[dr3wster]

Hey Guys!

Have been reading up a lot on both the insanely mac, this website, as well as a number of others, trying to find out how exactly to dual boot XP/Mac OSX on the Dell Mini9.

I know how to get XP and a copy of something along the lines of Kalyway/iDeneb/Leo4All working, but the fact that I can't seem to get the resolution to be anything other than 800x600 irks me, and seriously ruins my user experience. It makes the screen look cheap and apps, skewed.

ANYWAYS, was going to fork out some cash to get a Retail Copy of MacOSX and use the NetbookInstaller Method.

However, as hard as I have tried, i can't seem to find instructions / rough guide on how to get a Retail Mac OSX (using NetbookInstaller) to dual boot with XP.

Any ideas?

Please keep in mind that I am new to all this and don't have access to a MacOSx box!

Thanks

[holmes4]

http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/gene...-netbooks.html

[meklort]

To dual boot (with xp), do the following
1) Install (Snow) Leopard using NetbookBootMaker or NetbookCD 0.8.3 RC3 (Leaving a partition for xp). Make sure the drive is setup using GUID,*not* mbr
2) Install XP
3) Reboot (via the boot cd / usb flash dive) to your OS X install and run NetbookInstaller again, ensuring that it'll reinstall the bootloader.

That's it, you're done.

[dr3wster]

Champion!!!


Thanks heaps for the replies guys.. Shall try it out this weekend!!! Will let you both know


Thanks again

[smsgator]

[QUOTE=meklort;113861]To dual boot (with xp), do the following
1) Install (Snow) Leopard using NetbookBootMaker or NetbookCD 0.8.3 RC3 (Leaving a partition for xp). Make sure the drive is setup using GUID,*not* mbr
2) Install XP

This is where I get an " Unmountable_Boot_Volume" error when XP is done copying files and is ready to boot. When I boot from the USB flash drive after that it shows the Windows install but of course it won't boot Windows.

3) Reboot (via the boot cd / usb flash dive) to your OS X install and run NetbookInstaller again, ensuring that it'll reinstall the bootloader.

[psifertex]

Originally Posted by meklort

To dual boot (with xp), do the following
1) Install (Snow) Leopard using NetbookBootMaker or NetbookCD 0.8.3 RC3 (Leaving a partition for xp). Make sure the drive is setup using GUID,*not* mbr
2) Install XP
3) Reboot (via the boot cd / usb flash dive) to your OS X install and run NetbookInstaller again, ensuring that it'll reinstall the bootloader.

That's it, you're done.

Seems simple, but I can't get XP to install! SL goes in fine, then Ubuntu goes in fine for me, and I have an MSDOS partition (#2) created for XP, but when I try to install XP, all it sees is one giant partition the size of the whole drive, it doesn't see the individual partitions. I suspect I need to use gdisk to make the GPT visible via the MBR so that Windows XP will see its partition and I can install to that? I'm a bit afraid of destroying all the hours I've put into getting OSX and Ubunutu running and would love some expert feedback.


Specifically, I see:

E: Partition1 [Unknown[ 114474 MB (114473 MB free) instead of the individual EFI, DOS, HFS, EXT3, LNX SWAP partitions that are actually there.

Been up all night banging my head on this, really need to get triple boot working, any help would be much appreciated.

Also, if it matters, I used WintoFlash to create the USB cd, and I'm using the "1st boot installer" option to boot to the text mode windows installer to try to install. Maybe I need to create my XP install USB differently?

[meklort]

You have to use 0.8.3 RC3 for it to work, older version don't setup the partition table as a hybrid mbr / guid.

[psifertex]

Whoops, forgot to mention that. I /am/ using 0.8.3 RC3.

I popped into a command-line on my install USB and looked at the gdisk results. Here's what it shows:

Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

And if I go to expert mode and print the protective MBR, it shows only one partition of type 0xEE, filling the entire disk.

So it looks like the protective MBR is what windows is seeing and it doesn't know where to install. I followed all the install instructions pretty carefully. Did I miss something that caused my partitions to be allocated differently?

[psifertex]

I could get XP to recognize the windows partition and install by using gdisk to create an MBR from just the primary OSX, Linux, and Windows partitions, but I can't boot into that partition on subsequent boots. Of course the HD's MBR is blown, but when I boot to the Chameleon from my Install USB, I can see an actual windows icon as it recognizes the windows partition, but I get nothing but a blinking cursor.

[psifertex]

Ok -- if anyone else is having the same problem, it turns out I had created my partitions in the wrong order, or possibly had something else go wrong.

I started over from scratch, booted my netbookinstaller USB, partitioned four partitions with GPT (Windows, OSX, Linux, Linux Swap -- in that order), and installed OSX.

Next, I installed Windows XP (from a Wintoflash created USB drive). The only tricky part was that after selecting choice "1st" from the list (which isn't default), it made it halfway through the installation and after that I had to manually select the debug entry that tried the second partition. Using the default "2nd" choice failed.

This allowed XP to finish installing, and once it's booted, I just needed to edit the c:\boot.ini file to change the partition number from (1) to (2) (since the hidden EFI partition was getting in the way).

After that, it was smooth sailing. Installed Ubuntu (making certain to install the boot loader to the specific partition /dev/sda4, not the drive /dev/sda), now I'm off updating everything, tweaking drivers, and continuing along my merry way. Thanks!