UPDATED Jan 3 2010 to support adding Windows 7 on the second partition of an already functional Snow Leopard install For posterity, the original version of this guide is attached as a text file below.

With this guide I’ve tried to list every single step I performed to get my brand new 10v (compliments of Comcast’s ‘Free Netbook’ promotion) up and running with Windows 7 and OSX 10.6.2. There are many excellent guides that describe individual steps of this process, but many:

-are outdated (and it’s not clear they’re outdated if you’re new to this forum);
-make assumptions that the reader knows x,y, or z about how to manipulate OSX or Windows, which many people don’t;
-omit links to important tools; or
-omit simple details that are common sense to the experienced individual but aren’t for the newbie and are nevertheless critical for success.

For the newbie who has never even installed on OS, but is tempted by guides like the one in Gizmodo to install OSX on a 10v, pulling all this information together can be a daunting task. So my goal here is to put everything in one place, and not omit a single detail.

A few warnings, though:

1) I don’t understand everything I did. I know what I did, but I don’t know what every one of those processes does to an OS or my system. I just know the finished product works, and works well. I don’t even know if the way I did everything is the current best way to do it. So PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK and please forgive me if you ask a question and I can’t answer it. This should be considered the idiot’s guide—and I’m the idiot. Back up your stuff.

2) I strongly urge everyone to use a legitimate, retail, purchased copy of both OS’s.

3) You’ll need two >4 GB USB sticks (or external hard drives, I believe, work as well; I tried an SD card and could NOT get it to work, but others have. For the Windows 7 install, an external DVD drive will work fine as well). Ideally, you will need access to a functioning Intel-based Mac running Leopard or Snow Leopard to make the OSX install stick. (If you just can’t get to a Mac, there is a guide here to teach you how to do this from a PC. I have tried most of this guide out and it works.)

You will need a functioning Windows environment to make the Windows 7 install stick (a virtual Windows environment in Parallels or VMWare on a Mac is fine too, and if you have an external DVD drive for the 10v you don’t need to make a Windows 7 stick).

Phase 1. Prep the 10v hardware.

1. Plug in your 10v. Perform all steps while on AC power.
2. How to boot your 10v from a USB stick:
a. Boot the machine, and during the Inspiron flash screen hit F12 to enter the boot options menu. The possible boot devices are listed. Anything with a ‘+’ next to it contains media that the system could attempt to boot from. Use the arrow key to select the boot target you desire and hit enter. This is a one time selection—it does not alter the permanent order of boot devices, which can be changed by entering the BIOS during the Dell splash screen and right-arrowing over to the “BOOT� tab. Use the F5 and F6 buttons to change the order. My system has “USB storage� permanently set to the first boot device, because during this installation you’ll be booting to USB sticks repetitively.

NOTE: My 10v often does not check the USB media carefully to see if it is bootable. I watch the activity light of my USB stick during a boot cycle. If I see only a brief flicker of activity, then inevitably the USB stick will not load. You want to see nearly continuous activity right after the Inspiron splash screen. This may be a function of my USB media, so you may not have this problem.

3. NetbookMaker and NetBookInstaller 0.8.3 alpha (which you'll use below) currently support BIOS revisions A06 [the BIOS version is on the first BIOS screen] and below (as of 12/30/2009). As long as your BIOS meets those criteria, you're good to go. If Dell releases future BIOS revisions, these may cause problems with installation and I'll try to stay on top of that and update this guide as necessary.

4. While you’re in the BIOS (after hitting F2 at the Dell splash screen), right arrow over to the “Advanced� tab and Enable ‘USB BIOS Legacy Support.’ If your machine has a Bluetooth card, Enable that here as well. Note that even systems without Bluetooth will allow you to ‘Enable’ this option here—but you’re not going to magically get Bluetooth capability. Save changes and exit (F10). Your system is now ready to install OSX.

Phase 2. Prep your install media for the two OS’s.

