Need Help! installing mac os x BEHIND/AFTER XP

[ingmar]

i've got a notebook and made free diskspace behind my XP installation... can anybody

tell me, if there is a way to install mac os x on this free space...? when i use the mac os disk utility to format the free space, it say it must delete the xp partition....

[cyberjunkie]

Hi!

 

I hope somebody else will read my post, cause i will explain how i did a dual boot with OSX and XP,

with no need for Linux installation nor a Linux boot manager (Lilo or Grub).

I did a lot of searches on the web trying to get a ready-made solution but i couldn't find one,

so i went for trial and errors, and at the end i came up with a very satisfying solution.

 

First:

how do you make a native OSX partition?

If you have a previous XP partition ,a nd you want to keep it, there is no joy with the Mac disk utility,

that is also available at the start of the install process.

The way to go is either a Linux live cd, or (even better, for you) the diskpart utility that is at hand with

any XP installation.

But before creating the Mac partition with Diskpart, we can use any partitioning utility we like, to

create a very small primary partition at the start of the free space, that will be dedicated to the

installation of the partition manager. A bare 10MB will be more than enough.

Done that, it's time for diskpart.

Go to the command line, type diskpart, choose a disk if you have more than one (with the command

"select disk *", where * is 0 for first disk and so on), then if you have free space available (or you

made it with Partition Magic and the like), issue this command "create partition primary id=af".

Diskpart will fill the free space with a native Mac partition, so during the installation process you

will have to use the disk utility only to initialise the volume (i.e. format it with the right HFS+

journaled filesystem).

After the OSX86 installation went well, you have to install a boot manager that will allow to either

boot one or the other SO.

I tried with chain0, but with no success.

When i choose to boot from it, i could hear just a small reading noise coming from the HD, then i

was bounced back to the XP boot manager!

After many trial and errors, i found the right choice, working even with enhanced configuration

for both SATA and PATA channels in Bios.

It's BootIT NG.

It can be installed from floppy (good, so you can backup the boot sector of the HD, just in case

something is going wrong), or from a bootable cd.

It's the only boot manager (non-Linux) i tried that recognizes the Type=AF partition like

"Mac partition", and AFAIK the only one that does allow to boot from it!

After the installation of the boot manager you can configure its behavior, like time-out, use of

the mouse, search for USB 2.0 and Firewire drives, and so on...

The only problem is that it's not free, and that after 30 days it will expire.

Here you are left on your own... :censored2:

Please don't use old versions, just the last one!

 

 

Paolo

 

Note:

I tried a Linux-only solution at first, but i couldn't boot a Linux live-cd.

Later on i discovered that the Enhanced config i did choose in BIOS for both SATA and PATA

channels, prevented the boot from Linux live-cds'.

I suppose it's a problem also with many boot managers, but rest assured that with BootIT NG

even this non-standard config will work.