Inspiron 1100, pure Windows installation

[SUBMarcos]

Dell Inspiron 1100

Celeron 2.2GHz

1024 MB RAM

Dual boot, OSx86 Tiger and Windows XP Pro SP1

 

Made a guide in English and Español

 

http://usuarios.lycos.es/subosx86/

 

This procedure worked for me on the 1st attempt to install OSx86 Tiger. This technique only uses Windows.

There is NO need for you to know about bootloaders.

Installation time; not longer than 20mins.

 

 

EDIT:

 

For installation using pure Windows OS;

 

Prerequisites;

1. tiger-x86-flat.img (deadmoo's image = 1.29GB b2z-archive from t0rrents). Use Winrar 3.5+

2. dd for windows (dd.exe)

3. aprox. 13 GB free space, in this fashion: 6.5Gb for deadmoo's image and the equivalent as "unpartitionated space"

4. Partition Magic 8 or any other similar application

 

Goals (this is an overview);

1. Have tiger-x86-flat.img and dd.exe (along w/its dll) in the same folder

2. Use Windows start->run-> and type "cmd"

3. Use DOS commands to create an "af" partition which supports OSx86 Tiger

4. Use DOS to dd the image to the "af" partition

5. Be able to set the OSx86 partition as an "active partition" IMPORTANT!!!

 

Follow this;

1. Get 6.5GB or more as unpartitioned space.

2. Run cmd

3. Use the following cmd session to accomodate to your own software. Unknow partition type means OSX type of partition. (NOTICE how volume6 and partition6 are related in my machine. Attempt to use it to your different partition number)

 

- -

C:\Program Files\Stardock\Object Desktop\ObjectBar>diskpart

 

Microsoft DiskPart version 1.0

Copyright © 1999-2001 Microsoft Corporation.

On computer: PALETITA-SIHSBL

 

DISKPART> select disk 0

 

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

 

DISKPART> list partition

 

Partition ### Type Size Offset

------------- ---------------- ------- -------

Partition 1 OEM 39 MB 32 KB

Partition 2 Primary 9 GB 39 MB

Partition 3 Extended 9 GB 9 GB

Partition 4 Logical 7013 MB 9 GB

Partition 5 Logical 2016 MB 16 GB

 

DISKPART> create partition primary size=6660 id=af

 

DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition.

 

DISKPART> list partition

 

Partition ### Type Size Offset

------------- ---------------- ------- -------

Partition 1 OEM 39 MB 32 KB

Partition 2 Primary 9 GB 39 MB

Partition 3 Extended 9 GB 9 GB

Partition 4 Logical 7013 MB 9 GB

Partition 5 Logical 2016 MB 16 GB

* Partition 6 Unknown 6668 MB 18 GB

 

DISKPART> exit

 

Leaving DiskPart...

 

C:\Program Files\Stardock\Object Desktop\ObjectBar>E:

 

E:\>cd OSx86 Tiger

 

E:\OSx86 Tiger>cd tiger-x86

 

E:\OSx86 Tiger\tiger-x86>dd if=tiger-x86-flat.img of=\\?\Device\HarddiskVolume6

bs=32256 skip=1 --progress

rawwrite dd for windows version 0.3.

Written by John Newbigin <jn@it.swin.edu.au>

This program is covered by the GPL. See copying.txt for details

6,441,878,016

199711+0 records in

199711+0 records out

 

E:\OSx86 Tiger\tiger-x86>

 

C:\Program Files\Stardock\Object Desktop\ObjectBar>diskpart

 

Microsoft DiskPart version 1.0

Copyright © 1999-2001 Microsoft Corporation.

On computer: PALETITA-SIHSBL

 

DISKPART> select disk 0

 

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

 

DISKPART> select partition 6

 

DISKPART> active

 

 

REBOOT, you should now see Darwin bootloader

 

-----

The whole cmd process (installation of image), should take no longer than 30 mins.

 

Apply Maxxus patches, and if you boot into a screen full of squares simply boot first in Windows, then restart your computer and boot into OSx86. That works for this computer.

