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How to dual boot Windows Vista/7 with Mac OS X


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Edit: This guide only works with Windows and Mac installed on the same disk!

 

HOW TO DUAL BOOT WINDOWS VISTA/7 WITH MAC OS X

The best guide. Ever.

 

--THIS GUIDE IS FOR A CLEAN INSTALLATION OF MAC OS X86--

 

ALL BOLD STUFF IS THE MOST IMPORTANT!

 

Step 1:

Make sure you have Windows Vista/7 installed.

Make sure you have a Windows Vista/7 Installation Disc (for repairs)

Make sure you have a Ubuntu Installation Disc (we're not going to install ubuntu, so it will be OK if you put it on a RW.)

Make sure you have EasyBCD installed (don't panic if you see this, this time it will work!)

 

Step 2:

Restart your computer, boot into your Ubuntu disc.

Select 'Try Ubuntu without installing'.

When booted, Open up from the menu: System->Administration->GParted

 

Step 3:

In GParted, create a new partition (NTFS is OK). Make sure it's AT LEAST 10 GB. Make sure you have it selected to 'PRIMARY PARTITION'; if this option is not available, and you can only select LOGICAL/EXTENDED, make sure the unallocated space is not in a extended partition, or that you have more than 4 primary partitions. When created, flag it with 'boot'.

 

Step 4:

Now, restart the computer, and install Mac OSx86.

When booted, go from the bar to Disk Utility.

Select the newly created partition, and go to the Erase tab, and make sure you format it as 'Mac OS (Journaled)'. Make sure the label does not contain spaces!

Install Mac OSx86, and get it to work.

 

Step 5:

Boot into your Windows Vista/7 installation disc, and hit 'repair your computer'.

Go into Commandprompt, and hit the following commands:

 

diskpart
list disk
select disk 0 (the disk with Windows installed)
list partition
select partition 1 (the partition where Windows is installed)
active
exit
diskpart
exit
exit

 

Step 6:

Now hit 'Startup Repair'. This should work, might take some time (some minutes), and after that, reboot into Windows!

(You won't be able to boot into Mac anymore, yet)

 

Step 7:

Open EasyBCD, and go to 'Add/Remove Entries'. Make a new Entry: 'Mac->Generic OSx86 PC'.

When done, restart your computer.

 

Step 8:

You will be in the Windows Boot Manager. Select the Mac entry.

Now, you will come into Darwin or Chameleon, depending on what you've installed.

Make sure you hit any key, and then select the Mac installation, or otherwise it will boot back into Windows.

 

That's it.

You're probably thinking: 'What is this different from other multi-boot guides?' The answer: Step 2/3.

 

If the entry does not work, you can follow these steps, they might work for you. (you'll have to do that every single time if you want to switch between Windows/Mac):

 

Boot into your Windows Installation Disc

Go to repair your computer

Go to commandprompt.

Type:

 

diskpart
list disk
select disk 0 (the disk with Windows/Mac installed)
list partition
select partition 1 (the partition where Windows/Mac is installed)
active
exit
diskpart
exit
exit

 

Reboot.

 

Hope this topic helps everyone!!! Make sure to fill in the poll!!!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I tried the above but my setup still won't work

 

 

Disk 1: Snow Leopard working perfectly

 

Disk 2 Partition 1: Mac Storage

Disk 2 Partition 2: Windows 7

 

If I boot into Chameleon with the Snow leopard drive I can see windows 7 and snow, snow works fine, windows 7 just sits at Loading Operating System

 

If I disconnect Disk 1 and Just try to boot into Windows 7 the same thing

 

 

Tried setting the Windows 7 partition as active and repaired startup disk but to no avail

Any other suggestions? Thanks

 

Nice guide btw

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  • 2 weeks later...
I tried the above but my setup still won't work

 

 

Disk 1: Snow Leopard working perfectly

 

Disk 2 Partition 1: Mac Storage

Disk 2 Partition 2: Windows 7

 

If I boot into Chameleon with the Snow leopard drive I can see windows 7 and snow, snow works fine, windows 7 just sits at Loading Operating System

 

If I disconnect Disk 1 and Just try to boot into Windows 7 the same thing

 

 

Tried setting the Windows 7 partition as active and repaired startup disk but to no avail

Any other suggestions? Thanks

 

Nice guide btw

I should have said this in the post, but this will probably only work correctly when Windows and Mac are on the same drive. Excuse me for this.

