Booting a hard drive with Windows XP on it.

Hi all,
I want to boot a hard drive that was in my mother's dead laptop from 10 years ago via a ATA/IDE to USB enclosure with my 2011 Macbook Pro 13''.
The hard drive has Windows XP on it and I am running Mountain Lion. I want to know if this is possible, and if so, how can I do it?
Thank you in advance!

You can't boot from the XP drive, nor can your Mac run XP, but you can read it's files from the drive and copy them with the right adapter.
Mac's can read NTFS formatted drives, but can't write to them without additional paid software installed.
If there are files that can't be opened on the Mac, even with the free LibreOffice and VLC player, then you could install Windows 7 Pro + either into a virtual machine program or into Apple's BootCamp.
Windows in BootCamp or Virtual Machine?
Windows 7 Pro and above will run most XP programs, else they provide a XP download to virtualize XP in Win 7 that will run the files provided you have a compatible program installed.
http://windows.microsoft.com/is-IS/windows7/install-and-use-windows-xp-mode-in-w indows-7
It can become quite complicated with three nested operating systems, so you need to have plenty of RAM, 16GB preferred.

Similar Messages

Can my iSight work on partitioned hard drive with windows 7?

I have a macbook pro 17in screen, snow leopard. I have yet to get it updated to the latest operating system. I partitioned the hardrive to run windows 7. The built in iSight camera is not working. The dvd player will not visual to tv or projector. If I wanted to project a power point presentation, it wont transfer thru the hardware provided by the mac.

kmburr wrote: Can my iSight work on partitioned hard drive with windows 7?
Yes. If you are using BootCamp to boot Windows®, see Apple - Support - Boot Camp for help.
If you are using an virtualization emulator like Parallels, VMware Fusion, CrossOver Mac, or VirtualBox, seek help from its support site.
kmburr wrote:... The built in iSight camera is not working....
If the problem continues after turning Mac off for a minute or two and restarting in Mac OS X with no external devices connected, see Apple's How to Troubleshoot iSight.
Be sure to test more than one Apple camera app in more than one user account.
kmburr wrote:... The dvd player will not visual to tv or projector....
I do not understand this sentence. We can try to help with this after you get your other problems corrected. However, to minimize confusion among problems right now, I suggest you not respond to this unless you can explain how it is related to your other issues.

Load Leopard on a New Hard Drive with Windows XP already loaded

How can I load a new, fresh Leopard operating system on a new hard drive, with Windows XP already loaded and working on it's own independent hard drive via bootcamp beta. I have been using Tiger on it's own drive and wish to discontinue Tiger and move to Leopard without reloading windows. Can I just put in a new drive, and load Leopard with the Windows drive in place?
Please, any suggestions would be appreciated.
Mac Pro Mac OS X (10.4) Runing Windows and Mac operating systems

Malcolm:
Thanks so much for replying to my question! I am new to MAC and have Tiger and Windows XP on separate drives. I will be removing the drive with Tiger and putting in a new drive to load Leopard and I wondered how that would effect accessing Windows XP since the Windows drive will remain in the system. Is there anything I need to do with bootcamp, since Windows was loaded using the Beta version of bootcamp, and bootcamp icon currently shows in the Windows XP taskbar. Tiger was pre-loaded when the computer was purchased. In fact I had to backdate the beta bootcamp version in order to get it to work. I hope this is not asking too much, but I wondered if there would any problem with Windows after the Leopard load.
THANKS IN ADVANCE!!

Erased boot camps hard drive with time machine?

so, i completely erased windows by erasing what was on boot camps hard drive. Boot camp cannot read my "start up" harddrive now. and the harddrive will not turn into a jornaled macintosh hard drive. i checked it with disk utility and it claims to be ok. is there a way i canget back the hard drive and my windows 7 to start up all over again?

