Video: Run Windows on Leopard OS X

April 4th, 2008 by Tom Merritt Tagged with: bootcamp, leopard, video, vista, windows, xp

Use Boot Camp, included in Mac OS X Leopard, to install Windows.

We've shown you how to run Windows on a Mac using BootCamp under Tiger. But Boot Camp is included in OS X Leopard. And it's a little smoother.

First gather the things you need. One Mac with OS X Leopard installed. One copy of your OS X Leopard disk. And a copy of Windows XP or Vista, which you have legally purchased.

If you're not on a laptop, make sure you have a USB keyboard. And then: Back up your data!!

Good--now you're ready. Make sure you are logged in as administrator. Then, go to Applications- Utilities- and launch Boot Camp Assistant

The first thing you'll need to do is create a partition for Windows. You'll need to decide what file system you'll use. This is how the data is written in the windows side.

FAT 32 lets you read and write your Windows files in OSX. But you're limited to a 32GB partition and you can't use Windows Vista.

NTFS limits you to only reading windows files in OS X, but you can make the hard drive partition larger and you can use either XP or Vista.

How much space you need depends on which OS you think you'll use most often. No matter what you do, you won't be able to read or write OS X files from Windows without purchasing extra software. I made my partition NTFS and large.

Once you decide, click partition.

Next, it will ask you to start the Windows installation.

Insert your Windows disk and press Start Installation. Your computer will restart and launch into the Windows installation. Follow the instructions for installing Windows.

But be sure of these two things!

1. Choose the right hard drive: It will be the one called Boot Camp. Don't install Windows on the drive were OS X is or you will be very miserable.

2. Choose the right format: In Vista you don't need to worry, but in Windows XP it will ask you whether you want FAT 32 or NTFS. Choose the one you decided on earlier.

If you choose FAT 32 on a partition larger than 32 GB you will be at best, wasting hard drive space, and at worst causing an implosion of dark matter that will eliminate us all.

You're almost home free. After the installation, you will boot into Windows. Go to My computer. Select the CD drive. Right-click and choose "Eject this disk" and eject the Windows installation disk.

Insert your OS X disk, and install the drivers. It should start automatically but if it doesn't go back to the cd drive and double-click setup.exe.

You'll restart again and Windows will tell you it found all kinds of new hardware. Just follow it's instructions.

From now on, if you want to boot into Windows, hold down the option key during boot up and select Windows.

You can also change the preference to boot into Windows in the Boot Camp Control panel.

That's it for this Insider Secret! Leave your comments for feedback on our tutorial below.