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would this work on MBR partitioned drive. I have installed win7 on my c drive and i have tried to install mac osx 10.6 on d drive but i get the error that my partition is not GUID.

Try These Step

1. Boot with Win 7 Installation disk

2. At welcome screen (after loading done); press Shift+F10 key

3. Type diskpart

4. Type list disk; you should see disk 0 if other disk not connected this is what they mean at the top of the thread.

5. Type select disk 0

6. Type clean

7. Type convert GPT

8. Type create partition efi=200

9. Type create partition primary=100000 (your Mac disk size in MB)

10.Type create pertition primary ( the rest of the amount of disk will become win 7 disk)

11. List disk; at this point you should see

Partition 1 (efi system type)

Partition 2 your MacOsx disk

Partition 3 your Win 7 disk

12. Type select partition 3

13 Type format fs=ntfs quick

14 Type assign letter c

15 exit

16 exit

17 Now you can install your Macosx first and select disk 2

18 after that just install win and select disk 3

19 that all; remember you boot disk now is efi type which is protected........

 

 

Now I have a question how should I install win 7 which is from recovery disk cause when I bought my Compac CQ40, they didn't give the installation disk but recovery disk and I need to burn that this; If I use same step above It does not work cause it format everithing

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Hello, i am new to this forum and hackintosh in general so I hope i am in a decent place to be posting this sorry if i am not. i currently have a pc dual-booting with windows 7 32bit and Linux Ubuntu. most of the write ups i have read about triple booting using involves installing Linux last but i was wondering if it is possible to keep what i have done and still install a hackintosh version as well for a triple boot. also if this will work would grub sense it or would i still go about using a boot loader such as chameleon. thanks very much - Steve

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Hello, i am new to this forum and hackintosh in general so I hope i am in a decent place to be posting this sorry if i am not. i currently have a pc dual-booting with windows 7 32bit and Linux Ubuntu. most of the write ups i have read about triple booting using involves installing Linux last but i was wondering if it is possible to keep what i have done and still install a hackintosh version as well for a triple boot. also if this will work would grub sense it or would i still go about using a boot loader such as chameleon. thanks very much - Steve

What you can do is disable GRUB bootloader by activating the Windows partition (flag with boot in GParted), Reboot, check if you can come into Windows, if you do, follow a guide for installing first, and then this guide. If you cannot come into Win, boot up the Win Disc and Startup Repair.

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What you can do is disable GRUB bootloader by activating the Windows partition (flag with boot in GParted), Reboot, check if you can come into Windows, if you do, follow a guide for installing first, and then this guide. If you cannot come into Win, boot up the Win Disc and Startup Repair.

 

thanks i will give that a shot once my hackintosh version is done downloading

- Steve

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thanks i will give that a shot once my hackintosh version is done downloading

- Steve

BTW, if it still doesn't let you boot into Windows after Startup Repair, make a small partition and install Windows Vista/7 on that, that should let you boot back into your Windows. After that, you can just remove that small partition and everything should be fine.

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Greetings! I am building my first dual-boot OSx86 system.. long time PC user... new to OSx!

 

That being said... here are my computer specs (I also attached images from CPU-Z screen):

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 - 2764.9 MHz (socket 775 LGA; SSE-1,2,3,3S)

MOBO: ASUS P5N-E SLI (nForce 650i SLI SPP chipset)

MEM: 4096 MBytes DDR2 (Dual Channel)

GRAPHICS: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra (1080 Mhz, GDDR3)

HDD: SATA 1.5TB Western Digital

DVD: SATA DVD-RW Sony

 

I am going for a split partition SATA-HDD dual boot.

 

So far I've been able to flawlessly install Windows 7 onto its own partition; but I have yet to be able to install the OSx onto the remaining partition. I keep receiving the 'infamous' "Still waiting for root device" Error. I have tried installing using empire EFI and an image copy of Snow Leopard; I've also tried iAtikos_v7, Kalyway_10.52_lite and iDeneb_v1.6_1058_lite.

 

I would be very appreciative if anyone has any advice about the best Bios settings for these specs; or for any other instruction for using these particular specs so that I might successfully dual-boot between Win7 & OSx! Thanks so much for time & help, this place is an amazing resource!

