Installing Windows 2008 on MacBook Pro 10.5

         Computing · OSX · Windows

Windows 2008 Server is probably the most robust operating system to come out from Microsoft whilst still supporting most of the modern features users demand. The robustness and speed of it is just two of the advantages it has over Vista.

To install on a MacBook Pro its probably easiest to use Windows 2008 Server x86 CD 32bit. 64Bit and bootcamp is not recommended at the moment!

First steps of the installation:

  1. Step one is to start up the bootcamp assistant whilst you are running OS X.
  2. It will take you through the procedure
  3. Put in the DVD when prompted
  4. Follow through the questions asked for the install
  5. When prompted to enter a password make sure to use one of these three: numbers, symbols, capital letters, lower case letters. Password policy is setup on Windows 2008!
  6. It will continue to install and any reboot needed will take you back to the installation

After this is done the OS is installed, but as a workstation OS its a bit of pain to use.

Next steps straight after installation

  1. Start by downloading a webbrowser that you can actually use. IE is quite restricted so to even download something you must go into options and change the privacy options
  2. Insert your Leopard disk and install the drivers that you need, then reboot
  3. From here you can change the resolution of the desktop to the native display resolution

All the steps after this are optional, but are probably good to know:

Enable themes

  1. Open up “Server Manager”
  2. Click “Action”, “Add Features”
  3. Choose “Desktop Experience”
  4. Go into the Service panel
  5. Enable the themes service (its probably disabled, so you need to double click it and enable it
  6. Select a theme by right clicking on the desktop and selecting personalised
  7. Aero theme can be found at: C:\Windows\Resources\Themes

Enable wireless networking

  1. Open up “Server Manager”
  2. Click “Action”, “Add Features”
  3. Choose “Wireless LAN Service”
  4. Let it install

Enable hibernation

  1. Open up a command prompt and type
  2. powercfg.exe /hibernate on

For more information on turning Windows 2008 into a workstation check out:

http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpress/

And for a program that easily enables the features of a workstation on Windows 2008 server:

http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpress/2008/07/17/windows-server-2008-workstation-converter/

comments powered by Disqus