[nvrmore100]

Hey all,

Ok I got this to work, and it's actually much easier than I would have guessed. It involves a few minor tweaks to the GUID partition table, which allow Windows to install on a GUID based disk. The result have both systems installed on the Mini, without any special boot loaders (uses Win7's built in one) and it also SHOULD not impact future updates to the OSX EFI side of things.

What I am assuming:

1. You already can manage to get OSX installed on your disk using the Type11 install (using a legitimate OSX retail DVD!!!!)
2. You can type a few things in a command line without having too much trouble
3. You have a USB stick with at least 2MB of free space (formatted FAT32)
4. You have downloaded the Windows 7 Beta, and have a valid license key that was provided to you
5. You are willing to quite possibly destroy your current install of OSX if all goes to hell (you have a Time Machine backup don't you?)

How to do it if you ALREADY have a Type11 install on your drive:

1. Download two tools to a USB stick (unzipped). These are attached to this post below.

Resizing your disk (Method 1):

2. Reboot and boot off of your OSX retail DVD (same way you installed the Type11 install to begin with, by booting his CD first, and then booting the retail DVD).
3. Once at the installer you will need to open a terminal and attempt to resize your disk. I didn't get this working properly, as I already screwed around with my GUID partition table. However, this should in theory work properly. At the terminal type:

#  df -h    (Determine how big your drive is, and how much free space is left.  Subtract the amount you want to use for Win7, and insert it into next command) 
#  diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 20G     (note my disk is a 32GB STEC drive, and I wanted ~10GB for Win7)

If all goes well, you should see it tell you it has resized, if so, continue on to the modify your GUID steps. If not, see Method 2.

Resizing your disk (Method 2 - Harder and possibly could screw up your OSX install):

2. Download a Ubuntu live CD (Knoppix should also work) and boot off of it. Once booted, you should already have "gparted" installed, but if not, install it via apt-get.
3. Lauch gparted with "sudo gparted".
4. Resize your OSX partition down leaving your free space you intend for Win7 at the end.
5. Create a new partition here, but leave it as unformatted, you likely will have to delete it in the Win7 installer like I did anyhow.
6. Reboot and boot off of your OSX retail DVD (same way you installed the Type11 install to begin with, my booting his CD first, and then booting the retail DVD).
7. At the installer, open Disk Utility like you did during the Type11 install.
8. Choose your OSX partition, and then choose "Repair". This should fix some minor things that gparted likely messed up on the partition.
9. If you get a repaired successfully, continue on to the modify your GUID steps.

How to do it if DO NOT already have a Type11 install on your drive:

1. Install OSX using the Type11 method. The only modification to the install steps you will want to do is to create 2 partitions on your drive (still using GUID based disk) with the second partition being your future Windows 7 partition. I suggest you format that on as FAT32. As for the Type11 version to use, there is no reason to not use version 7.7, so please use that going forward. I for one am tired of hearing all the threads from people having stuff not working properly that on an old release. Please make us all happy and upgrade.
2. Once installed, you will need to download two tools to a USB stick (unzipped). These are attached to this post below.
3. Continue on to the modify your GUID steps.

Modify your GUID disk to allow Windows 7 to install:

1. If you not already booted into your OSX installer at this point (assuming new install above), then do so (same way you installed the Type11 install to begin with, by booting his CD first, and then booting the retail DVD).
2. Once at installer, open a terminal (if not already open).
3. Insert your USB stick, note if you had it inserted when the installer was booting, it likely didn't automount it. If not, unplug it and plug it back in, should automount now.
4. Type the following:

#  umount /Volumes/NameOfYourOSXpartition     (note this is what your named your partition, not what I just wrote.  Mine is called OSX, yours is whatever your named it).
#  cd /Volumes/NameOfYourUSBStick
#  ./gptsync /dev/disk0   (Choose "Y" when it asks if you are ready to modify)
#  reboot

Install Windows 7:

1. Boot off your Windows 7 DVD and pick advanced install when you reach that point.
2. Choose your empty partition on your disk (should show up as partition 4)
3. If you are able to click the format option, great, mine would not. If not, pick delete, and then new in the free space.
4. Install the remainder as normal

Setup the bootloader to allow OSX to boot properly:

Once you have a functional Windows 7, boot it up and insert your USB stick and launch the EasyBCD installer.

1. Install (don't bother with TweakVI its over 100MB) and then launch EasyBCD
2. Once in the application, pick "Add/Remove Entries" on the left.
3. Click Mac in the Add an Entry section. From the pull down pick Generic x86 PC and name it something (like OSX). Click Add Entry
4. Click "Change Settings" on the left.
5. Set your timeout to whatever your like, and pick the default OS you want to boot (who wouldn't want OSX??!?!) and click save settings.
6. Reboot!

