[anguish]

Not to take away from jbeamer, but I just did created this guide and it worked beautifully. I won't necessarily say it's simpler or anything, but it works very well. Now to take out the test hard drive so I can use my 10v with the one I did the other day and is my "production" drive. This guide needs some cleaning up, and when I do my videos on it (after my new 10v gets here), it will be based off this methodology.

WARNING: Not for the faint of heart. Although the OS installations are simple enough if you have ever installed an OS before, dealing with the bootloader and correcting issues that may arise are not always the easiest. Please be aware of this BEFORE you try this, especially if the machine is critical to your use.

OS X, Windows 7, Ubuntu Netbook Remix Triple Boot

Tools Required/Used
- OS X 10.5.6 USB key created using Netbook BootMaker 0.8.3 RC3
- Windows 7 USB key
- Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 USB key

Steps required for creating above can be located elsewhere on the forum, and is beyond the scope of this guide. Also, in theory, an external USB DVD drive may be usable as well, although I understand OS X installs to be very finnicky depending on the make/model of the drive.

Steps
- Ensure USB BIOS Legacy Support is enabled for USB booting
- Boot from OS X 10.5.6 install media
- Open Disk Utility and partition drive, creating three partitions
- Create first partition for Windows 7, formatted with MS-DOS (FAT)
- Create second partition for OS X, formatted with Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
- Create third partition for Ubuntu, formatted with MS-DOS (FAT)
- Click Options and ensure GUID Partition Table is selected
- Install OS X to second partition, customizing as desired
- Reboot as required, and go through initial config wizard (1024x576 screen users: it is recommended to have an external display plugged in so that you can run the wizard, but it isn't required)
- Reboot and launch Windows 7 installation
- Follow prompts and do a Custom (advanced) install
- Select the partition for Windows 7, click Advanced, and then click Format. You will not be able to install to the partition until you do.
- Let Windows installer reboot as required. Follow the prompts and go through the initial setup configuration as well.
- Once you are at the Windows desktop, reboot and launch the Ubuntu Netbook Remix install (if you have an external display plugged in, you might want to unplug it for the Ubuntu Netbook Remix install)
- On the main menu, highlight Install Ubuntu Netbook Remix and hit Enter
- Follow the prompts until you get to the location to install Ubuntu, which is Step 4 and titled Prepare disk space.
- Select Specify partitions manually (advanced) and click Forward
- On the partition table, you will see multiple zones of free space. We want to keep these, so at this point you will want to edit the partition set aside for Ubuntu, which is likely going to be /dev/sda4 if you followed these instructions exactly. Select this partition and click Edit partition
- Resize the partition so that you have subtracted some space for the swap partition. In my case, I use a roughly 4 GB swap partition, so I resized it from 39666 to 35666. For Use as, select Ext3 journaling file system, click Format the partition and for Mount point select /. Advanced users can actually partition how they like, this is just keeping it as simple as possible. Once done, click OK.
- You will be prompted with a window to write the previous changes to disk. Simply click Continue. The partition formatting and resizing will take place. Depending on the size of your drive and partitions, this could take some time.
- Finally, select largest chunk for free space (in my case, around 4000 MB), and click New partition.
- For Use as, select swap area, ensure that the partition size is correct, then click OK.
- You can click Forward through the rest of the screens, filling out pertinent info, until you hit the last screen which is Step 7.
- On Step 7 (Ready to install), click Advanced. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. Change the location of the boot loader installation to the partition you created for /. In our example, this is /dev/sda4. (NOTE: It is possible that because we are using Chameleon as the main bootloader, we may not even need a bootloader. I have not, however, tested this theory.) At this point, you can click OK, then Install and let the installation begin.
- Reboot as prompted. At this point, you will have all three OS'es installed, however the system will be completely unbootable. This is now the point where we correct that issue.
- First launch the OS X install media again. All we want to do is reinstall the Chameleon bootloader, so you'll get to the main install screen, then select NetbookInstaller under the Utilities menu. Select the volume to install on, then unselect everything except for the first option. Click Install, then when completed, reboot the computer.
- At this point, you should have a functioning Chameleon bootloader. You can test to see which OS'es you'll can get into, but likely you'll only be able to get into OS X. If you select Linux, you'll get put right into GRUB. If you select Windows, you'll get the 0xc000000e boot issue. We're going to fix this now.
- Boot into the Windows install media. You don't need to go any farther than the first screen. Hit Shift+F10 (you may need to also hit the Fn key as well depending on how your BIOS is setup), and then launch diskpart.
○ In diskpart, perform the following:
list disk
select disk 0
list partition
select partition 2
active
○ Disk 0 is the local hard disk, and in this case, partition 2 is the Windows 7 partition.
- Exit out of the command prompt, then launch Repair your computer, which is on the second screen.
- Windows will at this point automatically search for and find problems with your computers startup options. Simply click Repair and restart. Once you have done this, you should boot into Windows 7. (You may see the option to Start Windows normally. If you do, please select it.) Login, and open a command prompt (I recommend launching it as an Administrator…Start, cmd in search, right click and click Run as administrator).
- At the command prompt, type diskpart.
○ In diskpart, perform the following:
list disk
select disk 0
list partition
select partition 4
active
○ Disk 0 is the local hard disk, and in this case, partition 4 is the OS X partition.
- Reboot after exiting out of the command shell, and test booting into all three of your OS'es. You should now be able to successfully boot into all three.