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  • 2 weeks later...
I keep receiving the 'infamous' "Still waiting for root device" Error. I have tried installing using empire EFI and an image copy of Snow Leopard; I've also tried iAtikos_v7, Kalyway_10.52_lite and iDeneb_v1.6_1058_lite.

This happened to me before, try again, try to put out as much USB cables out of your PC, because this might be a problem that i tries to connect to something that is connected with USB... So unplug one by one the USB cables, and try to find the one that creates the problem. USB Memory Sticks are mostly the problem.

 

BTW: You've got good PC specs, they shouldnt be the problem. If it after that still doesn't work, just try others! Like Leo4All, iPC, etc

 

Hope it helps

 

-gdscei

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I installeed Mac os x Leopard and everything went fine. When it said 'installation complete', it told me I needed to restart so I did and took out the disc and as it went to start up, I got a Boot0 error.

 

So I restared and put in my 'Rebel EFI' disc and it gave me the option to boot from the osx86 on the hard drive or choose to install it again. I clicked on the hard drive and a white background with the grey apple logo came on screen. (I admit, I had a smile on my face)

 

And after about 30 seconds or so, I get the little error that overlays the logo

 

This: http://www5.picturepush.com/photo/a/273166...MAC-Problem.bmp

 

Its all installed perfectly. Just this annoying error when trying to start it up. I had it at first before I installed the os and typing '-x -v' fixed it. But now it doesn't give me the option to type anything, when I put in the EFI disc, it tells me I can choose to boot or install. If I don't put the disc in it just starts Windows 7 up... :/

 

PLEASE HELP! THANKS!

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I tried the above but my setup still won't work

 

 

Disk 1: Snow Leopard working perfectly

 

Disk 2 Partition 1: Mac Storage

Disk 2 Partition 2: Windows 7

 

If I boot into Chameleon with the Snow leopard drive I can see windows 7 and snow, snow works fine, windows 7 just sits at Loading Operating System

 

If I disconnect Disk 1 and Just try to boot into Windows 7 the same thing

 

 

Tried setting the Windows 7 partition as active and repaired startup disk but to no avail

Any other suggestions? Thanks

 

Nice guide btw

 

you must repair the MBR too.

 

Try this

 

1. Insert Win 7 DVD and boot from it.

 

2. Select Repair

 

3. Go to Command prompt

 

4. Type "Diskpart"

 

5. Type "Select Disk 1"

 

6. Type "Select partition 2"

 

7. Type "Active" then "Exit"

 

8. Go To drive C:

 

9. Type "bootrec /fixMBR"

 

10. Type "bootrec /fixboot"

 

11. Type "bootrec /rebuildbcd"

 

some options will show here please select appropriate then Exit after successful

 

Restart you PC and boot Win 7

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I tryed Dual booting Mac osx with Win but it destroyed the master boot record. and for some reason it just coudnt work anymore tried rewriting it using win 7 dvd etc. So I guess always back up your data

 

Indeed

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Hi, First Post here :)

 

I have searched but couldn't find much info, and it wont let me start a new thread because i'm new.

 

Thr problem is; i'm trying to get OSX & W7 & Vista on a triple boot.

I've managed to install everything fine, except however MAC is made the default boot OS using Chameleon boot loader. where as i want W7 to be the first.

 

Bearing in mind MAC is installed on a seperate IDE Drive while W7 & Vista is on my Primary SATA hard drive. The reason they are on different drives is because when installing MAC it either doesnt see my SATA HDD or only sees 128GB of it.

 

So basically what i would like ideally is for W7 to be the default OS using Windows boot manager, with Vista and OSX below them.

 

I've used EasyBCD to add/remove entries however when i add MAC it cannot find it because its on a different HDD??

 

So all in all, W7, Vista & OSX booting up via windows boot manager, with 7 and Vista on my SATA and OSX on a seperate IDE drive. Can it be done? (using iDeneb 10.5.8 LE for AMD)

 

Thanks.

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Hi, First Post here :)

 

I have searched but couldn't find much info, and it wont let me start a new thread because i'm new.

 

Thr problem is; i'm trying to get OSX & W7 & Vista on a triple boot.

I've managed to install everything fine, except however MAC is made the default boot OS using Chameleon boot loader. where as i want W7 to be the first.