I am having a similar problem. I use a Lacie external hard drive connected to an Airport Time Capsule via USB to store my itunes library. Yesterday I disconnected the external drive from the ATC and connected it to my macbook pro via fire wire to transfer 40 gigabytes of media files from my laptop to the external drive directly rather than over wifi. When I reattached the external drive to the ATC the Lacie drive didn't show up even after rebooting everything. I then disconnected from the ATC and reconnected to the laptop and now I get an error message saying the Lacie disk is unrecognizable and needs to be reformated. The Lacie drive was being included in the time machine backups so the files should be available through time machine but I don't see anyway to access them because the Lacie disk icon doesn't appear in the time machine backups. Is there another way to browse the files?
I have had issues with Lacie disks not showing up on the desktop before, particularly when transferring files from one computer to another. The transfer usually goes fine but then when I reattach the drive to the first computer it isn't recognized anymore until I reboot and it sometimes requires a couple of reboots. I initially tried to connect the external drive to both the ATC and the laptop but that didn't work, although now I'm wondering if that was because the connection to the laptop was firewire rather than USB like the ATC. In any case I currently have over a terabyte of data on my lacie that I can't access which includes my entire itunes library and backup files from multiple computers which were "cleaned" but not restored.
Disk utility sees the drive but can't verify or repair and tells me to backup as many files as possible and then reformat. Unfortunately I can't see ANY files to backup because the disk won't mount anywhere. If anyone has a recommendation for utilities to recover the files I'd be most grateful to get them.

Question about using HFS+ & FAT partitioned hard drive with Windows

Theoretically, if I have a [mobile] hard drive with one partition being "HFS+" and the other partition "FAT," What would happen if I used it on a PC? Would it only mount the "FAT" partition or both the "FAT" Partition and the "HFS+" Partition?
Apple Mac mini (2005) Mac OS X (10.4.7) PowerMac10,2: 1.5GHz, 512MB RAM, 80GB HD, BT/AE...

Unfortunately, you cannot have drive partitioned partly as Mac OS Extended and FAT32 that can be used on both a PC and a Mac. To use the drive on both you need to format the entire drive FAT32 as a single partition. Alternatively, you can format the drive Mac OS Extended and partition the drive, but to use the drive on a Windows PC you would need Windows software for reading and writing Mac disks, such as MediaFour's MacDrive.
That said there is a technique for doing what you want, and it's described here.

Can you boot a MacBookPro from an external hard drive with Windows XP?

I'm planning on getting a MacBookPro with a 512GB Solid State drive.
Is there any chance I would be able to find a way to boot from an external drive that has Windows XP installed.
Why would I want to do that you ask? I want to travel with my Mac, but have access to certain programs(AutoCad2010 & 3dMax)that are supplied on my Employer supplied computer without carting it around too... it's a "brick." I know there are Mac versions of AutoCad and 3Dmax, but my employer won't supply me with them. (They are not smart enough to recognize the productivity benifits of Macs.) I thought it would be great to take the Hard drive, put it in a USB or Firewire case and just boot up from that. Probably just a crazy idea, but maybe some clever person knows a way?

Windows XP will neither install nor run on an external drive. However, your boot volume is more than large enough to accommodate a Boot Camp partition in which to run Windows. Or you can purchase Parallels or VM Fusion to run Windows in a virtual machine. Problem solved.

Can I boot to an external hard drive with Windows OS installed on it to play games?

Hello,
I am getting a Mac in the near future for work, and was wondering if it was possible to take my current PC's hard drive and connect it to the Mac with the high speed thunderbolt cable, then book to the external hard drive to play games in windows. In my research I have not seen much about this. I understand that BootCamp works, and am willing to do this, but with the new Macbook Pros that were released, there is very little storage space for two partitions.
Any help would be great,
Also, I know that the performance would not be stunning, but my performance is already lacking because I only have AMD integrated graphics on my machine.
Thanks

A virtual machine is a software system such as VMware Fusion or Parallels which provides a software environment within which a different operating system, such as Windows can run. The files which make up the virtual machine itself (e.g., where Windows and any Windows based software, such as Microsoft Office, reside) can be located on an internal or an external drive. Only the virtualizing program itself needs to be on the boot drive. The connection between an external drive on which the virtual machine files reside will be faster than the external drive itself if the connection is USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt because the speed of an external HD will be the limiting factor. If the external is an SSD, the connection used might make a difference. But a virtual machine will still be slower than a physical machine (i.e., computer) because hardware is faster than the software emulation of it whether the hardware is Windows in BootCamp or a real PC, as BobTheFisherman says.
If you mean the new Retina MacBook Pro (Late 2013), the internal storage isn't a hard drive, it's an SSD on a PCIe bus. OWC, among other vendors, may one day develop an upgrade method as they have for the SSD's in earlier rMBP's but for now, what you order is what you get.

