Will Vista run on a dual core MacBook?

We’ve had the new dual core MacBook in our labs for a few days now, so we loaded Windows XP onto it using Boot Camp to see how it runs.

In use, Boot Camp is surprisingly easy to get going, as we explained in our review. Although there is a pdf manual explaining the entire process, Apple has made it very easy to start a Windows XP installation without having anything to hand other than a blank CD for burning drivers.

The Apple key becomes the Windows key, which is either a pain in the neck (for inveterate Windows users) or wonderfully intuitive (for Mac fans).

The only problem we experienced was with the boot loader - the Option key referred to in the Boot Camp manual is actually the key marked alt on the MacBook. A simple enough thing, but it had us confused and a little scared to begin with.

Once Windows XP was installed and running, it was only natural that we try our Beta copy of Vista, the next generation of Microsoft’s Windows operating system, on our Core Duo Macbook.

The first attempt was a bit of a disaster. Vista needs around 10GB of disk space to install, and our partition for boot Camp was too small for that. Luckily, Boot Camp allows you to resize partitions easily, albeit in this case at the expense of losing our Windows XP install.

One quick resize later, and we were able to boot from our Vista beta disc and start the install process. And the install process works just fine; it takes ages, but it gets to the point at which you put the validation code in and reboot. And then it breaks.

Once we’ve got XP back on the MacBook, we will run Microsoft’s software for checking systems capable of upgrading to Vista, to see if that works. The software can be found on Microsoft’s site.

Unfortunatly, to date, we haven’t been able to get it to run on the MacBook, which, to be fair, is what we were warned to expect – but we had to try anyway.

Although when we ran the Upgrade Advisor on a new Intel-based iMac, it told us that the Vista operating system would run fine, so there is some confusion around the tool.

So far, there’s a couple of theories to explain why Vista is not working. First and foremost, the Beta we have isn’t intended for EFI booting, which is what the Dual Core MacBook, along with all of Apple’s Intel machines, uses.

Secondly, Boot Camp is pretty tightly tied to Windows XP SP2, so there’s no reason to think that Boot Camp as a piece of beta software will be itself able to handle another piece of beta software in the form of Vista.

That said, we’re going to have a tinker with a pre-release candidate of Parallels for the Intel-based Mac, something best described by a colleague as VMWare for the Mac.

Related articles:
MacBook review
Boot Camp review
Boot Camp download