What happens if you try to install Windows XP on a 2011 MacBook? This is normally easy with Boot Camp. But what if this MacBook has a custom touchscreen? It’s more complicated, but it’s possible!
Clearly, Windows XP is popular at the moment. Microsoft’s cult operating system is regularly the subject of nostalgic or technical experiments, in particular to check how it would work on unusual or simply old hardware.
This is the case again here with a content creator specializing in vintage computer hardware, Michael MJD, who decided to install Windows XP on a rather unusual computer: a MacBook with… a touch screen?
Windows XP on a 2011 touchscreen MacBook
Already, we are wondering where this MacBook with touch screen came from. It is in fact a machine modified for accessibility reasons, thanks to a driver developed by Lingraphica, a manufacturer of devices dedicated to people with speech and language disorders.
On this very special MacBook from 2011, Michael MJD wanted to test, based on the advice of his community, installing Windows XP Tablet Edition, a version dating from 2005 of the famous Microsoft OS. The creator recounted his experience in a very informative 26-minute video.
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And it must be said that the whole process was fraught with pitfalls. It was first necessary to modify the Windows XP .iso file to force the installation in tablet mode, because its product key was only linked to an edition for desktop PCs. Once the system is installed, you must go through the crucial step of drivers. Windows is installed very easily on a MacBook thanks to Boot Camp, but on such a special machine, we had to pretend.
If the touch screen was recognized from the launch, but the installation of its driver and especially its calibration gave it a hard time. I still had to fiddle with one of the corrupted license files to complete the process without a hitch.
Once the system was installed via Boot Camp, it was just necessary to find the right Nvidia driver for the graphics part and the MacBook worked like a charm in tablet mode. Even the keyboard’s multimedia keys were taken into account in this configuration.
All that remains is to test the beast’s potential. Michael MJD first tried a game of InkBall, a game preinstalled by default in Windows, which works very well in tablet mode. Then, instead of the famous Doom, he tried playing Half-Life on the MacBook, which also worked perfectly, without using the touch screen.
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