Jim's Blog

Windows XP on my macbook

For a while now I've been stalling on getting winXP running on my macbook. Mostly I have not had any need for it since if I really needed windows I could always use Laura's laptop (IBM thinkpad). Said laptop is just shy of 7 years old, the "t" key works only about 1/3 of the time and I fear the potential spyware that is running on it. (aside: I'm highly annoyed with the tech's at U of O for issuing laptops with OS update set to "off" and no firewalls or virus protection). I suspect that computer is not long for this world.

The problem: Laura needs to be able to use IE 6 on win XP (or Vista) for work. We had updated her computer to have IE 8, but the software she uses does not support that. I find it ironic that it's to use a "secure" site that it requires the most insecure browser.

First issue: Since Laura would want to quickly log on, bootcamp was out. I was debating between parallels and vmware, but had not made a final decision before going out and paying 100 $ for the software. After talking to some guys at work, they highly recommended VirtualBox. Getting it up and running without reading the doc's took me just a couple of minutes. Really easy.

Second issue: For our XP computers, I could not find any install disks and I couldn't find a license key. I was expecting to have to go out and buy a new copy of XP because even though I was lent a legit OEM disk, I didn't have the key. I had looked at the computer for the license sticker, but had not found it. Today Andrew pointed out that they put the stickers on the bottom of the computer. I had to turn it over... I feel like the biggest idiot, but I think that I'd feel like an even bigger idiot if I had gone out and paid the 200 $ for a new license.

After everything was installed, including the guest additions, my only thing that I didn't know how to do from my macbook is right click. A couple of forum searches later I figured out the trick was "place 2 fingers on the trackpad, then click the mouse". Apparently this is a setting under system preferences (in my mac), but I didn't even have to change that.

Total time to get things up and running, not including waiting for the XP install to finish, probably around 1 hour. Now we have an XP install that's much faster than our hardware install of XP. Good times, good times...