1. Making a bootable Snow Leopard (“SL�) install USB stick.

a. Insert your SL install DVD into an Intel Mac (OSX !0.5 or above) optical drive.
b. Insert your USB stick into a convenient port.
c. Open the Mac Disk Utility program (applications-->utilities).
d. On the left hand pane, select the USB disk at the top-most level of description (the partitions on it are listed below; select the actual drive.)
e. In the right pane, select the “Partition� tab.
f. Under “Volume Scheme�, drop down and select “1 partition�.
g. Give it a name, any name, and select “MacOS Extended (Journaled)� as the format.
h. Select the “Options� button on the lower left, and then “Master Boot Record�. This renders the drive bootable by your 10v.
i. Apply changes. Disk utility will take a few minutes to reformat the drive.
j. Once this is complete, select the “Restore� tab at the top.
k. Drag the lower level descriptor of the SL install DVD to the “Source� field, and the newly formatted partition you named above to the “Destination� field. Click Restore. The disk utility will now transfer all the Snow Leopard install files onto your disk. This will take about an hour.
l. Once it is done, download NetBookMaker. The latest version is 0.8.3 alpha (as of 1/3/2010) and worked well for me. Download here.
m. Run NetBookMaker and tell it where your newly created SL install USB lives. It will install files that allow OSX to boot on your 10v. This software is an amazing piece of work that places Hackintoshing in the realm of the idiot (that’s me, remember?).

2. Making a bootable Windows 7 (“W7�) install USB stick.
The quickest way I’ve found to do this is to use the free utility Wintoflash.
Download it here.

It’s ridiculously easy to use:
a. Place your W7 disk in your optical drive.
b. Insert your USB stick in a convenient port.
c. Launch Wintoflash and start the wizard.
d. Tell it where your W7 DVD and USB stick are, and start the process.
e. It will erase and format the USB stick, make it bootable, and then transfer all the W7 install files to it. It’s that easy.

Phase 3. Create two partitions for SL and W7, and install and update OSX SL

NOTE: This Phase is written with the assumption that you are performing a new installation of both SL and W7 on your 10v. If you are adding W7 to an already running SL install skip ahead to Phase 4.

(credit for phases 3-6: anguish’s excellent triple boot guide which I have merely expanded on slightly and omitted Ubuntu.)

1. Shut down your 10v.
2. Insert your SL USB stick and reboot into this USB drive.
3. Once you get to the first SL install screen, go to the “Utilities� menu at the top of the screen and select “Disk Utility�
4. Select your 10v hard disk on the left pane, and Partition on the right. Drop down the Volume Scheme menu and select “2 partitions�.
5. The top partition will be for SL. Give it a suitable name (‘OSX’) and size it by dragging the lower bar of the partition to wherever you prefer. To the right, select “MacOS Extended (Journaled)� as the format.
6. The second (lower) partition will be for W7. Give it a suitable name (‘W7’) and select MS-DOS (FAT) as the format.
7. Select the “Options� button on the lower left, and then “GUID� as the partition scheme. Apply changes.
8. Write down the sizes of both partitions—you’ll need those later. I strongly suggest making the partitions a different size, even if by just one GB. This will come in handy to prevent making big mistakes while installing W7 in Phase 5.
9. Exit disk utility and return to the SL installer.
10. Install SL on the FIRST partition you created above. You may wish to “Customize� the install to remove language translations and printer drivers, saving nearly 2 GB of space. On the Customize screen you can also choose to install Rosetta (which you’ll need if you plan to install Microsoft Office 2008) and Quicktime 7 (which supports some older video file formats).
11. The system will reboot and you’ll be in SL. Go through the initial welcome process and set up your accounts and wireless access if you have it.
12. Open the Applications folder and run NetbookInstaller, a companion utility to NetBookMaker. Select your volume from the drop down menu and select ONLY these options:

-Install Chameleon 2 NBI; (installs the bootloader to allow SL to boot from the internal disk, and to allow OS choice for dual booting)
-Install Dell Mini 10v extensions; (adds custom 10v drivers)
-Show NetBookInstaller Files; (this is optional, but in the future you may wish to directly install custom kernel extensions, and you'll need to be able to see these files at that time)
-Regenerate a system specific DSDT .aml file; (tells SL how to interact with the power management features of the 10v hardware)
-Enable Remote CD (if you want to use that);
-Disable hibernation; (does not work with 10.6.2 anyway)
-Fix Bluetooth (if you have Bluetooth).

--NOTE: DO NOT check the "Enable quiet boot" option at this point, or you won't be given the choice of which OS to boot into when you start up the machine--it will boot directly into SL without giving you an option.

Click Install. Once complete, reboot.

13. Your SL install is now running custom drivers and kernel extensions that make it live more happily with the 10v hardware!
14. From the Apple menu, select Software Update and upgrade to 10.6.2. Select and install any other software updates that are presented, but I suggest that you do NOT install items that relate to hardware (for example, there is a new Airport utility update that appeared recently—I ignore these updates because it is not guaranteed that they will recognize the 10v hardware). Reboot.

OPTIONAL Phase 4. Re-partition your 10v hard drive to make space for W7.

NOTE: perform these steps ONLY if you have already installed SL to a single partition previously, and did not do phase 3 above.

