thoughthaus

I got a MacBook a while ago. Ironic but the most fun thing I’ve done with it is setup Windows XP with Parallels. It went pretty slick after I polished up my scrated windows XP home upgrade cd with some toothpaste.

steps:

1. install demo version of parallels (downloaded from their website). I’ll have to pay $70 bucks for it later.
2. create new virtual machine image using express setup for windows XP
3. place xp setup disk in MacBook cd drive
4. watch in horror as installation complains about unreadable files from the cd
5. listen to strange clicking sound.
6. pull disk out using “reboot with mouse clicker button pressed” trick as regular eject button didn’t work
7. observe scratches on disk (are they new?)
8. polish disk with toothpaste.
9. go to another computer and make images of the disk ( make image of old windows ME disk too as this is an upgrade installation)
10. move disk image .iso files to the MacBook via usb external drive
11. restart parallels software, create new virtual machine image
12. attach xp setup disk image file to the virtual machine cd-rom
13. when xp setup asks for older version of windows cd attach ME setup disk image file
14. when xp setup asks for the xp setup disk reattach the xp setup disk to the virtual machine CD-ROM
15. watch the rest of the setup go pretty quickly.

Now I can run windows on my MAC. cool. I do have to uninstall windows on my old PC. But I planned on doing that at some point anyway.

Now I can use the MacBook to watch instant view movies from the netflix website which only supports IE on windows XP. Also I can run my company’s silly vpn software on my laptop. Doing late night deployments in bed rather than in the home office.

So the number one take away: treat the windows install CDs like gold. Don’t use them. Make backups or image files and use those instead. You can get replacement media from Microsoft but seems like a hassle best avoided.

I’ve also learned that I want to protect my investment in the Apple hardware by getting a AppleCare extension to the warranty on the MacBook. I’m still in the first year warranty so they are going to replace the Super[Broken]Drive in the MacBook.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 3:43 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.