound familiar, anyone?). So, enchanted by Boot Camp and the Windows-friendly Intel Macs, she made the big purchase...and convinced me to get everything off the ground for her. I accepted the challenge, as I had never played with a Macbook or installed Windows on any machine. Even though this story has a happy ending (the aforementioned Macbook is currently a dual-boot machine), getting from Point A to Point B wasn't easy.

First the good news. Boot Camp installed without a hitch. If you haven't done this before, I can tell you it's pretty straight forward. At one point, you're asked to burn a CD of Macintosh-specific Windows drivers, which I did. When the installation of Boot Camp was complete, you're asked to put your Windows installer CD (XP with Service Pack 2 on a single disc) into the machine and click the "Install Windows" button. It's very creepy, and the machine then reboots and starts the next installation, this time Windows XP. Or, at least, that's what the instructions say (Note: PRINT OUT the instructions that are bundled with the Boot Camp installer. Trust me).

I got the initial blue screen and watched as the installer "checked" a number of files. Eventually it hung up and froze. After staring at it for ten minutes, I turned to my printed instructions. "If installation fails," it says (I'm paraphrasing here), "restart the machine with the option key down. Select the Windows CD as the startup disc and installation will resume." "Ok," I thought. I forced the machine to turn off by holding down the power button and then turned it back on, as the instructions suggested. The Macbook's hard drive and the CD appeared for me, I selected the CD and the machine returned to the same blue screen. Guess what happened?

The same thing. I repeated the reboot process, and this time it failed again, but with a different excuse: File such-and-such had been identified as "corrupt." How a file on a read-only CD could become corrupt is beyond me, but I initiated the reboot for a third time, and just as inexplicably it worked perfectly. I got her software up and running, booted back and forth between Windows and Mac OS X a few times just to see it work and called it a done deal.

After wrapping up a few niceties (like the driver CD I burned earlier and getting her printer working under Windows) everything seemed to be in order. I know that many have said this before, but it was kind of creepy to see XP running on that gorgeous Mac. I should also note that my trouble seemed to have been with the Windows installer, not Boot Camp (go figure). Now, you may be wondering why we went with Boot Camp over Parallels or something like Q? Well, cost was a concern, and Boot Camp is free. She bought XP on "Tax Day" (which is a tax-free holiday we have here in Massachusetts), and Parallels was $70US at Staples (an office supply and gadget store for the unfamiliar).