My Dell Mini Forum

HOW TO DUAL BOOT SNOW LEOPARD AND WINDOWS 7

WHAT YOU WILL NEED:

A USB/SD INSTALLATION MEDIA OF WIN7 (how to make one, scroll down)
A USB/SD INSTALLATION MEDIA OF OSX SL PATCHED WITH THE LATEST NBM (use <THIS> method to make one)

HOW TO PROCEED:

- boot off the Win7 USB/SB media
- click through the first two windows that appear (you will see a message "Setup is starting.."
- enter CMD by hitting SHIFT-FN-F10 (or SHIFT-F10) dependent on KB / model
- type in:

diskpart.exe
list disk
select disk (your hard drive, should be 0)
clean
convert GPT
create partition EFI size=200
create partition primary size=(size in mb for OSX> (mine was 30000 MB, of a 60 GB HD)
create partition primary size=(size in mb for Win7> (mine was 30000 MB, of a 60 GB HD)
list partition (a * should appear on the third partition, that's where you will install Win7 later)
(at this point you can type "extend" to fill the rest of the drive with any space left over from building the partitions
format fs=ntfs quick
exit
exit

- shutdown your mini by pressing the power button

- install OSX using <THIS> method
- during the install, you will see the NTFS disk, which you won't be able to use
- enter the DISK UTILITY and select the hidden "disk0s2" and erase is using Mac OS Journaled File System, name it OSX
- continue your installation as you were onto the newly created OSX partition
- when done, SHUTDOWN (don't reboot) and insert your USB/SD Win7 boot media again
- follow standard procedures for installing Win7 (onto partition 3)
- (if at this point it complains that Win7 cannot be installed onto this drive because of BIOS issues, reboot and do it again)
- when completed, download and install EasyBCD (Google is your friend)
- run EasyBCD and add your OSX Snow Leopard as an optional OS (generic x86), save the MBR with the two choices
- (you may want to decrease the countdown from 30 seconds to 10 or 5, as I did)
- reboot Win7
- see the TWO choices during startup


DONE! Your 10v will now boot with a menu of two operating systems. The Mini 9 should be able to complete the above process with no issues.

..

HOW TO MAKE A BOOTABLE USB/SD WIN7 INSTALLATION MEDIA:

WHAT YOU WILL NEED:

A 4 GB USB/SD STICK/CARD
A WIN7 DVD
A VISTA/WIN7/WIN2003/2008 SERVER WORKING PC (to run the installation)

- insert your 4 media stick USB/SD
- run CMD (as Administrator if needed)
- type in:

diskpart.exe
list disk (notice which is your USB/SD media drive)
select disk 4 (could be 3, 2, 5, etc.)
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=ntfs quick
assign
exit

- insert the Windows 7 DVD into your drive and copy the contents using robocopy:

robocopy.exe E:\ F:\ /MIR

(where E:\ is the source and F:\ is the destination USB/SD card)

DONE! You now have a bootable installation USB/SD media drive for Windows 7. The same procedure works for Vista, and Windows 2003 / 2008 server (NOT XP).

Cheers. I'd appreciate feedback.