You shoud have a fully working install now, that has a boot loader asking which OS to boot to. You should be able to pick OSX and it will chain boot the Darwin loader automatically for you, or pick Windows and it just boots itself up.

Good luck!!!

[Nintendoguy]

This one seems to work much better then the one i posted yesterday. thanks for making it work.
EDIT: this will also work in vista. I will soon post how to make the bootloader work with XP.

[nvrmore100]

Good point, Vista will work as well. I haven't thought to try with XP, didn't realize it had the functionality, but if you can provide the howto, that would be nice!

[Slovig]

Seems interesting. Why wouldn't you be able to use OSX's Boot Camp Utility? (Sorry if this is a stupid question, I'm not that skilled at this type of programming) :mrgreen:

[sircharles]

Thanks for your writeup! Sounds good. I intend to use it when I get my mini 9 this week. I'll use an external hard drive holding both the OSX and Win 7 installers. One question: you mention first partitioning the SSD into two partitions, installing OS X into the first and then Windows 7 into...partition 4? :?: Just want to clarify. Thanks again.

[UnaClocker]

Originally Posted by Slovig

Seems interesting. Why wouldn't you be able to use OSX's Boot Camp Utility? (Sorry if this is a stupid question, I'm not that skilled at this type of programming) :mrgreen:

Because Bootcamp is essentially a type of BIOS emulator needed to run PC OS's on a Mac. We have the opposite problem.. We use a EFI emulator to run Mac on a PC.. Bootcamp just isn't needed and won't work on an actual PC.

[nvrmore100]

Originally Posted by sircharles

Thanks for your writeup! Sounds good. I intend to use it when I get my mini 9 this week. I'll use an external hard drive holding both the OSX and Win 7 installers. One question: you mention first partitioning the SSD into two partitions, installing OS X into the first and then Windows 7 into...partition 4? :?: Just want to clarify. Thanks again.

If you do a standard OSX installation with GUID based partitioning, you will end up with 2 partitions (1 for EFI and 1 for OSX). In this case, you are adding an additional partition for Win7. Lastly, when you modify the GUID with the gptsync, it creates a very very small 4th, which Windows see's. Basically it will look like this after the gptsync is done:

1. ee (name is something along those lines this is created by gptsync)
2. EFI
3. OSX
4. Win7

The names of the OSX and Win7 partitions would be whatever you named them of course.

[X-Files]

This sounds really cool. I think I may try this route. I broke down and ordered a 32GB RunCore. I am going to start out playing with Windows XP and Widows 7 exclusively at first (Dual boot).

What would be a good partition ratio for OSX and Windows 7?

Should I do 50/50 (16GB/16GB~)?

I still have to get my copy OSX. I think I am going to wait for the MAC Box Set. How much space does an OSX install take?

Mac Box Set

Get the latest versions of the Apple software for your Mac — all in one box:

* Mac OS X v10.5.6 Leopard, the latest version of the world’s most powerful operating system
* iLife ’09, featuring the new iPhoto ’09, iMovie ’09, GarageBand ’09, iWeb ’09, and iDVD
* iWork ’09, Apple’s productivity suite for home and office including Pages ’09, Numbers ’09, and Keynote ’09

[nvrmore100]

OSX takes a bare minimum of ~7GB or so. However, you need to use a separate drive to build onto, shrink, and move to even get it that small. For mine I put about 20GB to OSX and 9GB to Win7. Keep in mind you lose a bit of space on the drive due to rounding and filesystems. You end up with about 29GB usable on a 32GB drive.

Oh one thing to note, if you do full installs on iWork and iLife, you are likely adding about 6GB+ of data. They aren't small. You can definitely shrink them down after the fact, but they still take up a lot of space. I suggest installing what you expect to you (unlikely you will want GarageBand, or iMovie on your mini for instance, but your mileage may vary).

[Prax]

I have tried this process and have installed OS X and Windows 7 to two different partitions, but I can not get the vista boot loader to copearate with the EFI partition. When ever I try to boot to my Mac OS partition I get some text stating that it is trying to call the chain loader from hd(0,2) (which would be my main Mac OS drive) then it asks me to choose the drive where MacOS lives (I choose 80) then it goes to calling the chainloader again and dumps me back at the vista OS selector screen. This is my current layout

hd 0,1 EFI
hd 0,2 MacOS
hd 0,3 WIN7

I used the standard Type 11 isntall and my partition table is set to GUID. When I tried to run the guidupdate application, it says that the tables are the same.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Prax