 

Bearing in mind MAC is installed on a seperate IDE Drive while W7 & Vista is on my Primary SATA hard drive. The reason they are on different drives is because when installing MAC it either doesnt see my SATA HDD or only sees 128GB of it.

 

So basically what i would like ideally is for W7 to be the default OS using Windows boot manager, with Vista and OSX below them.

 

I've used EasyBCD to add/remove entries however when i add MAC it cannot find it because its on a different HDD??

 

So all in all, W7, Vista & OSX booting up via windows boot manager, with 7 and Vista on my SATA and OSX on a seperate IDE drive. Can it be done? (using iDeneb 10.5.8 LE for AMD)

 

Thanks.

 

 

you should be able to change the drive that macosx boots from in the settings of easybcd give that a try. :)

 

now my own problems... ok *takes deep breath* i have windows 7 installed on the 1st partition on my hdd i have created another partition and also installed iATKOSv7 with no problems, i can load up the macosx partition fine no problems (chameleon 2) when i go to load win7 from chameleon it wont load i get the usual error that windows bootmanager is missing and therefore cannot load wondows.

 

so i have tried about 15 different methods of repairing, flagging and activating that i can find on this forum and the internet also using easybcd 1.7 and 2.0 but after i repair the windows partition it will not load up chameleon again instead i get sent too grub... or an error.

 

it seems that windows has changed the format of partition 2 (mac) back to ntfs.

 

now before all this i had iatkos 1.0 working with darwinboot and i could boot win7 or mac fine no problems (but i had an error with my drivers after going into mac so i got iatkosv7)

 

I would like to know if there is a method out there where i can install iatkosv7 and keep the partition formatted as mac ext journaled whilst repairing windows bootup "or" a method where i can get windows7 to work through chameleon2 or 1 without having to repair win7 partition.

 

please please somebody help me with this i have spent many hours searching and trying just on the edge of having the dualboot working i would really appreciate any help

 

Thanks in advanced :D

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  • 1 month later...

Did anyone else tried this out???

 

I would like to know if there is a method out there where i can install iatkosv7 and keep the partition formatted as mac ext journaled whilst repairing windows bootup "or" a method where i can get windows7 to work through chameleon2 or 1 without having to repair win7 partition.

 

please please somebody help me with this i have spent many hours searching and trying just on the edge of having the dualboot working i would really appreciate any help

 

Thanks in advanced -_-

I really don't know why Windows would do that... That's just weird. I am sorry, I cannot help you as I am not familiar with Windows causing this problems. Are you sure it isn't something else?

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Hello everybody :D

 

I here post my problem here because I'm not allowed to create new topics.

 

So, I (think I) have a hybrid GPT/MBR partitioned disk with :

 

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *74.4 GB disk0

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Hackintosh 37.2 GB disk0s2

3: Microsoft Basic Data 36.8 GB disk0s3

 

(It's a SATA AHCI drive)

 

I have installed OSX and pc efi 10.5 on #2 which boots out of the box

Then I have installed Windows 7 on #3 which has been converted to NTFS during the installation.

At this point, the PC booted on Windows 7, ignoring OSX.

So I booted from a thumb drive equipped with PC efi 10.5 to access OSX, then i reinstalled pc efi 10.5 on his partition (#2)

But at this point, Windows 7 didn't appeared in pc efi's boot menu.

So I booted from W7 DVD, and made partition #3 active, but at this point windows 7 didn't boot.

So I booted from W7 DVD and repair W7's bootloader, and that time, windows 7 did boot. (but OSX had, obviously disappeared)

So I booted from a thumb drive equipped with PC efi 10.5 to access OSX, then i reinstalled pc efi 10.5 on his partition (#2)

But Windows 7 still doesn't appear in pc efi's the boot menu :unsure: (My goal is, obviously, to get a dual boot W7/OSX)

 

I really don't know what to do... Can anybody help me, knowing I don't want to reinstall any OS ?

 

Thank you a lot ;)

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  • 4 months later...

Hello ALl,

All of the dual boot tutorials seem to start with windows. I have a decent OSX setup and dont want to mess it up just to run windows.

I was wondering if I have 2 disks can I change the boot order in the bios and use that to install and dual boot? I'm guessing it cant be that easy, but has anyone done it? Thanks CFI

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