Hello from Vista
Oct. 4th, 2008 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rubahAfter having my MBP for two years, I'm finally dual-booting with it.
K so, I bought a mac because I wanted to be able to dual-boot eventually. That's basically it. Like I read digg a lot two years ago and was like 'hmm, triple booting sounds fun!', so here I am.
I really didn't use my shiny laptop a lot over the next six months because, well, I was good with windows and didn't want to give up various programs. I mostly just used my mbp when I went places, like to stu's house and then on vacation with my parents. True story: stu used it to play WoW that summer and after he left, I simply let it sit in the floor for a month, so when we were getting ready to go Mt. Magazine for a couple of nights, the battery wasn't charging :] It eventually started charging again after a few cycles, but that was scary and a testament of how long I hadn't used it.
I took the big jump when I moved into Pomfret at the u of a. No room for a desktop in my room, so I had my little laptop. By then, I'd about gotten all the appropriate settings and programs figured out. And the bootcamp beta had ended so I thought 'hmm, well i don't really miss windows, let's just forget about it for now.' And I became a hardcore mbp fangirl. I mean, these are nice machines to use :D aside from the huge heat issue xD
fast-forward to this year. I enroll in a CAD class and find out that Autodesk doesn't make a mac version. Hmm, oh well, I can just use the computer labs. Except that's ANNOYING. They're all either far-away or downhill :[ The university of arkansas college of engineering has a msdn academic alliance thing as a part of our CoE fees, which means we can download lots of normally-expensive MS software for "free". I'd already installed xp on my desktop at home, dual booting with ubuntu, so I figured I'd try to install sp1 (desktop has sp2 and they're separate purchases on the msdn site) and dualboot. I wait patiently for stu to get his paycheck so he can buy his birthday present for me two months early: Leopard (for $76!), which has bootcamp installed (after the beta ended, they released a Tiger update that effectively broke it, forcing us to use leopard to dualboot. Shady, but what's new >;[) I install leopard, it's a beautiful process, don't even have to say anything other than 'yeah I still want to use english, can you update this for me?'. I had backed up my files though jic :] It's not all that different from Tiger, but there are some basic changes, such as Bootcamp! yay!
the msdn site requires you use IE to download their files, which is counterproductive to the whole dualbooting process, so I make stu log into windows on his dualbooted computer, and after a lot of failures, we decide sp1 is simply not available anymore, so we plan to use the sp2 iso I still have and the serial the site lists for sp1. It could work!
Anyways, I decide to go ahead and parition the drive, and it's like 'lol, um you don't have enough contiguous freespace. Sorry!' and I'm like 'fuck' and go to my favorite site for Mac Serial Junkies *cough* and download a nice little program called iDefrag. You can only use the 'quick' defrag when you're booted off the disk, but I decide to try it anyways, and leave my poor MBP in front of an air conditioner vent to try and keep it in the low 80Cs while the defrag goes on. (I told you this thing runs hot! serves me right for buying early gen hardware ;D). Anyways, after several hours of that, I open bootcamp assistant again, and I get the same sob story.
So the makers of iDefrag have a program called simply "CD Maker" that allows you to make a bootable osx cd/dvd with their software on it, so I go back to MSJ, grab that program, and try to burn a cd.
When trying to burn windows, my cd drive kept complaining about the power level, which was kinda annoying. I figured it was software I use to "undervolt", so I uninstalled that, and it still happened. Well, I couldn't even insert a cd this time, it would just spit them back out. So I waste a dvd on a 650mb file and burn the program, then spend several hours letting it defrag with the Full Defrag setting.
Do you like watching filesystems defrag? I love it. And at the end, when all the files were off to one side with a million miles of contiguous freespace, I was just elated.
I go back to Leopard and run bootcamp again. It partitions! Then I remember my cd drive refuses to load cds at all. That doesn't stop me from trying anyways, and I get this horrible black screen saying 'no boot devices available'
oshi...
Well, stu and I give each other a look and his is saying 'oh shit I'm sorry I didn't mean to break your filesystem' and mine is saying 'omgggggggggggggg' But we don't panic, step one is getting the disk out of my slot loading drive. There is no tray eject, so this is kinda tricky. We force reboot and stu finds out that by holding down eject, we can get the disk at. So we get to the black screen again, but it's cool because we pop the Leopard disk in, and boot off of it.
In that, you can run various utilities you might need, but even better, you can choose exactly what to boot from, so man, I click on Cee Colon Slash so fast, you'd think it was a lightning flash.
We both let out sighs of relief when we see the apple show up, and then again when my desktop shows up. Phew. It's hard to convey how frightening that was unless you have seen that kind of screen yourself.
Anyways, back to bootcamp, we come back to the 'hey, that cd didn't work. How do we install xp?'
"well, I guess I could use vista. . ."
Stu has vista downloaded already, so he offers to burn me a dvd and bring it back, so I go back to the MSDN site and "order" vista, and write down the serial, except I'm singing the numbers/letters to the tune of Taking it Easy by the Eagles xD
He brings it back, and starts planning for his awesome birthday party, and I'm looking at the ugly artifacted install screens and wondering what devils I'm going to awaken by performing this rite. Then it asks for my serial and refuses the ones I enter.
