How to install Service Pack 3 for Windows XP on a MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard

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This post is more of a “note to self” than anything else. I spent good part of today fighting against my MacBook Pro, trying to install Service Pack 3 for Windows XP (Bootcamp partition).

After a few hours of frustration, I found this link buried in Apple’s support site that contains a workaround.

The meat of the problem is a driver that makes HFS partitions readable in Windows, and the fact that SP3 sees them as the main partition and tries to copy SP’s files from there.

The fix is trivial, just find AppleMNT.sys, rename it to something else, restart the system, install SP3, rename the file back to the original name and the problem is solved.

Thanks Apple, now if you made the kb article a BIT easier to find, that would be awesome.

By Luca Candela

Born in Italy, after a MS in Computer Science in Torino, Italy, I moved to Madrid first, then to California to pursue my dream of working in the epicenter of the digital revolution, the Bay Area. I'm currently the Head of Product Management at Treasure Data. I'm passionate about Agile development, User Experience and social media. In the rare occasion when I'm not working, I like to play electric guitar, ride my mountain bike and enjoy Asian food.

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