What's the best dual boot method? (eg. is WinXP using chain0 bad?)

[sofakng]

I plan to triple booting Vista, XP, and Mac OS so if I understand my options I think I can use the Windows XP boot loader, Darwin boot loader, or a 3rd party one (BootMagic?).

 

The Windows XP boot loader seems to be the easiest (copying chain0 to my Windows XP partition), but will this cause any performance decrease? Will it affect my 10.4.9 AMD SSE3 patch?

 

I also think I'd rather a nice graphicaly boot loader (that is FAST!) so does anybody have any suggestions for that as well?

 

Thanks!

[Guest Ramm]

Acronis OS Selector.

 

Simple and Easy.

[Oracle67]

Acronis Os selector.

(one more vote)

[cbmkgd]

The darwin bootloader itself would be the simplest solution.

Then, of course, there's AOSS.

[siddharth]

Use the Darwin bootloader.

[mami007]

I read some thread about changing the codes in ubuntu can launch different OS.

Do anyone know about it???

[cbmkgd]

ubuntu uses grub. you can modify the menu.lst to include osx.

osx86 wiki: grub in short

adjust for your own partition.

[raggedjagged]

and what about which OS to sintall first? Is it recommended to install Vista first? or OSX first?

[Superhai]

Anyway, the 'chain0' method from Windows booter will not decrease performance.

[oneearth]

being primarily a pc user, i like seeing the xp boot menu first.

 

initially, the chain0 technique didn't work for me (xp first partition, osx86 second) and would loop back to the xp os boot menu if i selected osx86. i finally got it to work by booting into osx86 and changing the com.apple.Boot.plist to include Quiet Boot=no and add Timeout=some number. that gets me to the darwin boot loader and then i have to hit any key to get me the list of os that darwin can boot. here i select osx86.

 

--> dualbooting xp/osx86 works!

[Sailfish]

What's the best dual boot method?

 

There is no "best" method. Only the opinions of the collective. After you have tried all of them, you will certainly have your own biases. Each has its pluses and drawbacks. And of course, this will be laced with my opinion based on fact. Acronis OS Selector is nativley the prettiest of the boot loaders. It is also is the easiest to implement. It automatically finds every OS no matter how many drives are used. I used it for a while and have several systems out their with it running. It is slow to start though and the mbr tends to become corrupt quite often. The good news is that it is easy to repair if you want to keep it and easy remove when you get tired of it.

 

Chain0 has been beaten to death by the famous "it didn't work for me" quote. That's all bull. It works great if you do it right. Clean and bare bones (not pretty). Very fast though. Probably where most folks end up on dual boot systems. Main problem is boot looping which is easy to fix.

 

If Linux is involved, you are going to get a lesson on GRUB. No way around it. And it is a great way to go for multiple OS's across as many drives as you would like. It is fast and not pretty in it's raw black and white form. You can however, make it as pretty as you would like with all of your own artwork, icons and splash screens.

 

And then there is OSX's Darwin. It's fast, not pretty (black & white) and works great for Single drive Multiple OS sytems. Brainlessly easy to set up and has absolutely no flexibility.

 

For Vista and operating systems on the same or different drives, there is Easy BCD. Fast and clean. Not pretty though. There are no doubt at least 10 other alternate methods or pieces of software out there in the world to accomplish multi-boot with. In this forum though, most of what you will find is based on these methods.

 

Lastly, The most unpretty down and dirty of all of them is using the BIOS on the Motherboard to do the selection. This would be for having each operating system on it's own hard drive. Some motherboards facilitate this better than others with a simple keystroke on boot. Others require delving into the BIOS menu a bit to change the drive prioritized on startup.

 

If you look at my Sig, you will see that I run 4 Operating Systems with 3 different boot methods. I primarily run OSX and XP. So I have the system booting via Chain0 to give me that choice. Each is on it's own drive. Vista and Fiesty Fawn are on their own drive. I have them just for fun. And to get there, I just hit F11 during boot and choose that drive. It boots to GRUB and I choose which OS on that drive I want. It works for me and makes me happy. You might hate it though! And just in case you were wondering why I continue to run XP when I have Vista Ultimate handy? CAD software of course... That just isn't quite ready for Vista yet.....

[graphic Design]

There is no "best" method. Only the opinions of the collective. After you have tried all of them, you will certainly have your own biases. Each has its pluses and drawbacks. And of course, this will be laced with my opinion based on fact. Acronis OS Selector is nativley the prettiest of the boot loaders. It is also is the easiest to implement. It automatically finds every OS no matter how many drives are used. I used it for a while and have several systems out their with it running. It is slow to start though and the mbr tends to become corrupt quite often. The good news is that it is easy to repair if you want to keep it and easy remove when you get tired of it.

 

Chain0 has been beaten to death by the famous "it didn't work for me" quote. That's all bull. It works great if you do it right. Clean and bare bones (not pretty). Very fast though. Probably where most folks end up on dual boot systems. Main problem is boot looping which is easy to fix.

 

If Linux is involved, you are going to get a lesson on GRUB. No way around it. And it is a great way to go for multiple OS's across as many drives as you would like. It is fast and not pretty in it's raw black and white form. You can however, make it as pretty as you would like with all of your own artwork, icons and splash screens.

 

And then there is OSX's Darwin. It's fast, not pretty (black & white) and works great for Single drive Multiple OS sytems. Brainlessly easy to set up and has absolutely no flexibility.

 

For Vista and operating systems on the same or different drives, there is Easy BCD. Fast and clean. Not pretty though. There are no doubt at least 10 other alternate methods or pieces of software out there in the world to accomplish multi-boot with. In this forum though, most of what you will find is based on these methods.

 

Lastly, The most unpretty down and dirty of all of them is using the BIOS on the Motherboard to do the selection. This would be for having each operating system on it's own hard drive. Some motherboards facilitate this better than others with a simple keystroke on boot. Others require delving into the BIOS menu a bit to change the drive prioritized on startup.

 

If you look at my Sig, you will see that I run 4 Operating Systems with 3 different boot methods. I primarily run OSX and XP. So I have the system booting via Chain0 to give me that choice. Each is on it's own drive. Vista and Fiesty Fawn are on their own drive. I have them just for fun. And to get there, I just hit F11 during boot and choose that drive. It boots to GRUB and I choose which OS on that drive I want. It works for me and makes me happy. You might hate it though! And just in case you were wondering why I continue to run XP when I have Vista Ultimate handy? CAD software of course... That just isn't quite ready for Vista yet.....

 

 

Yeah, agree with U!

I use "chain0" method with no problem, very simple, that's the best way!

one vote for "chain0" method!