"okay, maybe singing the alphanumeric characters was a mistake. . ." I run back to stu's room, use his computer to log back into msdn, realize my 4 was actually supposed to be a Y, and hurriedly run back up after telling stu what I pizza I wanted to eat tonight at the party.
Success! It says that's all it wants right now, and says I can go on my merry way, so I decide to just finish it after the party. We leave, pick up a friend, and realize we should have taken some regular *ahem* non-alcoholic drinks with us, so we run back to the dorm, park in a handicapped space, me and stu's roommate RUN to the door and wait impatiently for the elevator while we grab our breath, and in my room, I pause to enter a usename and password and computer name. Exciting! It says my screen will probably flicker while it works, but I don't care, just grab my coke zeros and fly down the stairs. I'm surprisingly only a few steps right behind Mike.
Then we party until about 2am, which is enough for a whole post in itself, and when we get home, I realize that even an xp install would be done by now! so i run back up, and staring at me is a cute little vista desktop.
I stay up until 4 am doing things like downloading mIRC and firefox and turning off UAC.I notice that the explorer path bar has a neat little compartmentalized dropdown, and it really makes me think of OSX! 'maybe this wont' be too bad'.
After I get it to look a little prettier (purple with no glass effects) and find out my vista experience index (4.1, with my graphics card being the lowest) I make myself go to bed and fall into a deep slumber (after brushing my teeth to get the cigar stank out of my mouth).
I get up this morning and boot into Leopard to make sure it's still okay and to assure it that I still love it, and I've spent the rest of the day in vista downloading Auto-CAD. Now that my drivers are all installed (they're included on the leopard disk) the experience is so much better! Vista is dumb about some mac things, such as how to properly interpret information from a trackpad (I have to keep my arms spaced out when I type, else I keep hitting the touchpad with the pads of my thumbs. It doesn't click because it doesn't know how to tap-click, but sometimes it scrolls and it's disorienting xD)
I downloaded an app called input remapper, and now I can hit cmd+w to close windows instead of ctrl+w (that's so out of the way!), and my ctrl button is the windows button, and my right ctrl button is an alt so I can use cmd+arrows to navigate in firefox, and my function keys are function keys instead of being hardware functions, but it's okay. I probably can set that back somewhere.
Anyways, I just ran out of diskspace (I gave windows 15gb!)
I'm just really excited about it.
K so, I bought a mac because I wanted to be able to dual-boot eventually. That's basically it. Like I read digg a lot two years ago and was like 'hmm, triple booting sounds fun!', so here I am.
I really didn't use my shiny laptop a lot over the next six months because, well, I was good with windows and didn't want to give up various programs. I mostly just used my mbp when I went places, like to stu's house and then on vacation with my parents. True story: stu used it to play WoW that summer and after he left, I simply let it sit in the floor for a month, so when we were getting ready to go Mt. Magazine for a couple of nights, the battery wasn't charging :] It eventually started charging again after a few cycles, but that was scary and a testament of how long I hadn't used it.
I took the big jump when I moved into Pomfret at the u of a. No room for a desktop in my room, so I had my little laptop. By then, I'd about gotten all the appropriate settings and programs figured out. And the bootcamp beta had ended so I thought 'hmm, well i don't really miss windows, let's just forget about it for now.' And I became a hardcore mbp fangirl. I mean, these are nice machines to use :D aside from the huge heat issue xD
fast-forward to this year. I enroll in a CAD class and find out that Autodesk doesn't make a mac version. Hmm, oh well, I can just use the computer labs. Except that's ANNOYING. They're all either far-away or downhill :[ The university of arkansas college of engineering has a msdn academic alliance thing as a part of our CoE fees, which means we can download lots of normally-expensive MS software for "free". I'd already installed xp on my desktop at home, dual booting with ubuntu, so I figured I'd try to install sp1 (desktop has sp2 and they're separate purchases on the msdn site) and dualboot. I wait patiently for stu to get his paycheck so he can buy his birthday present for me two months early: Leopard (for $76!), which has bootcamp installed (after the beta ended, they released a Tiger update that effectively broke it, forcing us to use leopard to dualboot. Shady, but what's new >;[) I install leopard, it's a beautiful process, don't even have to say anything other than 'yeah I still want to use english, can you update this for me?'. I had backed up my files though jic :] It's not all that different from Tiger, but there are some basic changes, such as Bootcamp! yay!
the msdn site requires you use IE to download their files, which is counterproductive to the whole dualbooting process, so I make stu log into windows on his dualbooted computer, and after a lot of failures, we decide sp1 is simply not available anymore, so we plan to use the sp2 iso I still have and the serial the site lists for sp1. It could work!
