[Paul O]

Hi everyone!

About me!
Newbie here (be gentle!). I have a macbook already and yesterday purchased a Dell Mini10v (I think this is the model, its got Windows 7, 160gb hard drive and a webcam) for my good lady to use on the train. She loves the Mac OS and asked if it can be installed as well. Over to the geeky boyfriend to find out, and I was somewhat elated to discover it can be!

So, I've spent the best part of today reading/watching forums and websites to understand the process of dual booting (the preferred option, as she also wants Windows as an option; this is how we use our macbook).

So, thats the background, now my question before I head off to buy Lepoard tomorrow from the shops!

My Question
Is it possible to create a dual booting system on the min10v with Windows 7 already installed? I was thinking of using Partition Magic to free up, say 100gb of space and allocate this for use on the MAC and then use software such as EasyBCD to create a dual boot menu. This would save me the hardship of re-installing Windows 7 when we already have a fresh install on the box.

Can this be done, or is there a gaping hole in my plan?

Thanks very much everyone - can't wait to do this!!

Paul.

[Paul O]

Bump.

Has no-one tried this process? I've ordered SL, expect delivery in a few days so I'm going to give it a go anyway.

If successfull, I'll create a guide for it as I've not been able to find one as yet that covers this particular scinareo.

I think from what I've been reading the process is something along the lines of;

1) Create a new primary partition and format suitable for the MAC.
2) Reboot, install SL on the partition
3) Boot Win7 from CD/USBimage and alter the boot menus. Not entirely sure about this bit, so more investigation required.

Any assistance appreciated.

Cheers,

Paul.

[holmes4]

The problem is that OS X wants a "GUID" partition type, and you can't, as far as I know, convert it once Windows is already installed. I went through this a few months ago.

One thought I had was to do an image backup of the Win7 partition, install OS X having it reformat the disk leaving space for Win7 and then restoring the backup. The catch I ran into there was that the backup software I was using, Acronis TrueImage, refused to restore to the GUID-type disk.

If you do manage this, you'll have to run the Win7 repair to make the Win7 partition bootable, then use EasyBCD to do the boot selection.

What I ended up with is just reinstalling Win7 after doing the OS X install, and then using EasyBCD.

[Paul O]

Thanks very much for your reply.

I've found this guide, which looks like it might be possible. I'll give it a go once SL arrives and will let you know if it works...

[Guide] The Fool-Proof Vista & XP / Mac OS X Dual-Boot Guide - InsanelyMac Forum