Windows Vista has been booted on an iMac, according to a poster on the OSx86 Project forum yesterday. Previous attempts to install and run Vista - currently available in pre-release form - have been unsuccessful.

According to OSx86 Project's correspondent, the solution is to eradicate the machine's Mac OS X disk partitions and install only Vista. Airman Pika said he used Apple's recently released Boot Camp utility to install the Microsoft operating system and apparently had to delete all the OS X partitions.

Subsequent correspondents claimed it's not necessary to remove OS X, simply the EFI partition Boot Camp creates. Doing so allows the system to boot from either operating system.

That said, the Vista installation process does not appear to run as smoothly as the Boot Camp-based Windows XP installation. Work is going on to understand what the Vista installer is doing in order to tweak the overall installation process and make dual-boot Vista installations work more effectively. ®