1. If you already have SL installed on your 10v, and want to create a new partition for W7, this is easy to do.
2. Start SL (from your internal hard disk—no need to boot from the USB stick) and launch Disk Utility.
3. Select your 10v hard disk on the left pane (at the top-most level of organization, which should show the size of the drive), and Partition on the right.
4. You should now see a graphical representation of your drive in the middle pane, with one large partition. Grab the lower right hand corner of that partition and pull it up to reduce its size, or simply click on the partition and then enter the new size, in GB, you want it to become in the field to the right.
5. Click “apply� and the SL partition will be non-destructively resized. You will not lose any data and the drive will still boot normally assuming you did everything correctly. If you don’t follow these directions precisely, however, you could erase your entire disk. Backup your stuff and proceed with caution.
6. You now have a chunk of unused space available for W7. This needs to be at least 10 GB in size.
7. Click the ‘+’ sign beneath and to the left of the drive partition map to add a new partition in the free space you just created. Disk Utility should automatically make that partition fill all the remaining space on the drive. Give it an appropriate name (‘W7’) and select MS-DOS as the format type. Click apply. Write down the size, in GB, of both the SL and the new W7 partitions. Exit Disk Utility.

Phase 5. Install Windows 7.

1. Shut down the 10v and insert your W7 install USB stick.
2. Boot the system and hit F12 during the Dell splash screen, and select USB storage to boot into.
3. The system should now launch into the W7 installer. You’ll see “Windows is Loading Files� and a progress bar along the bottom.
4. Select your language and “Install Now�. Setup will start. Accept the license.
5. Select a ‘Custom (advanced)’ install.
6. At the next screen, select the second LARGE partition to install W7. Don’t get confused here—there will also be some smaller partitions that have been created by bootloaders. The one you want to select will be several GB in size and will be the second >1 GB size partition on the drive, and should be the size of the W7 partition you created and wrote down above in Phase 3 or 4.
7. You’ll see an error message below that says W7 can’t be installed on this disk.
8. Select ‘Drive options (advanced)’ and then ‘Format’. This will format the partition as NTFS, which will allow the W7 installer to proceed.
9. W7 installer should now proceed with the installation, and will reboot several times. Since the system may currently be set to boot to USB, hang around and remove the USB stick at the first reboot. Otherwise you’ll just go into a USB W7 installer loop. If you get stuck in this loop, just hold the power button down for five seconds to hard stop the system, remove the USB stick and reboot.
10. Go through all the W7 first boot welcome wizards and set up your accounts. Update W7 if you so desire. You’ll get some critical updates and driver updates from Windows itself, but there are some 10v specific utilities (and an updated trackpad driver) on the Dell support website.
11. At this point, you will only be able to boot into W7. We fix this in Phase 6.

Phase 6. Make both systems bootable with Chameleon

1. Shut down the system. Insert the SL install USB. Reboot and hit F12, selecting the SL USB stick.
2. Boot into the SL installer once again.
3. Once you get to the first SL install screen, go to the “Utilities� menu at the top of the screen and select “NetBookInstaller�
4. Run NBI and select only the Install Chameleon NBI option. This reinstalls the Chameleon bootloader, and during this re-install Chameleon will recognize and add W7 to the bootable OS list (although it won’t yet be able to boot).
5. Quit NBI and the SL installer. The system will reboot. Before it does, remove the SL USB stick.
6. After the Dell Inspiron splash screen, you’ll now see the Chameleon bootloader screen. By default, it will show you only the SL volume and a backwards progressing bar. Hit any key during that progress bar and you’ll now see both the SL and the W7 partitions. You can select either, but only SL will be bootable. The W7 option will give you an error.
7. To fix this error, reboot the system with your W7 USB stick inserted. You’ll enter the W7 installer.
8. From the very first screen (where you would select your language), hit Shift+ F10. A terminal window with a command prompt should pop up. If it doesn’t, hit Shift+Fn+F10 simultaneously. I had to use the second option.
9. At the command prompt, type ‘diskpart’ without the quotes and hit enter.
10. Steps 11-15 are copied nearly verbatim from Anguish’s triple boot guide and must be followed precisely:
11. Once diskpart loads, Type the following commands, hitting enter after each command (omit text in [brackets], which are merely my comments):

list disk
select disk 0
list partition  [note here which partition number corresponds to W7, based on size (several GB) and location (the second several GB partition—the first is SL)]
select partition X [where X is the number of the W7 partition]
active