T410s with Windows 7 and additional internal Hard Drive with Windows XP. How do I make them work?

Hi Everybody,
I have had my T410s for 9 months and I love it. No problems at all. I was a contractor so I could use whatever laptop I wanted. Now I work for a big company that issued me a Thinkpad T410 with Windows XP. Now the T410 model has a huge heavy battery compared to the T410s. An ex-colleague of mine used to have a T60p with 2 internal Hard Drives one with Windows XP and one with Windows 7, and he could boot the computer with the Hard Drive of choice.
Does anybody know how to do that? I already got the bay and the Windows XP Hard Drive inside the T410s.
Thank you in advance
Nicky

Spoiler (Highlight to read)
I tried that and I get an error message that says that it detected a possible virus.
I tried that and I get an error message that says that it detected a possible virus.
Spoiler (Highlight to read)
Any other idea?
Any other idea?

Installing new hard drive with Windows XP on T40

My 40GB IDE hard drive on my T40 is dying. PC Doctor reports failures. I reformatted and reloaded from factory defaults with pre-loaded software, especially including Win XP. Even upon reformat, Windows discovered (and marked) many unrecoverable bad sectors.
So I decided to buy a 120 GB IDE drive (same mfr Hitachi with same drive telemetry i.e. cylinders, heads as my dying drive.
I also bought a USB to IDE cable - works well - have both IDE drives active.
I used a piece of software called BounceBack Ultimate by CMS which is supposed to copy the exact image, including partitions, boot sectors, system software, etc. from one drive to another.
I went to Windows Explorer, made sure I was able to view hidden and system files, and it looked like it worked - all files and folders that are on the old drive are on the new one.
I shut down the system, put the new drive in the internal bay, but I cannot get boot - just a flashing underscore of a cursor in the upper left corner of the screen after some drive activity.
So, I remember the good old DOS days when I could reformat with the /S option to make the disk I was formatting bootable with the OS version I was booted under.
There HAS to be an easy way to do this! I do not have any OEM version of Win XP since this is preloaded on the hard drive that is failing.
I know I have to be missing something easy. Seems like I should be able to format the new IDE drive via USB and transfer the OS while my old drive is still limping along.
Help. Thanks!

BounceBack Tech Support gave me a different version of their image copying software and the new drive booted.

Portege 3490, install new hard drive with windows xp ready loaded?

My hard drive failed recently on my portege 3490. I bought a replacement seagate 20gb hard drive. I installed Windows XP pro by connecting the drive (via adaptor) to my desktop and running the setup cd.
I thought I could then just fit the drive back into the Portege and be good to go. However when I turn on the system straight away asks me to insert system disk.
I have no floppy drive and my only cd is a usb drive and I cannot use this to boot.
Has anyone got any ideas how I can get this working?
I plugged the same drive into my other notebook (non Toshiba) and it boos straight away. Thanks for your help
[Edited by: admin on 27-Jun-05 07:03]

Hi
I have no real solution for you except that I can confirm that the ay you installed Windows and then moved the HDD is generally not a good idea.
In your case I think what is the primare problem is that the BIOS'es in the 2 different PC's look at the HDD in different ways. That means that even though both systems might say that it is a 20GB HDD they read it differently and therefore the 3490 gets only 'strange' data from the disk.
Even if it had been able to read the contents still it is not a good idea to do the installation this way because if the chipsets differ too much then Windows will not be able to boot due to wrong drivers.
My suggestion is to
In the 3490 format the HDD with FAT32.
Once again attach the 20GB to the other system.
Copy the contents of the i386 folder of the Windows media to the HDD.
Put the HDD back in the 3490.
Boot up on a DOS/Win9X diskette and enter the I386 directory. Start the installation from there.
A little bit of fiddling but should give you no problem with boot up.
Good luck
Tom

Help needed setting up 5th Gen Time Capsule as a wireless hard drive with Windows

I've got hold of a Time Capsule as I managed to snag it for a decent price and, to be honest, it looks better than other options out there, but I'm having some issues setting it up how I want it. My wireless router is downstairs and I connect to it from my desk on the first floor, which is where the Time Capsule will be as well. I basically just want to use it as a wireless hard drive to store movies and the odd document. I really need some guidance on how to go about setting it up, as Apple don't seem to provide any user guides for Windows at all and the Airport Utility is essentially a very broken piece of software - all I've managed to do so far is run into a series of blinking light warnings and errors.