Anyways, I decide to go ahead and parition the drive, and it's like 'lol, um you don't have enough contiguous freespace. Sorry!' and I'm like 'fuck' and go to my favorite site for Mac Serial Junkies *cough* and download a nice little program called iDefrag. You can only use the 'quick' defrag when you're booted off the disk, but I decide to try it anyways, and leave my poor MBP in front of an air conditioner vent to try and keep it in the low 80Cs while the defrag goes on. (I told you this thing runs hot! serves me right for buying early gen hardware ;D). Anyways, after several hours of that, I open bootcamp assistant again, and I get the same sob story.
So the makers of iDefrag have a program called simply "CD Maker" that allows you to make a bootable osx cd/dvd with their software on it, so I go back to MSJ, grab that program, and try to burn a cd.
When trying to burn windows, my cd drive kept complaining about the power level, which was kinda annoying. I figured it was software I use to "undervolt", so I uninstalled that, and it still happened. Well, I couldn't even insert a cd this time, it would just spit them back out. So I waste a dvd on a 650mb file and burn the program, then spend several hours letting it defrag with the Full Defrag setting.
Do you like watching filesystems defrag? I love it. And at the end, when all the files were off to one side with a million miles of contiguous freespace, I was just elated.
I go back to Leopard and run bootcamp again. It partitions! Then I remember my cd drive refuses to load cds at all. That doesn't stop me from trying anyways, and I get this horrible black screen saying 'no boot devices available'
oshi...
Well, stu and I give each other a look and his is saying 'oh shit I'm sorry I didn't mean to break your filesystem' and mine is saying 'omgggggggggggggg' But we don't panic, step one is getting the disk out of my slot loading drive. There is no tray eject, so this is kinda tricky. We force reboot and stu finds out that by holding down eject, we can get the disk at. So we get to the black screen again, but it's cool because we pop the Leopard disk in, and boot off of it.
In that, you can run various utilities you might need, but even better, you can choose exactly what to boot from, so man, I click on Cee Colon Slash so fast, you'd think it was a lightning flash.
We both let out sighs of relief when we see the apple show up, and then again when my desktop shows up. Phew. It's hard to convey how frightening that was unless you have seen that kind of screen yourself.
Anyways, back to bootcamp, we come back to the 'hey, that cd didn't work. How do we install xp?'
"well, I guess I could use vista. . ."
Stu has vista downloaded already, so he offers to burn me a dvd and bring it back, so I go back to the MSDN site and "order" vista, and write down the serial, except I'm singing the numbers/letters to the tune of Taking it Easy by the Eagles xD
He brings it back, and starts planning for his awesome birthday party, and I'm looking at the ugly artifacted install screens and wondering what devils I'm going to awaken by performing this rite. Then it asks for my serial and refuses the ones I enter.
"okay, maybe singing the alphanumeric characters was a mistake. . ." I run back to stu's room, use his computer to log back into msdn, realize my 4 was actually supposed to be a Y, and hurriedly run back up after telling stu what I pizza I wanted to eat tonight at the party.
Success! It says that's all it wants right now, and says I can go on my merry way, so I decide to just finish it after the party. We leave, pick up a friend, and realize we should have taken some regular *ahem* non-alcoholic drinks with us, so we run back to the dorm, park in a handicapped space, me and stu's roommate RUN to the door and wait impatiently for the elevator while we grab our breath, and in my room, I pause to enter a usename and password and computer name. Exciting! It says my screen will probably flicker while it works, but I don't care, just grab my coke zeros and fly down the stairs. I'm surprisingly only a few steps right behind Mike.
Then we party until about 2am, which is enough for a whole post in itself, and when we get home, I realize that even an xp install would be done by now! so i run back up, and staring at me is a cute little vista desktop.
I stay up until 4 am doing things like downloading mIRC and firefox and turning off UAC.I notice that the explorer path bar has a neat little compartmentalized dropdown, and it really makes me think of OSX! 'maybe this wont' be too bad'.
After I get it to look a little prettier (purple with no glass effects) and find out my vista experience index (4.1, with my graphics card being the lowest) I make myself go to bed and fall into a deep slumber (after brushing my teeth to get the cigar stank out of my mouth).
I get up this morning and boot into Leopard to make sure it's still okay and to assure it that I still love it, and I've spent the rest of the day in vista downloading Auto-CAD. Now that my drivers are all installed (they're included on the leopard disk) the experience is so much better! Vista is dumb about some mac things, such as how to properly interpret information from a trackpad (I have to keep my arms spaced out when I type, else I keep hitting the touchpad with the pads of my thumbs. It doesn't click because it doesn't know how to tap-click, but sometimes it scrolls and it's disorienting xD)
I downloaded an app called input remapper, and now I can hit cmd+w to close windows instead of ctrl+w (that's so out of the way!), and my ctrl button is the windows button, and my right ctrl button is an alt so I can use cmd+arrows to navigate in firefox, and my function keys are function keys instead of being hardware functions, but it's okay. I probably can set that back somewhere.
Anyways, I just ran out of diskspace (I gave windows 15gb!)
I'm just really excited about it.
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-05 03:52 am (UTC)I love Vista to pieces.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-05 05:42 am (UTC)I'm glad everything worked itself out.