 

This computer (laptop) has good sound, good disk speed, fast window transitions, openGL, Quartz supported (I dont know what that means), fast spotlight (even gets resuts from Windows partitions). I will test video capabilties later.

 

- - - Please leave your comments... these may really help somebody else

[NotMeAgain]

Dell Inspiron 1100

Celeron 2.2GHz

640 RAM

 

Sound works and I havent touch anything yet.

Cd drive is recognized.

Internet works without any manual configuration

Dual boot, configured from Windows, only 3 lines in CMD. No boot.ini or chain0 procedures. Worked on the 1st attempt

 

Feels real good. No OS X experienced user.

 

Installed very simply using Windows XP Pro.

 

If anyone is interested drop me a line or PM.

 

I will only explain the Windows method if someone shows interests.

 

Other than that this works and very neat... probably I will use it most of the time and only use Windows when needed.

 

/me opens a bag of interest and shows it to SUBMacros

[SUBMarcos]

I will provide the command line text and the general technique I used today or tomorrow.

 

@Not MeAgain, do you have an Inspiron 1100? r just wanting to know the procedure to see if it works with your other kind of pc?

[NotMeAgain]

I will provide the command line text and the general technique I used today or tomorrow.

 

@Not MeAgain, do you have an Inspiron 1100? r just wanting to know the procedure to see if it works with your other kind of pc?

 

 

The latter, i'm finding the ingenuity of the members of these forums fascinating, i have macosx installed and fully working on my system by following guides that people have posted, and another one is just healthy reading.

 

So please share the info

[BRN2PLAY]

I'd definately love to know how. I have an Inspiron 600m so I'm really interested to find out how to do it.

 

I suspect everything should work fine for me (I hope), but the only thing that I am waaay confused about is this whole "second hard drive or two or more partitions" business. I've never partitioned my hard drive, so I'm not quite sure how to do it, and I'm not sure if I can delete partitions, etc. Also, I'm not quite sure about booting up the OS. I'd like it so that I can have WINXP as my primary OS, but have the option at startup to use OS X.

 

I'm reading all the possibilities and exploring my options.

[MLS]

SUBMarcos, is Spotlight fast for you ? I had some problems with its performance on my 1100.

How did you install it, deadmoo's image using dd for windows ?

 

By the way, if anybody's interested, I made a post last week about the way I installed it on my 1100. Not a 100% Windows method, though, I used a Linux LiveCD.

 

 

 

BRN2PLAY >

 

I am waaay confused about is this whole "second hard drive or two or more partitions" business. I've never partitioned my hard drive, so I'm not quite sure how to do it, and I'm not sure if I can delete partitions, etc.

 

Does the 600m have a DVD drive ? If so it should not be that hard, you'd only have to backup your data, resize down your partition using a partitioning app, then use the DVD to install on the empty space.

I use Acronis ParitionExpert, it's an easy to use commercial app for windows, it can take care of creating, moving and resizing Windows and Linux paritions, it also worked to move my OSx86 partition.

 

Also, I'm not quite sure about booting up the OS. I'd like it so that I can have WINXP as my primary OS, but have the option at startup to use OS X.

 

That's possible. You need to make your Windows partition bootable, then change the settings of Window's bootloader (it's quite easy, search for chain0 on the wiki). You can also choose to have OSx to be the default.

[SUBMarcos]

Sorry I did not post it yesterday. Once I get time this afternoon I'll provide you with the cmd (windows console) entries and a step by step.

 

I am editing Post#1 with the information.

 

Thanks for your interest, glad to help as I was helped here.

[BRN2PLAY]

Wow thanks a lot!

 

I have a couple of extremely newbie questions to ask, and I'm sorry if these are really stupid, but better safe than sorry right?

 

I'm going to be using your method for installing OS X, so just a few things for clarification:

1. What exactly is dd.exe, and where can I get it?

2. Do I burn the tiger-x86-flat.img onto a CD or DVD or something or does it stay on the computer at all times? I ask because I only have a CD burner, and no DVD burner.

