[jcarlo]

Hi Can someone direct me to the right link for How to dual boot osx leopard and xp on a 16gb ssd. Thank you in advance people

[RickABS]

What's your current setup?
First I'm going to give you some advise, Don't delete your XP partition if you haven't yet. As it turns out it's a lot easier to install OSX from a memory stick then to install XP from one.

If you have installed OSX and wiped out XP from your machine like I did, my second piece of advise. Goto Staples and buy a USB CD/DVD rom (on sale for $59 this week) and install XP using the original disks.

I don't say this lightly, I spent the last two weeks trying to install XP through a thumb drive, followed every method I could, bought additional memory sticks because different methods gave me different results, tried combining methods and nothing worked, I always hit a wall. beleive me it became a matter of pride, a challenge. But I do work for a living, and when I noticed my billables for the month were down and it was all due to a three hundred dollar machine that I wanted to play with. I took a step back and rethought the whole process through. I bought the cheapest USB CD rom I could get my hands on right away; and installed XP like the computer Gods (Dell, Microsoft) intended it to be, with a CD. It took about an hour and now I'm happy again.
hope this helps!

[jcarlo]

My set up right now is osx 10.5.8 and I think I'm running Bios a04. Let me know. Thanks for replying. also I have a usb drive and the dell XP cd

[Boss302]

Originally Posted by RickABS

What's your current setup?
First I'm going to give you some advise, Don't delete your XP partition if you haven't yet. As it turns out it's a lot easier to install OSX from a memory stick then to install XP from one.

If you have installed OSX and wiped out XP from your machine like I did, my second piece of advise. Goto Staples and buy a USB CD/DVD rom (on sale for $59 this week) and install XP using the original disks.

I don't say this lightly, I spent the last two weeks trying to install XP through a thumb drive, followed every method I could, bought additional memory sticks because different methods gave me different results, tried combining methods and nothing worked, I always hit a wall. beleive me it became a matter of pride, a challenge. But I do work for a living, and when I noticed my billables for the month were down and it was all due to a three hundred dollar machine that I wanted to play with. I took a step back and rethought the whole process through. I bought the cheapest USB CD rom I could get my hands on right away; and installed XP like the computer Gods (Dell, Microsoft) intended it to be, with a CD. It took about an hour and now I'm happy again.
hope this helps!

I just got SL installed and wiped out xp, i have a couple of external dvd drives so thats not an issue, but id like to install xp along with SL and hope i dont need to migrate osx image, id prefer a guide that allows me to install xp as things are now, if one exists, can you give me a guide or some tips? thanks a lot! anyone?

[RickABS]

Sorry guys, I've had to catch up with work now that I satidfied my obsession with getting my Mini the way I wanted it. I know how frustrating it is to have something cool and you know you can make it cooler.
It took me a while to figure this out and I’m trying to remember what I did. My biggest hang-up was getting XP to install, and the reason was because I was trying to do it from a memory stick. Once I put that CD and drive in place it was a cake walk. Except that I couldn’t figure out how to get back to OSX, I knew it was there but it took me a while to find instructions on how to get to it. There are some guides that will have you boot with netbook loader and re-activate chameleon, but they warn you about causing problems the next time you boot in windows. The way I followed didn’t have that problem.



What you’ll need:
1) Your original usb memory stick with your mac os on it. I needed this because it has Chameleon on it which will allow you to do your dual boot once you install XP. (XP doesn’t allow you to choose what to load, more on this later…)
2) USB Optical Drive.
3) XP CD and XP key(you won’t need the key if you are using the CD’s that came with your dell mini)
4) Netbook installer, if you didn’t get it when you installed your Mac OS, get it now, there is plenty of links in the guides to this software.

