12 Comments

Load Windows Media Center on an Intel Mac

March 17, 2006 by in Random with 12 Comments

You can load Windows XP Pro on your Intel Mac, now you have the ability to load Windows Media Center (WMC) on your Intel Mac.

From The osx86project:

OK so I wanted Media Center 2005 installed on my iMac so I started trying to figure out a few things. With the help of several people I managed to edit the slipstream so that it will support MCE2005 (before it would break the install and only install XP SP2 Pro leaving out the MCE parts).

Now it works BUT there is one catch. Of course you need to own MCE but you have to burn it onto a DVD. The problem is that at a certain point in the install MCE normally asks for CD2 of MCE (assuming you aren’t using a DVD version) but it doesn’t eject CD1….and the intel imac doesn’t have a manual eject button or pinhole so you are SOL. Only fix to this is to put all the files onto 1 DVD. The rest of the process is the same though and I have tweaked the install guide accordingly.

Please note that this is only for MCE2005 and not XP Pro (I hope to figure out other versions later if I get the time).

Anyway enjoy and thanks again to Narf and blanka for the good work.

Download the Patch [via]


  • http://www.uneasysilence.com/archive/2006/03/5687/ .: UNEASYsilence :. » Blog Archive » Instructions on how to Install Windows on a Mac

    [...] Load Windows Media Center on an Intel Mac These don’t sound too dangerous Laser Water Show !!Yo! New Yorkers, Billy G wants to give you Dough! New meaning to the term ‘audio book’ Rockin’ it old school Fancy ‘arches TagWorld launches music discovery service Windows Drivers for Intel Mac Now how do you go about collecting smells? Fresh Comments [...]

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/thelawn/ Mike C.

    It seams the flood gates have been opened, maybe someday we’ll actually be able to install media center edition on a regular pc-not some “special” media one.

  • Jon

    What, the Intel iMacs can’t eject the disc when you go in there with a paper clip? I thought there was a little thing you could manually push inside the drive to “hard-eject” discs…

    I can’t imagine Apple has taken that way of recovering your discs when you computer is refusing to start…

  • R031E5

    Unfortunately they don’t have a pinhole. I had the same problem when trying to install a Linux distro, it asked for CD 2 but I couldn’t eject it nor manually remove the disk, specially because I have a Powerbook :p

  • http://www.dorksandlosers.com Tan The Man

    Super cool.

  • http://www.thinkwasabi.com/2006/03/18/y-ahora-windows-mce-tambien-en-mac/ Think Wasabi. » Archivo del weblog » Y ahora… Windows MCE (también) en Mac

    [...] Sólo unos días después de haber conseguido la instalación de un Windows XP en un MacIntel, ya habido quien ha encontrado la forma de instalar (también) un Windows Media Center Edition. Hay que aplicar un pequeño parche, pero por lo demás, al igual que en Windows, la instalación no difiere mucho. @ UNEASYsilence [...]

  • http://www.dibblecreekdesign.com/blog Derek Scott

    Mike C: I’m pretty sure WIndows Media Center Edition doesn’t require a “special media pc” to run . Someone at work had it installed on a pretty crappy custom built pc.

  • http://5thirtyone.com/archives/123 5thirtyone | it’s not wheatgrass » Browser testing & a standalone IE7

    [...] Now if I could just get my hands on a new Intel iMac or Macbook so I could load XP and test with all know browsers from a single machine… Safari screenshots and the occasional time in front of spazs iBook can only do so much. [...]

  • http://lisacerilli.nfshost.com/ Lisa

    Um… don’t Macs have a manual eject button on their keyboards…?
    I thought that was a standard feature on Macs. Has that changed?

  • Man43

    Are you sure that the fans on your Mac are running when you boot it in XP? I think they are not running.

  • Javier

    i have a pc p4 2.5 1.5 memory 200gig its a sony and it ame with xp home but i want to upgrade to MCE 2005. how do i go about it. thnak you

  • ODESSIA

    WOULD LIKE TO INSTAL THIS

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