Elusive Posted June 20, 2006 Share Posted June 20, 2006 Alright, i'm a massively long time user of Windows, and an old school user of Apple OS as well. I've played with OS X Tiger and Jaguar at school a bit, and it seems interesting (for the most part). I'm interested in knowing how to partition my computer to run XP, and if I choose to: boot into OS X. Do I need a seperate drive, or just another partition? Any details you can give me would be great. Using OS X would be nice I suppose for a little bit at least. At least until Vista comes out, than i'll make a decision on where i'll go: Leopard or Vista (however as of right now Vista seems to be where i'll be going, after I purchase some much needed [and already coming regardless] upgrades). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lunchandamovie Posted June 20, 2006 Share Posted June 20, 2006 Hi, and welcome to the forum. It is quite a lot of work to get OS X and Windows XP dual booting. First off, is Windows XP already installed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jsobeck Posted June 21, 2006 Share Posted June 21, 2006 I have recently done exactly what you are looking to do. First off, make sure Windows XP is already installed. There are ways to do OSX first, but i find it easier to install XP and configure things from there. Next, obtain OSX86 (I won't say how, due to the legality of obtaining it, email me if you have no clue how to get it, I can point you in the right direction) Many guides out there suggest that you need a seperate hard drive, but all you actually need is a seperate partition. You have a less risk of data loss with a seperate HD, but it isn't neccessary. The first thing you need to do is aquire a few programs. I personally prefer Acronis Disk Director Suite, but PartitionMagic will work just fine. Once you have installed one of those programs, you need to resize your hard drive. I would recommend at least 10~12 GB, (I went with something around 56 GB as I have the space) keep in mind that Tiger uses about 7GB or so for installation, and then make room for any music/pictures/programs you want. If you chose the Acronis Disk Director Suite, then you also have the Acronis Boot Manager (which shows a nice XP-style screen for OS selection). Make sure the Boot Manager is also installed (there are alternate methods, this is just the one I used). Assuming you have a prepatched version of OSX86, you can pick up at step 2 of this guide, skipping steps 5-11. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antman Posted July 5, 2006 Share Posted July 5, 2006 the way I did this is Installed XP first created 3 partitions 1 partition is 8gig and second is 40gig for OSX and remaining is just left over partition. Then I installed XP like normal to the 8gig partition, then comes the tricky part I had to remove the 40gig partition in XP and recreate it making sure not to format it and after removing and recreating those partitions I was ready to install OSX. I booted OSX up and told Disk Utility to format the 40gig partition in HFS+ Journaled format and then installed it.. After completing the install you will get the darwin bootloader and it will count down 10 seconds (JaS Install) if you press a key you will notice you can boot either OSX or WinXP and congrats you are done. enjoy. hope this wasnt confusing... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts