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Got Windows XP, got OSX... How do I switch back and forth?


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I'm not new to this or anything, I've either had OSX or WIN XP, but for the life of me I cant get both booting from one hard drive. I've tried a few different methods, such as making a different partition the active one or getting into Mac's System Preferences and changing the startup. Nothing seems to work, I always get a "Error finding operating system" when I try loading up Window$.

 

Any tips? I cant live without my Counter-strike Source, but Mac is just so nice...

 

I've tried the wiki..

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Depending on the install order and whatnot there are a few things that could be causing this.

One problem could be how the MBR (this happened to me 1/4 installs) was modified during installation. When the Darwin bootloader goes active and the active partition is changed to the OS-X partition, the drive letters can be internally changed. Try this to set your Windows partition active again:

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...mp;#entry326761

 

Look for my entry and do this for your Windows partition (set it active). If you can get into Windows, then there are lots of threads on how to get it dual-booting (for example, with the chain0 method) again. If you have Windows hang on the blue Welcome screen, it's because the drive letters have been remapped, and I think you are screwed to be honest. If your drives have had their letters internally changed, the only fix (I know of) is to reformat, repartition and go from scratch. This is what I ended up doing (after trying a dozen fixes with Linux rescue disks) when I had the issue.

 

Good luck!

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Did you use fdisk -e /dev/disk0 or did you use ... /dev/disk0s#. You shouldn't enter a "s#", as that is a particular partition. I'm just guessing this is why you got that error, as that is what you get when you try to fdisk -e a specific partition.

 

Try it again and make sure you use "> fdisk -e /dev/disk0" (I'm assuming it's disk 0 you want here).

 

If not, I'll think of something else...

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Alright, for more information, I AM using one hard drive. So 2 partitions. After a while, I got frustrated and just extended DarWine's boot loader time, then tried to load partition 1 which was Windows XP, and my computer froze. Worse over, my bios had some strange issue (it happened about 4 times) and I had to pop out the battery on my Motherboard or my processor fan would run at max speed, and I wouldnt get a display. Strange stuff...

 

After installing Windows XP once more, I'm finding that after primary installation, nothing happens. So Windows is gone, and wont come back.

 

Time to start from Scratch.

 

This time I'll try harder to load it onto seperated Hard drives instead of partitions.

 

Thanks for the effort though, Analog, I appreciate it, and I'll keep you posted on my progress.

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