12. Exit out of the command prompt. Then launch Repair your computer, which is on the second W7 install screen. [NOTE: some users have found it necessary to remove the USB W7 stick before selecting ‘Repair my computer,’ or the installer can get confused and try to repair your USB stick. I did not have this problem.]
13. Windows will at this point automatically search for and find problems with your computers startup options. Simply click Repair and restart. Once you have done this, you should boot into Windows 7. (You may see the option to Start Windows normally. If you do, please select it.) Login, and open a command prompt (I recommend launching it as an Administrator…Start menu: type ‘cmd’ in search: right click on the cmd icon and click ‘Run as administrator’) [virusdoc note: I could ONLY get this to work if I ran as administrator].
14. At the command prompt, type: diskpart
15. In diskpart, Type the following commands, hitting enter after each command (omit text in [brackets], which are merely my comments):

list disk
select disk 0
list partition  [note here which partition number corresponds to SL, based on size (several GB) and location (the first several GB partition on the drive)]
select partition Y [where Y is the number of the SL partition]
active

16. Reboot after exiting out of the command shell, and test booting into both of your OS'es. You should now be able to successfully boot into both.
17. You’re done. I was able to boot successfully into W7 and SL. The default OS is SL (as it should be) but there is probably a way to change that—I don’t know how but a search for “Chameleon change boot order� will probably find something helpful.

Phase 7. OSX tweaks, and installing software in OSX without an optical drive

1. My primary OS is SL, so everything here is SL specific. Do whatever you want to W7.

2. My sound did not work until I re-ran NetBookInstaller and selected only “Install 10v extenstions�, then rebooted. I don’t know why. You can re-run NetBookInstaller anytime to reinstall drivers, and as NetBookInstaller is updated with future versions it’s a good idea to do so. The hardware support in 0.8.3 alpha is already stellar but has gotten better with each of the previous releases. If you appreciate the efforts of the developers who put together this miraculous piece of code, I strongly urge you to support their future work by donating to the developers fund.

3. I found this list of fixes not built into NetBookInstaller to be very helpful

From this list, I did the following:

#2. Enable Remote CD/DVD sharing [enables installing CD/DVD based software over a network without an external optical drive. Even though NetBookInstaller has a setting to enable Remote CD, I never see the icon in my Finder until I execute the two lines of code here]
#8. Hibernate/sleep mode fix
#9. Vertical screen resolution fix (Method 2, scripts linked below it) [very useful!]
#10. Audio "PoP" and Short Sound Fix.
Miscellaneous #7: Custom Mini 10v Screen Calibration (Color Profiles)

4. As an alternative to using Remote CD/DVD sharing, you can install most Mac software by creating a diskimage (.dmg) file from the CD/DVD and placing it on a USB stick. To do this, you obviously need a functional Mac with an optical drive. Place your software install disk in that drive and launch Disk Utility. Select the disk you want to image on the left pane. From the top ribbon, select “New Disk Image� and a window will pop up asking you where you want to save the image. Select your USB stick and save the image. This image can now be opened in SL on your 10v and will be treated just like the CD/DVD as far as the installer is concerned. This worked for me for iWork and Office for Mac.

5. Fine tune the SL trackpad. NetBookInstaller installs a nicely improved driver for the horrid trackpad on the 10v. Properly adjusted, this driver makes the trackpad function better in SL than it does in W7. There is an 81 page (!) thread on these drivers here. But I have yet to find a succinct description of what all the features do. At a minimum, I suggest turning on clicking, two finger (right) clicking, and two finger scrolling. I have had good results with turning the one and two finger threshold sensitivities up high to prevent cursor jumping. But play around with the settings and see what suits you. Then, go buy an external wireless mouse and you’ll finally be happy!

6. Enable read/write support of your W7 partition from within SL, so you can share files between the two OS's. See this comment below.

7. Fix a bug that causes W7 to show the time as universal time code (UTC, essentially equal to GMT). Every time you boot into SL, it will change your system BIOS clock to read UTC. When you boot into W7, it assumes that the system BIOS clock is set to local time, and changes its clock accordingly. You can fix this permanently by adding a new setting to the W7 registry, a trick I learned from a post at InsanelyMac. I've reposted their instructions here:

*** WARNING: Editing your registry improperly can render your Windows installation inoperable. Proceed VERY carefully. I am not responsible if you mess something up. ***

The short solution for people who know how to edit the registry:
A DWORD key called HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\TimeZoneInformation\RealTimeIsUniversal needs to have the value of "1"

The step-by-step solution is as follows:
1. Boot Windows
2. Click Start --> Run and type regedit. Click OK
3. The Windows Registry Editor should pop up. Navigate within the explorer to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\TimeZoneInformation
4. Click on the TimeZoneInformation "folder" from the navigation pane if you haven't already done so.
5. This assumes the correct key doesn't exist. If it does, you will just change the existing key's value: Right click on the white space within the folder (If you don't have a right mouse button, you may need to download a program called applemouse to emulate the "control-click" of the apple 1-button mouse). Select new --> DWORD Value. Title the key "RealTimeIsUniversal" (No quotes). Set the value to "1" (No quotes again). Hexidecimal should be fine.
6. Either reboot and set the clock in MacOS or set the clock in Windows. You should now be able to reboot into either OS and have a correct clock.

