Apple OS

[bigdawg]

Being a windows man myself I am not sure if this can be done. My sister has a Mac laptop that she was told needed a new hard drive. This I am not so sure, I had my parents bring it down from Minnesota. I asked for the recovery cd that came with it and was told she could not find it. What my thoughts are is to format the hard drive and then put windows on it just to try and hopefully she can find the cd that came with it. Does anyone know if this can be done? A hard drive is a hard drive so I would think that it can. Tomorrow I will have it in my possession to look at. Thanks PS I could not find a thread where to post this because it did not fit into the catagories

[bigdawg]

I am sure it can just never heard of windows and apple running isde by side! I have put mandake and redhat so am sure Apple will allow me to partition windows

[Daybreak_0]

Bigdawg

My father once had a PC (IBM clone) with the HD partitioned, Windows on one side and Apple on the other. He had programs he still wanted to use from an old Apple computer. Going back probably 10 years or more now though, and a lot simpler hardware back then.

Short partially correct and easy explanation for laymen - The Operating system (OS) is specifically designed to talk to Hardware, in other words it is a layer between the actual hardware and the programs/applications you then run on the computer (The OS is the filling inbetween).

Now - Apple controls both the OS and the Hardware. The Apple hardware understands the calls the apple OS makes to it. As Apple control both OS and Hardware you get less problems and less crashes.

MS owns the Windows OS but does not control the Hardware (partially correct statement - Hardware manufacturers usually build to MS OS now.) The original MS OS's spoke to hardware based on IBM design.

Anyway long and short of it - You may be able to put Windows on the HD and run it on the Apple laptop, but I expect there will be differences and subsequent freezes or crashes as the Hardware does not recognise some commands or vica versa.

Regards

[bigdawg]

Thanks for the indepth responce. Basically my sister was told that the HD was bad due to a lightening hit. My guess is that there may be a corrupt file in the OS. I will be getting my hand on it later today. I do not even know what happens when it is powered on. I really have no preference for a different OS on it. I asked for the recovery cd but she could not find it. I have Win 98, Mandrake 8.1, and Red Hat so I was just going to attempt to put on a different OS if the HD was fine. Hopefully she can find her Mac CD in the meantime and would re-install her OS how it came. I will post an update to what I find when I get it. Myself just really do not trust a whole lot of shops that quote 6 hundred to fix. That would be a pretty safe amount to quote across the board without looking at something knowing that on average the repair would be around 2-3 hundred

[Daybreak_0]

sheesh

Lightning hit??

I mean, I know that the HD has some chips etc, but unless the HD was floating off somewhere by itself when it was hit, then I would say that the MB would be more sensitive.

Regards

[bigdawg]

I agree, the lightening thing was told to me by my sister. I had my doubts immeadiatly. Unfortunatly I have it in my possession but I was not sent the recovery cd nor the power supply. Lot of good it does me. Thought about useing battery cables for the car to jumpstart it!!Ha Ha. I will have to wait til the cables get sent to me before I can power it on. With luck I hope to get the cd for it also.It has a 400 mgh processor and a 6 gig Hd so maybe I can get it going for her kids and let her get a new one as it is a couple of years old and nowadays two years almost makes it obsolete.

[DCElliott]

There is something called the hardware abstraction layer or HAL that is necessary for the OS to talk to the hardware. Macs use proprietary hardware (notice the different keyboard and mouse setup - and that is just what you can see) that the Mac OS can talk to. For one thing, they use a different processor architecture. Computers that do both windows and mac generally are using emulation in which programs run in a black box that they "think" is their regular environment and their input output is translated by the emulation program. It is, of course, a very slow and unsatisfactory process.

So - don't try to load windows - the process probably wouldn't even read the Windows boot disk or CD.

DE

[bigdawg]

Thanks for all the insight because I am really not that familiar with Apple. She has a powerbook. Not really sure what may be wrong with it because I can not power it on at this point. Waiting on power supply in mail.Good answers from DE and Daybreak though because I was just thinking of the HD and did not take the processor into account. Thanks

[Daybreak_0]

Have you asked Apple for a CD? or some type of bootable disk?

[bigdawg]

No I have not. Could never hurt to ask! I will se if my sister can find it . My parents were in a hurry to leave and just grabbed the powerbook. Hopefully she will at least send the transformer. If anyone knows what amp it runs at would be nice. I have a Gateway and Toshiba but neither would fit in maybe I can go to radio shack and get an adapter to fit in. I do not think that I could over power it. Thanks

[Daybreak_0]

Not a good idea to second guess adapter. You may get wrong ampage or voltage, or even worse negative mixed up with positive. Patience may be a virtue in this case.

On the lighter side, lucky you have a boat, as Apples make good anchors :) if you can't fix them!