BootCamp and AutoCad for students

As a parent who just jumped in and bought a MacBook Pro for his daughter in college, I now realize she will need AutoCad for her interior design classes, so big ooops for me. I am trying to determine if installing BootCamp will be able to run that program effectively, or do I bite the bullet and get her the PC instead. It's the only Windows app she will need, albeit a big one ! Has Bootcamp evolved since its inception. I don't really want to do the Parallels Desktop either.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5), Processor 065-7018 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

Posted on Feb 10, 2008 7:46 PM

36 replies

Mar 7, 2008 10:01 AM in response to Mothman277

I was trying to run AutoCAD '08 and the license kept breaking... so I deleted the XP partition, recreated the partition in the Boot Camp Assistant, installed Windows XP, and installed AutoCAD '07 and it works perfectly. No license problems... it seems to me that its only v'08 that has problems with XP in Boot Camp.

So, no, I wasn't trying to install CAD on Vista... which I did a long time ago and it worked fine the whole time. It doesn't have anything to do with the operating system.

joeyaudio Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 9, 2008 4:28 PM in response to inukbob

Well she tried the install of Windows XP Pro SP2 and got the dreaded "Press any key to boot from CD. Disk Error. Press any key to restart". Needless to say, she is stuck. I understand from reading other forums that the partition needs to be formatted, but she never gets to that part of the installation. She gets the error message after she selects "Select “C: Partition3 [FAT32].” The computer does it's thing but never gets to the format phase!!!!!!!!@##$%%%%%%%%%%

joeyaudio Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 9, 2008 6:36 PM in response to joeyaudio

Also, can she use Disk utility to format the patition for windows and then return to the install afterwards?

Mar 9, 2008 11:21 PM in response to joeyaudio

Read this

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306504

joeyaudio Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 10, 2008 7:28 AM in response to TravelMac

That page doesn't help. I need to know how the heck she is supposed to format that partition, that is the problem!When she selects the 32gb partition, the installer stops after a bit and gives that error message, before she can format!

joeyaudio Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 10, 2008 5:33 PM in response to joeyaudio

Directions say " then rebooting from the Windows XP installer CD,", how do you reboot to the XP CD?

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

BootCamp and AutoCad for students