Mac Pro SATA Performance Fixed under Windows XP

AndyR, thanks for the reply. That sounds very promising. I just have a couple follow up questions.
What do you mean when you say "You have to do the old F7 trick to load extra drivers." In other words what F7 trick and what extra drivers. Do you mean that you still have to install the same drivers that go along with Bootcamp anyway or the SATA drivers?
Lastly, when you bootup do you follow the same procedure outlined in Bootcamp by holding the Option key down to choose b/t Mac OS X or Windows.
Sorry for all the questions but this is all new to me. Thanks!!

Hi MaineMac,

It is illegal to use an OEM version of XP that came installed on another machine to install XP onto your Mac Pro.

The Microsoft licence for the OEM version of XP can only be used on the machine that it was originally installed on.

The only version of XP that can be legally transfered between machines is the full blown expensive version.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Cheers

Andy

It worked for me when I installed my Dell OEM Win XP on my Macbook Pro. I didn't know it was illegal, though. That's good to know. I formatted and sold the Macbook for the Mac Pro, so we'll see if I'll do it again.

And the worst part is that our system is not even 64 bit yet as of this time (not fully) only specific applications run in full 64 bit mode ... well , then again... if you look close we might get there ugly fast since a mac pro booted in verbose mode looks for ... 8 cores ... and errr windows is still somewhere with some 16-32 bit parts that does not help paging and processors management and is not yet SMP (symmetrical parallels processing) that us macheads have been enjoying since the G4 and 10.2. Really experiencing XP felt weird not because of the hardware at, all those machines are blazing regarding to xp standarts (i dont live much in the XP world , sorry , complains regarding Hardware where actually poor software is involved might just not be my favorite cup of tea).

And i hope bootcamp gets the fix out not only for xp but also all the .. Linux stuff going about , Windows is only one part of the picture and the real performance target does not seem windows to me at this time. And by the schedule Vista is being rushed out , Leopard inches ever closer to release each and every time (would love to get system wide ACL , Posix is GREAT , but its getting some wrinkles as a multiple group authorisation manager , well our dear Netinfo and consorts take it from there quickly.

Hi Bertrand,

Why do you think XP is not SMP?

Cheers

Andy

The Drive Image boot disk (used for backing up) requires the SATA drivers while it's booting (via a USB floppy), yes, the same drivers you have to use when installing XP.

And yes, just hold the option key to choose OS.

i already have windows up and running... as i've read, i can't insall the SATA drivers after the install, so i suppose i'll have to re-install windows. however, what's the best way to go about doing this? should i dissolve the windows partition and re-install, or can i do a repair-style install of windows? i'm just running off of the stock 250 drive, with a rather small partition, if that matters.

I was in the same boat as you. I just rebooted with my new slipstreamed install disk in the drive, and booted off the windows install disk. Then chose to reformat the partition and start over. I don't know if a repair type installation would work, but give it a shot and report. I didn't have any other software installed on the XP side, so a complete re-install was no big deal.

Still SATA 1.5Gbit/sec is enough speed for the Raptor to achieve 150MByte/s burst speed...

SH

Umm...I'm no more of a fan of Windows than anyone else here, but windows has had SMP support since (at least) NT 4.0 (3.x may have introduced it - when were the dual P90's released? 94 or so?). All variants of XP have SMP capability, but the various releases throttle how many CPUs can be actively used (XP home is locked to a single CPU, if memory serves - pro may be limited to 2, but don't quote me on that). Windows server variants exist for up to 32-way SMP on 64 bit hardware. You'll pay for it, but it does exist.

Uptime and stability - that's another story. Weekly reboots of the windows servers are SOP in several datacenters that I know of, while the *nix boxes have uptimes measured in months...

Sorry. rambled a bit there.

I have it working but re the instructions:
OTE: FOLLOW THESE STEPS EXACTLY!
Click "Insert" - "Multiple Driver Folder"
Browser to the path of the IntelDrivers Folder (X:\MACXPINSTALL\IntelDrivers\)
Click "OK"
Click "ALL"
Click "OK"
Select "Intel(R) ESB2 SATA RAID Controller (Server ESB2)"
•••••••••••
i made some changes, i used the AHCI rather than raid, and i included only the xp drivers, not the 64 bit or vista ones

Before (when it didnt work), i was not doing the chipset drivers, so maybe that made the difference, but its wrong to use all of them coz the 64 bit ones crash the installer. And, the esb2 raid might work too, for all i know, but one of these changes i made must have worked , coz now i am getting 20x better performance from the drive . ( a dedicated sataI western digital)
(60mb/s vs 3.6 before !!). I just got a bit tired of experimenting so tried 2 changes at once.
By the way, installing the chipset drivers in the xp cd caused trouble with the audio drivers, but its all sorted now. I hope i can leave this install on until i update to a leopard/vista combo !!

"By the way, installing the chipset drivers in the xp cd caused trouble with the audio drivers, but its all sorted now."

How did you get this sorted? I still have no sound and the Realtek drivers won't install - either from the Boot Camp drivers disc or even manual attempts with the drivers downloaded from their website. I'd REALLY appreciate if you could explain how you fixed this.

Mac Pro 2.66 Mac OS X (10.4.7)

How did you get this sorted? I still have no sound
and the Realtek drivers won't install - either from
the Boot Camp drivers disc or even manual attempts
with the drivers downloaded from their website. I'd
REALLY appreciate if you could explain how you fixed
this.

Mac Pro 2.66
Mac OS X (10.4.7)

I have no sound either? Installed Windows XP Pro via Bootcamp 1.1. Anybody out there with a solution?

How did you get this sorted? I still have no sound
and the Realtek drivers won't install - either from
the Boot Camp drivers disc or even manual attempts
with the drivers downloaded from their website. I'd
REALLY appreciate if you could explain how you fixed
this.

Mac Pro 2.66
Mac OS X (10.4.7)

I have no audio either. Installed Windows XP Pro via Bootcamp 1.1 on separate hardrive (I refuse to let that inferior Windoze OS touch the same hardrive as my Mac OS). Anybody out there with a solution or suggestion for audio? Thanks.

How did you get this sorted? I still have no sound
and the Realtek drivers won't install - either from
the Boot Camp drivers disc or even manual attempts
with the drivers downloaded from their website. I'd
REALLY appreciate if you could explain how you fixed
this.

Mac Pro 2.66
Mac OS X (10.4.7)

I have no audio either. Installed Windows XP Pro followed by Bootcamp 1.1 on a second hardrive (I refuse to let that inferior Windoze OS touch the same hardrive as my Mc OS) and although Bootcamp instructions state that it includes audio drivers, I have no sound. Anybody with a solution out there? Thanks!!