Well, that’s about it. I have probably omitted some steps. If something doesn’t seem right, let me know and I’ll try to fix it. I have also certainly omitted credits for other guides that helped me. I spend several days and at least a dozen hours trying to get my system running, so please accept my apologies in advance if I don’t reference your guide and it is clear that I rely on it. If there are better guides or methods, please let me know—although I have tried here to stick only to steps I actually performed so that I can vouch for them.

EDIT: as Anguish notes in his triple boot guide , if you upgrade your SL install to a new version (10.6.3 or later), you will likely screw up the ability to boot into W7 and need to repair it. In general, I would avoid any SL updates that deal with hardware (for example, the Airport Utility update recently released) or the OS until you find out from these forums whether they are problematic. Software updates are fine.

-virusdoc

[emiderics]

Best walkthrough I've seen yet!!! My Dell 10v is working awesome with SL and W7! Thank you so much!!!!!!!

[virusdoc]

Thanks! Glad you found it useful!

I will add one detail to Phase 7: I was unable to get SL to utilize the external VGA port correctly until I re-ran NetBookInstaller and selected the 'install Dell 10v extensions' + 'install old mirror-friendly GMA kext' options.

Prior to this modification, attempting to use an external monitor would result in no output (if mirroring was off) or a completely garbled video output (if mirroring was on).

[Andy1098s]

Thanks virusdoc. I am a newbie and just ordered SL to put on my new 10V.

This will be fun!
Andy

[JoshMcMadMac]

No need to downgrade the BIOS with NBI RC5.

[virusdoc]

Originally Posted by JoshMcMadMac

No need to downgrade the BIOS with NBI RC5.

Thanks. I saw in the release notes to RC5 that there was a "temporary" fix for the A06 BIOS incompatibility, but the first time I did this install I used RC4 and did need to downgrade. Since I was trying to make sure I could personally vouch for anything I wrote here, I described it as I actually did it. But since there are potentially severe consequences to doing a BIOS flash if something goes wrong, I'll edit the guide to note that downgrading is reportedly no longer necessary.

-virusdoc

[CousinVinny]

Many thanks, virusdoc. This guide is great.

A quick question. If I have an external USB CD/DVD-ROM drive, could I just use that and the W7 installation disc for phase 5 and 6 without creating a bootable W7 install USB stick (as you recommended in step 2 of phase 2)?

[virusdoc]

Originally Posted by CousinVinny

If I have an external USB CD/DVD-ROM drive, could I just use that and the W7 installation disc for phase 5 and 6 without creating a bootable W7 install USB stick (as you recommended in step 2 of phase 2)?

Absolutely. You just can't do that with the Snow Leopard disk, since it isn't bootable with a BIOS--it requires a different interface called EFI. The NetBookMaker allows your SL USB stick to boot with BIOS, and then creates a virtual EFI to allow SL to load. There is probably a way to just inject the EFI from USB stick and then install from the SL disk, but I don't know how.

[BDS369]

Getting stuck on this... after Step 12 of Phase 6 there is no repair option.. when i click on load drivers it cant find any.. I dont want to blow away my win 7.. there anyway to repair?

btw using win 7 ultimate dvd via usb dvd drive

Update: found another dvd that did allow me to repair.. thought it didnt show the install in the list the log file showed that it did do something. still when it reboots it wont go into win7. I have changed boot order to put hard drive first, usb first, and dvd first. hard drive results in reboot cycle, usb results in chameleon loading showing osx/ win7 logos, which when i click on win 7 to boot it goes to windows boot manager fail screen right away saying "the boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible.", and when the dvd is the first boot device it just boots into win7 set up. HELP PLZ

Update 2: booted from the cd without the usb pluged in and it found the install, and is repairing it! Fingers crossed.

Update 3: That did repair the win7 install. But now I cannot get OSX to boot. BTW in my case OSX is partition 3, Win7 is 4 but I did thing accordingly. When I select partition 3 is active it just goes into endless reboot...
Hope I didnt kill OSX. Anyone have thought on how to fix? Thanks guys

[moody]

What size should the Mac OS and Win 7 partitions be?