You cannot setup the new Gen5 TC from windows. It is clearly stated in the specs that it requires v6 utility which has not as yet.. and perhaps never will be made available in windows. In other words this is now an Apple device and almost exclusively for apple. Or at least a mixed network. Without Apple clients you will have continual issues.
If you have iphone or ipad or even an ipod with iOS v6 or later.. you can download the iOS version airport utility for setting up the TC. Once setup windows can use it.. with some issues.
I don't know if you can return it.. but if possible I would. You can buy a wireless synology or WD or lots of other brands now. what they might lack in looks they make up for in functionality.. sadly in the end.. functionality is essential whereas good looks are merely that.. good.

Share external hard drive with windows

I have 2 pc's and a minimac. I want to share them on my home network. I have a new 3TB external hard drive that I want to store everything on. I want to write to it from all computers. I want some files to be shared such as photoshop illustrator and premeire pro from both pc's and mac. Lastly I want to use time machine. Am I asking too much? The wife refuses to learn mac at this time. Maybe in the future then I can turn the pc's into a boat anchor.

While it is possible to do all of these things on your external hard drive after going through a few steps, you will find that after some time - Time Machine will consume all of the free space on that hard drive.
My recommendation is that you use a seperate hard drive for Time Machine - and don't do anything else with that hard drive.
In the meantime, you could use the equipment you have available and establish a folder on your Mac Mini that will allow you to do all of the sharing that you need. Everything will then be archived on the external hard drive using Time Machine.
The following Mac 101 article will get you up and running in the file sharing arena:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1549?viewlocale=en_US
Enjoy!

Install Mac OS X on a hard drive with Windows?

Hello everyone. I have a Mac mini (Mid 2011) running Windows 7, Windows only in HD and recently bought a new installation of Mac OS X Lion to reinstall it, but to download the new facility, need to open the Mac Store from Mac and only have windows.
In short: I need to install from scratch Mac in HD.
Does anyone know how to solve?

The 'normal' way to install Windows on a Mac requires that initially the Mac have OS X already installed on it, you would then use Boot Camp Assistant which would 'divid' the hard disk in to two parts one for Windows and still keeping the Mac part. It would therefore be possible to set the Mac to boot directly in to Windows and later switch back to booting in to the Mac part.
It is potentially possible to configure a Mac with just Windows on it and no Mac drive but this as mentioned above is not the normal manner. If you had done it the proper way via Boot Camp Assistant then you would also end up with a Control Panel in Windows to let you select the Mac or Windows drive to boot from. See if there is a Control Panel called Boot Camp in your Windows system.
If the Control Panel was not installed then another method of switching which side to boot from would be to hold down the Option (aka. Alt) key on your keyboard when you turn on the Mac. This should cause it to display a list of all available boot volumes. See if one looks like a normal Mac boot volume and try it.

Sharing External Hard Drive with Windows PC

I just purchased the Maxtor Turbo III. I can read/write to/from my PowerBook to the Maxtor, but I cannot even see the drive when it is attached to my PC. I'm assuming that it the drive has been formatted for OSX but that it needs to be reformatted for PC.
Is there a formating method that can be applied such that both Windows PC's and Macs can read and write to the drive?
Thanks

You wrote: "Thanks, but isn't Fat32 "old technology"? And doesn't it have file size limitations?"Yes: 4 GB is the largest file size under FAT32.
See my "Sharing a FireWire drive between a Mac and a PC" FAQ for some other ideas.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Sharing hard drive with windows xp on imac intel duo core

Hi,
I was wondering whether I could give over anymore of the hard disk on my imac intel duo core to Windows xp? If so, how would I go about doing that?
Thanks in advance

At this point I think that you would need to use Boot Camp to remove the current partition and then make a bigger one and reinstall Windows.
Just an idea for you. There is an entire Apple Discussion forum dedicated to Boot Camp and Windows.
The Forum is at the bottom of the main Apple Discussions page under Windows Compatible Technology.
Here is a link;
Forum: Boot Camp Public Beta

Booting a hard drive with Windows XP on it.

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for