Mac Pro Vista Install Experience Notes

Question

Well, I read many posts on this board and others before taking the plunge. Got my new Pro about two weeks ago; decided to do this cause the kids are buggin me about "games", whatever those are. Man, oh man, do you PC users ever have my undying sympathy and respect after going through this! Man, and, uh, WOman, you've certainly got a pair, <choose which pair here>. ; )
Its hard to believe all the fun I've been missing by actually USING my computer all these years as a MAC user instead of working on it! YOWSER!
Anyways, for all you masochists out there, here's some painful details:
Still having a very clean HD, or so I thought! I installed bootcamp and followed the instructions to create a 32GB partition (and NO more than 32GB mind you, because, this is WINDOWS and that's what it said).
Then, having created my trusty Vista install disk (oh, did I forget to mention, how could I, that it took me 2 HOURS to get a MICROSOFT PRODUCT KEY by following just these easy 79 steps? AND THEN I DIDN'T NEED IT! Funny, ha ha. Boy, they had me rolling after that one!)
Then, following the bootcamp instructions carefully, I started windows, which then asked me for the second time to identify a partition for windows. Weird though, it listed FOUR partitions when I could swear I only had 2: one for OSX and the one I created in bootcamp for Vista! Four? Yep! Well, this one should be easy....just select the one that is 32GB cause that is the size I created in bootcamp....click ok....and YOUR DISK DRIVERS ARE SO SCREWED UP THAT WE ARE LAUGHING IN REDMOND! or some such error code!
After reading enough notes on this board (thank you, all), I learned that there seemed to be a general problem with the partitioning recognition in windows, and that many, by the simple act of deleting a partition, got Windows to work correctly.
NOW THE HARD PART: staring at the list of partitions, It said I had a 200GB, a 201GB, a 128MB and a 32GB partition. Huh? I only have a 250GB drive! How's that work? After thinking this through scientifically, I mentally flipped a coin and decided to delete the 201GB partition for the reasons that it was listed second in the list and 201GB sounded FUNNY. So.....click on 201GB....then delete....ZAP! GONE! with a friendly little reminder that all my data was being deleted! yikes!
well, after a couple of crashes on startup, Vista now seems to be working somewhat as expected, and, JOY OF JOYS!, holding down the option key I could still boot into good old OS X and there was my data! whew!
so, I don't know if this will help anybody or not, because its not very scientific and all, as I just seemed to have lucked into picking the right partition to delete! and still live to see another day.
please, someone pat me on the back before I realize what I just did.
Mac Pro   Mac OS X (10.4.8)   2GB RAM, nVidia graphics

Answer 1

It was a "learning experience." There are always hidden partitions. That 128MB is probably the Mac EFI partition? There is always some hidden partition in-between each user partition too.
I would install Vista but afraid I'm not ready to install all the security, AV and other tools to feel safe on the net.