3. When you say 13 GB of free space, do we basically just ensure that we have approximately 13 GB of free disc space, then use partition magic to create a 13 GB large partition (so if my Hard drive is 40 GB, I would have one partition at approx. 27 GB (for Windows XP) and one 13 GB (for Mac OS X)) or do I do it to create 3 different partitions on my computer, one 27 GB one for windows, one 6.5 FAT32 or NTFS partition for the tiger-x86-flat.img, and one "unpartitioned" one for Mac?

4. I'm still not 100% positive I understand the diskpart part. Should I actually be using the Stardock path or am I using a different path, like that of Partition Magic?

 

Thanks again, and I'm realllly sorry for all the newbie questions. I've got everything good to go, but I just need confirmation that I understand everything completely before I proceed. I don't want to lose any valuable data on my computer .

[MLS]

Interesting to see your technique, SUBMarcos, and thanks for the PM.

I'm not sure if I understand the issues correctly, but I thought that creating a partition without blanking its first sectors would be likely to make OSx unbootable - I had that problem with an install made on a partition created that way with Diskpart - I redid it on Linux with Cfdisk then following the procedure in the "DOS 6.x WARNING" section of the cfdisk manpage ( dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdxx bs=512 count=1 ).

 

 

BRN2PLAY>

 

Please backup first any data you have. Really. The install is not supposed to go wrong, but only one typo when dealing with dd could destroy data. There are kinds of people : those who have yet to lose data, and those who make backups

 

1. dd is basically a free software that moves data around and has a much greater control of how it is done on the hardware than a file manager. It's a powerful UNIX tool, you can find it on every Linux distro, including liveCDs like knoppix, and you can also find dd.exe by searching "dd for windows".

 

2. No. That file comes from the ~1.3Gb tiger-x86.tar.bz2 archive. It is an image of the OS, that you can copy using dd.

 

3. Basically, you will need to have at the same time the large image to be copied, and the partition where you will copy it, and that partition cannot be resized without a fair amount of effort. As long as you have 13GB free right now on your HD not including the image (IE, something like 7GB if you already have copied the image on this HS), you can do it, partition managers will take care of downsizing. You'll be able to reclaim 6GB of space after the install by deleting the image.

If you don't have enough space but another computer, you should also be able to store the file on your network.

 

4. Stardock & Objectbar are completely unrelated in his technique, they simply were the directory in which SUBMarcos happened to be. Diskpart is available from any directory in the command line, just like "cd" and "dir" are.

[SUBMarcos]

@BRN2PLAY, Try to understand the prerequisites, and the goal sections I wrote. That may clarify your inquiries about the 13GB.

 

You do NOT need to burn the tiger-x86-flat.img into a CD or DVD, leave it on a folder along with dd (for windows. You can google it)... that is the reason you need 6.5GB to hold the image in your hard drive.

 

Regarding the partition where OSx86 will be installed review the Goals section, point 3 and 4. Reread over and over until you get it. If not, do not hesitate to ask again (PM me since these questions could be redundant to some readers and may make the thread longer).

 

I hope you can try it out and tell the community what you get.

 

@ Thanks MLS for bringing your experiences here as well

 

Cheers from Mexico

[MLS]

BTW, since it hasn't been stated yet in this thread and can be a problem for this computer (and maybe some other inspirons), remember that if you have an old version of the BIOS, you'll have video problems. I don't know for sure what's the minimum, I think my version is the A29 and everything went fine. Windows-based updates are available on dell's site, and if you don't use Windows you can find a bios update bootcd on the page Linux on the Dell Inspiron 1100

 

Another thing to remember is that there's a lot of doc out there, but it is not very organized because all this OSx86 business went so fast, so those of us who didn't follow it right from the start have a lot of catching up to do. It's really necessary to read as much docs as possible even if you don't end up using them, to get the big picture.

[BRN2PLAY]

Thanks again for all the replies!

 

I've decided to wait and buy an external USB hard drive off of eBay after I get my paycheck this Friday. Hopefully all goes well, and I'll keeo you posted!