Mac Mini + Vista Success

I’d heard that the Pre RC1 release of Vista (build 5536) ran happily on Intel Macs so, having been looking for an excuse to try Boot Camp, I gave it a go.

I had two issues. The first involved the firmware on my Mini. Even though Software Update displayed no additional updates, Boot Camp insisted that I was out of date. Every time I ran Boot Camp Assistant, it displayed an error message about the firmware version I was running.

A quick browse around the forums presented this. One brief download later, and Boot Camp was running happily.

I’m impressed with Boot Camp. It’s incredibly easy to repartition your drive, and initiate a Windows installation – simply drag the slider to the size you want, and click “install Windows”.

I happily watched my machine reboot, launch the Vista setup, and start installing. Foolishly assuming that everything was going well, I left the Mini merrily chugging along, and busied myself with other things.

When I returned to the machine, the monitor was in power saving mode and nothing I did would wake it up. I rebooted, and the same thing happened – white startup screen for a few seconds, then into power saving mode. I tried to boot from the CD again, but the same thing happened.

I booted back in OS X, and tried to kick off another install from the CD. I got the same blank screen again. So I removed Boot Camp, and tried the whole process from scratch. Same result.

Finally, because I’ve known it cause problems before, I powered off my LaCie external firewire drive and tried again. Sure enough, the Vista installation DVD booted and ran. This time – and I know this breaks the golden “watched pot” rule of Windows installations – I kept my beady eye on the installation process.

This time everything worked fine. I hadn’t burned myself a Boot Camp driver cd, but Vista already included the network driver, and managed to locate the video driver using Windows Update. Impressive.

So at this stage I’ve got a fully functional Vista machine, on the Mini, without the need to jump through lots of complicated hoops. Even the Media Center side of things works. Well done, Microsoft. If they’re going to try to tempt Apple users away from OS X – and there’s a very real possibility of that with Intel based machines – then it’s in Microsoft’s interest to make the process as painless as possible. And I’m pleased to say: Right now, it pretty much is.

I’m going to spend a little more time with Vista over the next few days, and I’ll make sure I try future release on the Mini to make sure Microsoft don’t break anything. RC1 has already been released, and there will inevitably be a few more release candidates before Vista is finished.