ianmac77 Posted January 24, 2009 Share Posted January 24, 2009 It took me more than 3 hours to figure this out, so I figured I would share it. Worked for me on Windows 7 64 bit beta (7000). The Windows Installer for Vista and 7 can boot off of a GUID/MBR hybrid partition, the problem is that the installer sees the GUID part and freaks out. I tried for hours using the Gparted live cd to get windows to install on a GUID partition table drive, and it doesn't work. To my knowledge, the only app that will create a GUID/MBR hybrid is Disk Utility. I tried a lot of others that did only GUID and only MBR. It makes sense that Disk Utility uses a hybrid because thats how boot camp works. The GUID/MBR hybrid is simply a GUID partitioned disk, but it throws in a MBR file so that Windows doesn't freak the **** out. So open Disk Utility, and partition the disk, making every partition FAT32. (NTFS3G plugin didn't work for me) EVEN IF you want to make it Mac OS Extended. (We will do that later) Windows Installer will **** out a cow if it sees a Mac OS Extended partition. Now that you have your GUID disk partitioned into however many FAT32 partitions you want, its time to install Windows. Remember, if Windows sees ANY mac formated partitions OR drives, it won't let you install. I had to pull the SATA plug out of my Hackintosh drive just to get this working. Now select your partition, Windows will complain that it can't use FAT32. Select where you want the installation to go, and hit Format, it will make it NTFS. Now hit next, if you are lucky, Windows will continue installing. I used the first partition, so that might also be the trick. Let me know if this works for you or if you have any questions. Basically all you do is use Disk Utility to partition it using FAT32 and GUID, Windows won't figure out its a GUID/MBR hybrid, and it will let you install. Happy Hacking! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/148847-vistawindows-7-installed-on-guid-drive/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
vboyz Posted January 24, 2009 Share Posted January 24, 2009 Hey dude, I wanted to do this as well, but have a real quick question. I only have 1 HDD and in this thread you mentioned to pull out the cable for the other drive, so I'm assuming you used 2 HDDs??? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/148847-vistawindows-7-installed-on-guid-drive/#findComment-1053866 Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianmac77 Posted January 24, 2009 Author Share Posted January 24, 2009 Hey dude, I wanted to do this as well, but have a real quick question. I only have 1 HDD and in this thread you mentioned to pull out the cable for the other drive, so I'm assuming you used 2 HDDs??? I didn't know about this for a while so I bought a seperate drive. If you only have 1 hdd don't worry. You just have to make sure that windows doesn't see any mac partitions or drives and it will let you install. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/148847-vistawindows-7-installed-on-guid-drive/#findComment-1053884 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Hurt Posted January 24, 2009 Share Posted January 24, 2009 When I tried that with Vista x64, it apparently synced my GUID with the MBR and all went fine and installation went smoothly. I did however notice that OS X disk utility now recognizes the disk as MBR not GUID. Other disk utilities recognize it s invalid partition table even though they are GUID aware. I hate microsoft and windows. Please Microsoft support booting from GPT on BIOS natively like OS X and Linux without syncing with MBR!!?? Is that too hard. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/148847-vistawindows-7-installed-on-guid-drive/#findComment-1053943 Share on other sites More sharing options...
vboyz Posted January 24, 2009 Share Posted January 24, 2009 Hey ianmac, this works flawlessly thanks for the guide man...before this guide I have to do XP + Leopard but now it's all good. Well, one thing now...I installed Win 7 first and then Mac OSX, but somehow Mac OS doesn't write itself into the MBR so I can only boot Win 7 but not Mac. I tried the Vista dual boot tutorial by using BCDEDIT command and everything seems to be correct, but then when I rebooted and selected MAC OSX to boot, it went into Win 7 Repair mode. I'm puzzled...any help? TIA Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/148847-vistawindows-7-installed-on-guid-drive/#findComment-1054631 Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianmac77 Posted January 26, 2009 Author Share Posted January 26, 2009 Hey ianmac, this works flawlessly thanks for the guide man...before this guide I have to do XP + Leopard but now it's all good. Well, one thing now...I installed Win 7 first and then Mac OSX, but somehow Mac OS doesn't write itself into the MBR so I can only boot Win 7 but not Mac. I tried the Vista dual boot tutorial by using BCDEDIT command and everything seems to be correct, but then when I rebooted and selected MAC OSX to boot, it went into Win 7 Repair mode. I'm puzzled...any help? TIA Google boot 132 disk, and get one that works on your motherboard, using the boot loader on that Disk, you can boot to both Win7 and Leopard. Boot into leopard, then install the EFI v9 boot loader, which is basically the boot loader on boot 132. When all of this is done the boot loader when you start up your machine will let you boot into any drive on the hard disk. I have had problems with BCDEDIT in the past, I think a darwin bootloader would be the way to go here. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/148847-vistawindows-7-installed-on-guid-drive/#findComment-1056255 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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