With regards to OS updates, you should be able to update Windows 7 and Ubuntu without issue. However, if you update OS X, the updates will run fine (with the usual issues associated with 10.5.7 and 10.5.8 if you are just using Leopard), however you will need to repeat the following steps:

- Reinstall Chameleon
- Use diskpart to change to Windows to be the active partition
- Use Windows 7 install to automatically repair
- Boot into Windows 7 and then use diskpart again to change back to OS X to be the active partition

SPECIAL THANKS: Special thanks to meklort, mechdrew, bmcclure937 and many many other members of MyDellMini.com, as well as others in the hackintoshing community. This wouldn't be possible without their efforts.

[jbeamer]

Thanks Anguish -- much more complete -- I think my thread should be unstickied so that we jump off from this much better documented version.

I am psyched to see people trying this -- it's a quite satisfying set up.

-jb

[anguish]

Well, I certainly didn't want to take away from your guide. Both guides work very well, I just didn't (at least knowingly) use gptsync in mine. I'll leave your stickied, maybe sticky mine for now. I'm just thrilled as well to see others doing this as well. Now I need to work on quad-booting and getting XP involved. That'll be when my new 10v gets here though.

[bmcclure937]

Awesome! It is always good to have solid alternatives

Instead of making a sticky, why not move both of these into the "Dual Booting" guides section

[anguish]

Pffft.. That's no fun..

[simanco]

If anyone could offer some advice, I'd appreciate it.

I've tried jbeamer's triple boot tutorial as well as this one and run into the same problem each time.

I've got the following:
10v, 1gig, A04, N270, with Bluetooth, no WWAN, the 1397 wi-fi and 160gig WD drive

The BIOS has Bluetooth enabled, USB Legacy enabled and USB wake disabled.

With either tutorial I can get all three OSs installed and working. The problem arises when I attempt to set the WIN7 partition as active. I get the following:
"The selected disk is not a fixed MBR disk.
The ACTIVE command can only be used on fixed MBR disks."
This makes sense in my head since it was set to GUID.

When this happens, attempting to repair the install results in:
"This version of System Recovery Options is not compatible with the version of Windows you are trying to repair. Try using a recovery disc that is compatible with this version of Windows."
This makes no sense to me since it's the same, unchanged, usb key. I assume it's related to the MBR?

At the moment I can boot to OSX using Chameleon and UNR using Chameleon then GRUB. Selecting "Windows NTFS" in Chameleon or "Windows Vista" in GRUB results in the 0xc000000e error.

Anyone have any ideas just what the heck I'm doing wrong? I'm a longterm Windows guy. I have a bit of Linux experience but I'm a newbie to Mac/OSX.

Any and all help is appreciated. This is driving my blood pressure up!

Thanks,
Jim

[anguish]

I ran into that issue as well when I first got my triple boot working. My solution was to set Windows 7 to be the active partition through the OS X fdisk command. That said though, it's very possible that if you haven't reinstalled Chameleon at this point, and you do reinstall it, you may be able to get away with using diskpart.

Give it a whirl and keep us updated!

[simanco]

Just booted into OSX and used fdisk to set my Win7 partition as active as per a posting at Insanely Mac.

Booted to my Win 7 media to attempt the repair. Same issue as before.

Checked with diskpart. Same issue.

Booted back into OSX and re-installed Chameleon. Same issues.

Any other ideas?

Thanks again,
Jim

---------- Post added at 09:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:56 PM ----------

A further pit of info. Perhaps helpful; I'm unsure.

GParted under Ubuntu shows my Win7 partition as NTFS but reports it cannot read the contents of the file system for that partition. I've confirmed with an NTFS external USB hard drive that Ubuntu can read NTFS without issue.

Jim

[dselwyn]

Oh man, thank you! I've been trying to get a triple boot all weekend, I couldn't get it with Chameleon so I just gave up and used EasyBCD, but then I decided to give this a go and it worked perfectly. Also, if anyone wants to know, I used Backtrack 4 instead of UNR and it worked fine.

And Simanco, I don't believe you can ever access a Windows partition from Linux. That error is totally normal. As for your problem, I had it over and over again trying to install on previous attempts. All I can say is, try formatting the Windows 7 USB and re-imaging it using the same ISO and everything. I don't know why but it usually worked for me. To an extent. It's worth a try at least.

[anguish]

simanco, What method did you use for the OS X media? If you didn't use the latest/greatest version of Netbook Bootmaker to make it, you might want to.

dselwyn, Thanks! Glad to hear it! How did BT4 go? I had resolution issues last time I tried using it, but I'm willing to go nuts and create a quad-boot and put BT4 on...although I suspect my resolution issues are because I've got the 1024x576 display. That'll be corrected soon enough once my new 10v gets here.