What to do:
1) First lets partition your disk - Run Disk utility from your Mac OS
a) Select the top most device on the left hand pane (this is your hard drive’s name, not the disk partition.)
b) On the right top part of the screen select Partition.
c) Drag the bottom corner of your MAC partition to resize it (I chose 100Gig Mac, 50 Gig XP) but this is your choice
d) Hit the plus sign below the partitions and this should create a new partition for the free space you allocated – format it as MS-DOS (FAT). Look things over make sure you are comfortable with what you have done and then Apply. (The goal is to have two partitions, one of them DOS)
2) In OSX/SL (OS – Ten / Snow Leopard or whatever version) run netbook installer and install chameleon; also very important make sure that Enable Quiet boot is not checked, this is what allows you to interrupt the normal bootup to OSX and tell it to boot XP. After the install I would reboot to make sure that I see the chameleon boot screen (Picture of Hard Disk with a bar sliding back from full to empty.) If you see this screen then you are very close to your goal.
3) Install XP on the new partition using your disk and usb drive. (hit F12 to select CD-ROM) the installation will tell you it needs to repair the disk during the install; it’s all good as long as you don’t resize any partitions. If you format the new partition during the Install as NTFS you will not be able to open it in MAC mode and thus lose the ability to move documents back and forth between operating systems. (no big deal use a network share from one of your other machines)
4) Get all your XP drivers and all those other things that make windows so wonderful (this is when you begin to appreciate how simple installing OSX is). After you have rebooted countless times and you are fully done with your XP installation move to the next step. (Don't rush it, this is the hardest part)
5) Boot from your memory stick - USB OSX/SL installer (hit F12 you know the deal) (this is where the magic happens, as I said above there would be more about chameleon to discuss)
a) When you see the chameleon screen hit any key and it will show you three disks (the memory stick, and two disk partitions)
b) Type “-s” no quotes, this will take you to command prompt or shell
c) Type “fdisk –e /dev/rdisk0” (that’s a zero at the end), you may get an error complaining it could not find the file, no big deal. You have entered the fdisk utility.
d) “p” will show you your partitions – we need to make OSX (your largest partition?) the bootable partition, this is usually the second partition on your list. (1 – chameleon, 2 - OSX, 3 – XP). Type “f 2” this will flag OSX as your boot drive (which plays nice with chameleon). You can view the changes by hitting “p” again. If you like what you see hit “w” write, and “q” quit
e) You should be back in the root prompt - type “reboot” remove your memory stick and when the machine restarts and you hit any key during the chameleon boot process you will have your choice of OS to boot into. Your machine will default to booting to MAC, if you chose XP as the active partition you will not have a boot choice, repeat step 5 and choose the other partition.

Guys any questions or comments post back, I will monitor this thread.

[Boss302]

Thank you! Im gonna give it a go this weekend and ill let you know how things work out, worst could happen is I have to reinstall SL again. Your help is Appreciated!

[jcarlo]

Thanks. One question NetbookInstaller is different from Chameleon?

[minimalpc]

Originally Posted by jcarlo

Thanks. One question NetbookInstaller is different from Chameleon?

Yes. Chameleon is a bootloader, similar to EasyBCD or GRUB. It is the first thing that boots after the BIOS and then hands off to the OS (e.g. OS X, Windows, etc.) NetbookInstaller includes a modified version of Chameleon and installs if you check the "Install bootloader" box (which you should).

[damionhh]

hey folks, i asked the same question in another thread but i got xp and sl booting fine but only when i select the active partition with fdisk. even thouygh i have run netbootmaker numerous times i never see a chameleon screen booting either os. i used the MBR method of p[artitioning and installing (with the patched OSInstall file). my SL partition is the only option in netbootmaker and even though it says it instalkls correctly it seems to never hit chameleon. any ideas?

[minimalpc]

Originally Posted by damionhh

hey folks, i asked the same question in another thread but i got xp and sl booting fine but only when i select the active partition with fdisk. even thouygh i have run netbootmaker numerous times i never see a chameleon screen booting either os. i used the MBR method of p[artitioning and installing (with the patched OSInstall file). my SL partition is the only option in netbootmaker and even though it says it instalkls correctly it seems to never hit chameleon. any ideas?

Set the OS X partition active. Run NetbookInstaller 0.8.3 or later in OS X. Make sure the "Install bootloader" box is checked and the "Enable quiet boot" box is NOT checked. Reboot once NBI finished. After the Dell screen, you should see a countdown meter for booting OS X by default. If you press a key to interrupt the countdown, you can choose which OS to boot.