Windows XP SP2 installation

by Mike Kronenberg

About

This tutorial should help you to install a vanilla Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 as a Q GuestPC in 3 steps. It will also guide you through the process of installing the Q Drivers for Windows to take full advantage of the advanced Q features.

Step One: Configuring the GuestPC

General Tab
Give your PC a meaningful name.
Leave the rest of the settings.

Hardware Tab
change the following options:

• give your PC at least 256MB RAM (but do not assign more than half of your Macs RAM)
• if you want sound, enable the ENSONIQ AudioPCI ES 1370 sound card
• CD-ROM: select Built-in CD-ROM and insert your Windows XP SP2 installation-disk in the Macs CD-ROM drive
• set "Boot from" to CD-ROM

Step Two: Setting up Windows XP SP2

Start the guest by double-clicking it.

Windows XP SP2 Setup should start automatically.

Press RETURN

Press F8 (on MacBook? hold down the fn key while pressing F8).

Press RETURN. Select FAT file system (Quick). FAT is faster than NTFS and you can read and write files onto the image in OS X.

Press RETURN (this screen will not appear if you have chosen NTFS as filesystem.

Now Windows setup will copy files. This will take about 10 minutes on an Intel Mac.

Nothing to be done here.

Just wait for the guest to restart. After restart DO NOT PRESS A KEY.

You will get used to that screen :)

Windows installation now starts in graphic mode.

Please customize your regional settings. You should choose the same keyboard setting as you have on your Mac to avoid trouble with wrong mapped keys. Please notice that Windows uses different key combinations for some special characters.

Personalize your copy of Windows. To have less hassle with filesharing and other host-guest functions, you should choose the same username and password as you have on your OS X account.

Type your Windows XP SP2 License key.

Give your Windows installation a meaningful computer name. Again: To have less hassle with filesharing and other host-guest functions, you should choose the same username and password as you have on your OS X account.

Set the clock in Windows. At least set the time zone. The actual time will be set the first time you connect to the internet.

Windows now just installs on and on.

Leave this as proposed (Typical settings). Click Next >

Leave this as proposed (WORKGROUP). Click Next >

Windows now just installs on and on. After about 2 hours, Windows will reboot again. DO NOT PRESS ANY KEY.

After the reboot, Windows tries to find the best VGA setting. Just click OK.

Windows will choose 800x600x24 which is good. Click OK.

Now we find ourselves in the configuration. Hit Next.

Choose "Not right now", for Windows-updates are not yet working flawlessly on Q. Click Next.

If you have no network connection, you may skip this step.

If you want to avoid a hundred mails by Microsoft choose "No, not at this time". Click Next.

And again: To have less hassle with filesharing and other host-guest functions, you should choose the same username and password as you have on your OS X account. Click Next.

Click Finish.

Click I'm never completely sure about that... ;).

Click There we are'''.

To shut down Windows XP, click on the ominous start Button, then click Turn Off Computer.

Yes, Turn Off.

Q does not support ACPI at the moment, that is why you have to turn off the guest manually.

Choose Don't save PC.

Step Three: Installing the Q Drivers

The Q drivers will easily configure Windows XP to share Files between OS X and Windows XP.

Click the edit PC Icon.

In the General Tab, enable Show disk with Q Windows drivers'.

In the Hardware Tab, set Boot from to Hard-disk. Then click Update PC.

Double-Click your Guest to start it.

Windows will start up and always bug you with a thousand nags. Just click on the cross on the top right to get rid of them. (You can disable them one by one by configuring the respective program, but this is way out of scope of this small tutorial.)

Right click (or command-click, if you have no multi-button mouse) on start. Select Explore.

Find and Click QDRIVERS in the Folders pane. To start the Installation of the Q Windows Drivers, double-click Q_win2kxp_drivers-1_0_1.

Click Next >.

Click Next >.

Click Install.

Click Finish.

To access the shared files, double-click Q HD.

Now You find the files you have in your Q Shared Files Folder on the OS X desktop. (The files are stored on the OS X side...)

You can disable Show disk with Q Windows drivers before you start the guest next time.

Fin.