Hello,

please could someone explain how I can re-load apple OS with XP?

question not clear

!! aborting process . . . . . .

I mean exactly what i asked, how do i replace MAC OS on an apple laptop with XP OS? or alternatively, how do i install XP as the second booting OS on an Apple machine?

I am hoping here that you Apple Mac has an intel chipset. If it does not there is no way you can do it. Although you can setup a virtual instance of XP within Mac OS using virtuial pc.

Aussie Boy:

I am hoping here that you Apple Mac has an intel chipset. If it does not there is no way you can do it. Although you can setup a virtual instance of XP within Mac OS using virtuial pc.

parallels desktop or Vmware fusion are a better option

@poster

virtual machines can run on PowerPC so you don't need an intel machine. however dual booting requires an intel board and bootCamp installed.

to use a virtual machine, start the application, insert the windows cd, click the Play button and do a normal install from withing OS X.


alternatively, if you have Tiger then you need to download BootCamp here :

www.soft32.com/Download/Free/Apple_Boot_Camp/4-200398-1  (Apple no longer provide a downmload, only updates.)

install it and update via Sytem update or here :

www.apple.com/support/downloads/bootcampupdate21forwindowsxp


after installation and upgrading go to BootCamp assistant in /Applications and run it, then follow the prompts to burn a Windows Driver Disk. (ps: format the partiotion as Fat32 so you have read/write acess to your OS X partition. NTFS only gives read access).



then insert the windows cd and click Start Installation to do a normal install  (including CD key). after completion insert your Driver Disk you burned earlier.

to chioose OS at boot time, simply hold the Option key.

however if you have Leopard its much easier and you don't need to burn a driver disk, you just pop in the Leopard cd to install drivers,

here the pros and cons of using either metod.

1. Virtual machines: Pros

a. you can run both windows and OS X simultaneously
b. you can save states (snapshots) and return back to it later
c. you don't need to install drivers (just a set of tools)


cons:

a. slight degradation in hard disk performance

b. uses only partial memory since memory is allocated from the pool and the system slows a bit as both OS run concurrently on the same memory pool.

c.  you must boot into OS X to use windows.

d. no hardware acceleration so you can't run graphics intensive apps/games


2. Using bootcamp (pros)

a. you can dual-boot, so at boot up you can choose your OS of choice

b. windows runs at full native speed with hardware acceleration and full memory allocation

c. you don't need to boot into OS X first to run windows.

d. parallels or Vmware fusion in OS X can start and run your bootcamp windows partition from within OS X without having to reboot in order to use windows.


cons:

a. sometimes you get crashes
b. windows cant see your OS X home folder without 3rd party tools
c. you can only install 32bit versions of windows; 64bit will not work


hope this helps you in making up your mind which to use. if your copy of leopard came pre-installed then you already have free parallels 3.0 installed.

cheers.

@ Ex_inferis,

thanks for the info, though i don't understand it but i'll go over it and try it out. Thanks @all.