[schnide]

Hi all

I've just used this guide..

http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/dell-mini-10-guides/16574-complete-guide-dual-booting-10v-windows-7-osx-10-6-2-a.html

..to install Windows 7 in addition to Snow Leopard 10.6.1. I'm up to phase 6, but the problem is that I don't have a SL install USB anymore because I used it to make my Win 7 USB instead. My 10v now boots straight into Windows 7, leaving me unable to proceed.

Is there a quick USB stick I can create to get back into and boot from the Snow Leopard partition, or possibly some other kind of way, instead of having to go through the process of creating a SL install USB all over again? The stick I've used so far is 16gb and has Windows 7 on it, but I also have 2 x 2gb USB sticks elsewhere.

This is especially important as I'll still need the Windows 7 USB later in the process, and I don't want to have to create THAT again too!

Thanks guys,

schnide

[minimalpc]

Originally Posted by schnide

Hi all

I've just used this guide..

http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/dell-mini-10-guides/16574-complete-guide-dual-booting-10v-windows-7-osx-10-6-2-a.html

..to install Windows 7 in addition to Snow Leopard 10.6.1. I'm up to phase 6, but the problem is that I don't have a SL install USB anymore because I used it to make my Win 7 USB instead. My 10v now boots straight into Windows 7, leaving me unable to proceed.

Is there a quick USB stick I can create to get back into and boot from the Snow Leopard partition, or possibly some other kind of way, instead of having to go through the process of creating a SL install USB all over again? The stick I've used so far is 16gb and has Windows 7 on it, but I also have 2 x 2gb USB sticks elsewhere.

This is especially important as I'll still need the Windows 7 USB later in the process, and I don't want to have to create THAT again too!

Thanks guys,

schnide

The problem is that the Chameleon bootloader code in the MBR boots the active partition, which gets set to Win 7 during installation. You need to set the OS X partition active again. You can either use GParted Live on one of your smaller USB sticks or use the Windows command prompt (make sure to run it as administrator--type "cmd" in the start menu search box, right-click, select "Run as administrator"). From the command prompt, enter the following commands:

diskpart
select disk 0
list partition
(at this point look at the partition list and figure out which one is OS X)
select partition X (replace X with the number of your OS X partition)
active
exit

[schnide]

Thank you very much for this, I tried it last night and selected the wrong partition so I'm going to try using BartPE tonight to fix it, but it's no big deal. If I wasn't prepared to reinstall my OS' then I wouldn't have just taken a guess like I did.

I had three partitions:

Partition 0 - 200mb
Partition 1 - 79gb
Partition 2 - 79gb

Partition 2 was Windows 7, and I think I chose to activate partition 1. It didn't like that very much, and booted me to a black screen with a blinking cursor. So I'm assuming partition 0 is the one I should've chosen.

If I can't get BartPE to fix it for whatever reason, I'm going to wipe the whole thing clean and install with 10.5.8 and XP dual boot, instead of 10.6.1 and W7.

Off to find a good guide for that..

[minimalpc]

Originally Posted by schnide

Thank you very much for this, I tried it last night and selected the wrong partition so I'm going to try using BartPE tonight to fix it, but it's no big deal. If I wasn't prepared to reinstall my OS' then I wouldn't have just taken a guess like I did.

I had three partitions:

Partition 0 - 200mb
Partition 1 - 79gb
Partition 2 - 79gb

Partition 2 was Windows 7, and I think I chose to activate partition 1. It didn't like that very much, and booted me to a black screen with a blinking cursor. So I'm assuming partition 0 is the one I should've chosen.

If I can't get BartPE to fix it for whatever reason, I'm going to wipe the whole thing clean and install with 10.5.8 and XP dual boot, instead of 10.6.1 and W7.

Off to find a good guide for that..

Shouldn't be partition0--that is the EFI partition. Should be partition 1, if that is OS X. If it isn't booting, you made need to run NBI again to (re)install the Chameleon bootloader.

[schnide]

Thanks, I've now discovered the same.

Anyway, it's academic now - I've wiped all partitions and am going to find a way to dual boot Leopard and XP. I installed XP last night and it boots up SO quickly! I'm really happy with it.