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Using Boot Camp to Install Windows Vista Beta 2

Posted July 24, 2006 4:41 PM by Greg Wallingford, Staff Writer

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Note: This information was gathered from Hans VB's Weblog.

Getting a little bored of Windows XP? Try installing the Windows Vista Beta using Boot Camp!

Vista has taken cues from OS X, implementing similar features into its own OS.

If you've ever wanted to beta test, now is the time. You can dual boot Windows Vista and OS X. And, to make the deal even sweeter, the Vista beta is currently free! Try it today.

Install Boot Camp using the Boot Camp Assistant software.

Create a Microsoft Windows XP Partition.

Install Windows XP completely.

Download Windows Vista Beta 2. The file should be a .iso

In OSX, open Disk Utility. Drag the .iso to the left hand pane of Disk Utility. When it appears on the left, under the list of disks, highlight it. Then click 'Burn.' You now have a Windows Vista Beta install DVD.

Insert the Vista Beta 2 DVD and then restart holding down the option key (the one with alt on it).

When you need to select on which partition to install Vista, erase the EFI Partition (199mb). There should also be 128MB unallocated space, but don't worry about it.

Format your Microsoft Windows XP partition, and install Vista on top of it. This should work, but in my case it didn't. What fixed it was rerunning the install but then instead of clicking on the big 'Install Vista' button, click on the Repair button.

Next comes installing the drivers which is confusing and, in some cases, can be a pain. This experience will vary for every user.

Other things I learned...

When things go really pear shaped and you need to reinstall Mac OSX, sometimes the partitioning seems to be so messed up that you can't kick off the install. What works is trying option 2 from this support document. Important here is to really read the steps, especially this: click the Partition tab in the Disk Utility window. If the partition tab is not visible, make sure you've selected the disk (not volume) in the left side of the window. Then reinstalling Mac OSX is easy and you even get that EFI partition back.

You will also want to check out Office Beta 2 (2007 version) here

Good luck getting Windows Vista Beta 2 working. It's a neat, free trial that doesn't come along very often.