Mac Pro Early 2008 + boot camp!!! pliz help from Pros!

Question

Hi guys,
I'm currently using a Mac pro Early 2008 Quad 2.8 with 4 Gb of RAM. I also have 4 HDDs ( 2 of them are 1Tb( Western Digital Black and Green series), 1 is 320Gb-original comes with MP and one 250 Gb Western Digital caviar). All of my HDDs are internal. Recently, my superdrive failed on me. Therefore, i have to replace it using a Samsung OEM DVD optical drive ( TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S203D ) which was connected via the extra SATA port on my MP logic board. The optical drive was recognized fine by my MP.
Recently, as I used to work on both platforms ( Mac and PC) for audio mastering, I've decided to install windows 7 using bootcamp so that I can use Wavelab on my Mac for audio mastering. I had my 250Gbs SATA on HDD bay 4 formatted as a single volume for Bootcamp using Bootcamp Assistant. The process went fine until the system restarts for Windows installation. As I used Bootcamp before, i understood that freaking apple EFI wont read SATA (or external) optical drive to install Windows via Bootcamp, therefore I used RefiT as bootloader ( this method always worked for me before on other macs). I also have windows 7 ultimate ligit DVD. However, I experienced this :
- when I restarted my MP without having refit installed , there was always a flashing Apple + a prohibition mark and Windows installation didnt start. I've tried to reboot, hold down OPTION key so that the Windows installation DVD is read by optical drive and then choose it, same thing happened.
- After trying Bootcamp traditional way of installation without success, I install RefiT into my OSX drive ( 320 GBs), have MP restarted twice, then i got Refit boot menu, chose the windows installtion DVD..... now REFIT shows me that having some problem with Legacy boot and can't start the DVD.
Anyone is having the same problem like me with the flashing Apple+ prohibition mark ? Please HELP me!!!! I've used Bootcamp and REFIT for ages on Mac and never had this happened. Bleh!
I'm using Mac OSX 10.6.3. And below is my system profile:
Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro3,1
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MP31.006C.B05
SMC Version (system): 1.25f4
Disc Burning:
TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S203D:
Firmware Revision: SB00
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Generic Drive Support)
Profile Path: None
Cache: 2048 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -R DL, -RAM, -RW, +R, +R DL, +RW
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, CD-Raw, DVD-DAO

Answer 1

hi all,
Finally I had my Mac pro Early 2008 Quad installed Windows XP SP3 on 2nd internal HDD.
Here's the update for anyone that is having the same problem as I had.
1st : you need to prepare some elements for a smooth installation
- Winclone for mac osx
- Windows XP image that was made from Winclone ( I had to download Winclone 1st, then ran to a friend of mine who had Windows already installed on his Mac using bootcamp and made an image of a version of Windows ( XP/vista/7) on his HDD via Winclone. The image will have file extension like this : xxxx.winclone ( xxxx is the name you choose)
- bootcamp 3.0 drivers for windows, just in case.
2nd : install Winclone on your Mac osx drive.
3rd: open bootcamp Assistant. prepare your drive for a Windows installation then quit it. However, somehow in my Mac Pro, the partition that BCA created wasn't mounted on my Finder, therefore I opened disk Utility and then reformat my BOOTCAMP drive to FAT32 or NTFS ( if you install NTFS-3G, disk utility will allow you).
4th: Open winclone. Now choose Restore. Then choose your Windows image that you made earlier and choose the Partition that you formatted for Windows and wait. It wont take long for the software to copy the image to your partition.
5th: now its time to restart your computer. hold down Option key so that you can choose the Windows Partition to boot.
6th: Windows will boot up and starting to scan for hardware changes again ( as the computer hardware ID and specs changed).
7th: if needed, use bootcamp 3.0 to install drivers for your Mac in windows.
8th: register your copy of Windows
Hope this help.by the way, you also want to force your Mac Pro to recognize all of your SATA HDDs and optical drive by force it to load up drivers in AHCI mode. There are lots of threads over Internet about how to do it. Perhaps InsanelyMac forum ( that's where i find it).
And finally good luck with guys who are having the same problems like me. It took me 3 weeks to find out how to do it.
Sorry admin for any violations ( I only want to help people cos I know its hard with guys who dont know ).
CHEERS!