Is it possible to install Windows XP Professional on an G4 iMac?

Question

Is it possible to install Windows XP Professional on an G4 iMac?

I want to know if you can actually install Windows XP Professional on an iMac G4.

Windows XP Professional SP3

Posted on Jun 24, 2009 6:41 PM

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Answer 1

Jun 24, 2009 8:08 PM in response to StLouisBatman

You cannot boot it directly, like you can with an Intel Mac using the Boot Camp utility. The only way is to run an emulator that makes a PowerPC Mac pretend to be a Windows PC in software. The emulator runs under the Mac OS. The most well-known product was called Virtual PC (for Mac). It was originally released by Connectix, but it was acquired by Microsoft. Microsoft stopped publishing it when Apple changed to Intel; it may still be available from resellers (and as an used item on eBay and other sources). Because it is emulation and not virtualization, performance will be poor compared to a real PC (or an Intel Mac) running Windows.

Note: Microsoft still offers a free virtualization product called Virtual PC, but that is not the same thing as the Virtual PC for Mac.

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Answer 2

Jun 25, 2009 3:34 PM in response to Kenichi Watanabe

Kenichi Watanabe wrote:
You cannot boot it directly, like you can with an Intel Mac using the Boot Camp utility. The only way is to run an emulator that makes a PowerPC Mac pretend to be a Windows PC in software. The emulator runs under the Mac OS. The most well-known product was called Virtual PC (for Mac). It was originally released by Connectix, but it was acquired by Microsoft. Microsoft stopped publishing it when Apple changed to Intel; it may still be available from resellers (and as an used item on eBay and other sources). Because it is emulation and not virtualization, performance will be poor compared to a real PC (or an Intel Mac) running Windows.

Note: Microsoft still offers a free virtualization product called Virtual PC, but that is not the same thing as the Virtual PC for Mac.

The reason I asked was that I saw a picture of a Tray-Loading iMac G3 running Windows XP Professional at Flickr. And since it had Internet Explorer 7 displaying Microsoft Corporation's website, I figured that it had to have at least Service Pack 2 installed. I also found, at the same site, a picture of a PowerBook G4 with Windows XP. But what if the iMac G4 in question actually had an Intel processor and not a PowerPC processor?

Message was edited by: StLouisBatman

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Answer 3

Jun 25, 2009 3:49 PM in response to StLouisBatman

That would have to be an earlier Connectix version of Virtual PC. The later versions (when it was Microsoft) would have required at least a G4. And it would have run under Mac OS 9, not Mac OS X.

That would have need pretty crazy and unusable, even if that picture was real. A tray-loader iMac G3 maxes out at 512mb of RAM, with 333 MHz top speed (unless it had an upgrade). You need to allocate part of the RAM to run Window XP in emulation. So it would have been running Windows XP with maybe 256mb of RAM, while struggling to run the emulator itself.

If it was just a picture, it seems more likely someone was displaying a screen shot of Windows XP running IE7 (screen shot image taken on a regular Windows PC), in full screen mode on the iMac G3. Or the iMac G3 could have been running a VNC client to display (in full screen mode) a shared screen of a real Windows PC running Windows XP and IE7.

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Answer 4

Jul 9, 2009 2:42 PM in response to Kenichi Watanabe

Kenichi Watanabe wrote:
That would have to be an earlier Connectix version of Virtual PC. The later versions (when it was Microsoft) would have required at least a G4. And it would have run under Mac OS 9, not Mac OS X.

That would have need pretty crazy and unusable, even if that picture was real. A tray-loader iMac G3 maxes out at 512mb of RAM, with 333 MHz top speed (unless it had an upgrade). You need to allocate part of the RAM to run Window XP in emulation. So it would have been running Windows XP with maybe 256mb of RAM, while struggling to run the emulator itself.

If it was just a picture, it seems more likely someone was displaying a screen shot of Windows XP running IE7 (screen shot image taken on a regular Windows PC), in full screen mode on the iMac G3. Or the iMac G3 could have been running a VNC client to display (in full screen mode) a shared screen of a real Windows PC running Windows XP and IE7.

Come to think of it, I'm starting to believe that the iMac G3 in question may have actually had a 2.2GHz Intel processor, 4GB of RAM, maybe a 500GB hard drive, & maybe Mac OS X on another partition & was running Windows XP with Boot Camp.

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Answer 5

Smartmart

Level 2

186 points

Jul 9, 2009 3:17 PM in response to StLouisBatman

I still run my graphite G3 imac with tiger. 10 years old and it's still kicking it with the big boys. XP works on my old imac under virtual PC. It has just over 600MB of RAM and it is slow, but owrks none the less. I need a machine that will run latest windows programs so I've just bought a new iMac and will run windows with VMware Fusion or Parrallels (haven't decided which yet. Boot camp will be quicker but the software is acceptable and I'm confident that my new iMac will give me ten more years of solid crash free performance like the old one. ****, I'll be surprised if the old imac isn't still running Microsoft word and playing itunes for another ten years. In short what I'm saying is yes you can run windows on an old iMac, but for the hassle and lack of speed it's going to give you, invest in a new imac or get a cheap £300 PC from PC world. Mind you, it'll be £300 of consistently crashing, bug filled, virus riddled, die on you any second, **** on earth.

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