[revgreg]

I decided to replace one of the three OSs on my Mini 10v HD with WinXP but I've run into a partitioning problem. If this has been answered somewhere else I'm not finding it.

Okay, I booted into OSX and used Disk Utility to erase and reformat the second partition as FAT32 (100GB). The first partition is the EFI, the third one is OSX (180GB), and the last two are for Linux and its swap partition (about 30GB). So far so good.

When I reboot Chameleon shows me three choices: Windows FAT32, OSX, and Linux. I can boot either OSX or Linux with no problem. The Windows FAT32 won't boot of course because it's an empty partition.

Next I attached an external DVD drive and tried to install Windows XP, but when it gets to the screen that asks where I want to install the OS the only choice I have is my 30GB Linux partition!

What do I need to do to the 100GB second partition so that the Win XP install will find it?

[reflex]

There are two kinds of partition tables used on hackitoshes. MBR is the old PC style, it's what XP uses. GPT is new style, not yet popular on PCs, but GPT is used on current Macs. So, XP can't see a partition, if it's only described in the GPT.

"gptsync" is a program to sync entries between the two tables. Or there might be something included with the hackitosh tools. Or you could create the entry manually with partitioning tool.

[revgreg]

I've been reading up on "gptsync" but not sure I quite understand yet how to use it. Can the OSX "diskutil" command line options mark this partition as MBR and make it active?

[reflex]

I'm not an OSX user, but from glancing at the "diskutil" documentation that Google finds, it seems that it won't work. It can be used to set up a MBR drive, or a GPT drive, but not a hybrid of the two.

While searching the web, I found this page discussing the "gdisk" GPT partitioning tool and it's ability to set up hybrid MBR/GPT disks. Maybe there's some helpful info there (I think gdisk is used by some hackitosh tools).

As for gptsync, I've never needed to use it, but I think it just takes the GPT table and tries its best to make the MBR table the same.

[minimalpc]

Originally Posted by reflex

As for gptsync, I've never needed to use it, but I think it just takes the GPT table and tries its best to make the MBR table the same.

That is basically correct. The normal gptsync just takes the information about the first 4 partitions listed in the GPT and creates an MBR with that same information. There is an enhanced gptsync that allows you to specify which GPT partitions should be included in the MBR.

Using gptsync is simply a matter of running "sudo gptsync /dev/rdisk0" from Terminal.