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How do I reinstall XP without disturbing my OS X partition?


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Okay, so my XP partition was formatted, so I set OS X as my active partition.

 

Fine and dandy. OS X runs great.

 

But, how do I reinstall XP without hurting my lil OS X partition?

 

I tried it before, and after the initial XP setup (before going into the second stage of the setup), it returns "Invalid operating system".

 

So then, I have to go back into OS X setup and make OS X active.... and... well, it's a F*ing pain.

 

Anyone successfully installed XP after OS X?

 

By the way, for future reference, I allocated XP's partition as slice 1, and OS X as slice 2.

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Okay, so my XP partition was formatted, so I set OS X as my active partition.

 

Fine and dandy. OS X runs great.

 

But, how do I reinstall XP without hurting my lil OS X partition?

 

I tried it before, and after the initial XP setup (before going into the second stage of the setup), it returns "Invalid operating system".

 

So then, I have to go back into OS X setup and make OS X active.... and... well, it's a F*ing pain.

 

Anyone successfully installed XP after OS X?

 

By the way, for future reference, I allocated XP's partition as slice 1, and OS X as slice 2.

 

Make a disk image of the OSX installation and store it on a FAT32 partition.

 

You can easily reset the master boot record by booting to the Windows Recovery Console from the XP installation disk and entering the commands: fixboot and fixmbr. You'll then be able to reinstall Windows XP, but the system will probably no longer boot the OSX partition.

 

At that point, you can try using the Chain0 boot method from Windows XP or install a third-party boot manager, but these might not work if the OSX boot loader has been erased from the master boot record.

 

The following discussion shows how to transfer the OSX bootloader to the OSX partition, instead of putting it in the master boot record:

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...&pid=335328

 

To use this technique, you need to either boot a working copy of OSX or use the Terminal application from the Install DVD with the necessary bootfiles stored on a floppy or USB flash drive.

 

If you're not up for that, you might install a third-party boot manager and then reinstall OSX, using one of the procedures available in the Genius Bar. If wost comes to worst, you've still got the disk image of your old OSX installation, which you can eventually restore to the "new" OSX partition after you get it booting properly.

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