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HOW TO: GUID and Windows Vista


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Hacitrix,

 

I've successfully installed XP32 on a GUID drive in the 4th partition as Diabolic quoted.

 

Diabolic - I'm not sure why you can't get vista32 to work. I've not tried vista32 - i used vista64 with the same layout. One thing I would do is use FDISK to make sure the Vista partition is the active partition. You can do this without corrupting the GPT/MBR sync that Diskutil creates.

 

Diabolic - you can only use 4 total partitions (with the first being "wasted" on the EFI partition). Windows (even Vista64) will not see any partitions after the 4th.

 

After saying all that I've gone back to MBR since it's just more flexible than GUID when you have windows on the same drive

 

SMF

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SMF Thanks for replying. I'm not sure why I cant get it to work but it may have something to do with my bios on my Lenovo 3000 n200 0769. If anyone else has a clue Id be glad to get some other input on this for future reference.

 

SMF I tried what you said using fdisk to mark partition 4 active and still no go.

 

I had an MBR setup before. And had some strange behavior in OSX on MBR however I did not use EFI with MBR (or I dont think I did) and maybe that was why I got the strange behavior. I figured OSX would run better on GUID and thats why I wanted to get this to work.

 

I think I am going to go back to my MBR setup this time making sure I'm using an EFI MBR setup and see how well that runs. I know vista would at least boot that way and I can have more partitions that can be used at least.

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Diabolic,

 

Sorry I can't provide more pointers. For both MBR and GUID I've used EFI. For MBR with Vista64 I used the Vista bootloader to boot Windows and OSX. With XP I go back and forth - mainly because VMWare seems to have trouble booting occasionally if my OSX partition is the active one.

 

SMF

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SMF.. NP I got everything setup again this time with EFI on MBR and that was definitely my problem. With EFI all the strange behavior is gone. I got both OS's booting now and I use Darwin to boot both.

 

I tried to use vista's boot loader at first with it active and OSX would do this annoying loop thing that keeps loading the windows boot loader over and over again, unless you actually pick it manually. So I made OSX active but then you cant edit windows BCD unless its partition is active. It keeps giving u errors when you try to. So I tricked BCD by deleting it making it active repairing it then deactivating it and everything is working now.

 

Your right about MBR being a lot more flexible. I have destroyed GPT so many times and don't even know why and theres little or no support for it in many apps.

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  • 7 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...

I don't know if any of you know that, but I managed to install vista x64 sp1 on my GPT disk WITHOUT syncing with the MBR. All went smoothly, except that you'll need a boot-132 cd to be able to boot in os x after installing vista to reinstall Chameleon.

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^Correct.

 

I'm trying to install XP64 on a GUID partition, but I'm getting this error - Anyone else had this?

 

"Setup cannot install to the selected partition.

 

You can only install to GPT disks on IA-64 machines and MBR disks on X-86 machines.

 

you can only upgrade installations on GPT disk on IA-64 machines and MBR disks on X-86 machines."

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MikeHunt,

 

I've had success with XP x86 and Vista x86 and x64. I first partitioned the drive with diskutility which creates a synced gpt and mbr. I then installed windows (any version) to the 4th partition (counting the hidden EFI partition as partition 1). I never did figure out why windows likes the fourth partition.

 

A couple of items - did you partition with diskutility and are you installing to one of the first four partitions (EFI hidden is partition 1) ?

 

I have two recommendations - if you only have one drive use MBR - GPT just causes too many problems with windows. If you have two drives you could use GPT for OS X on one drive and MBR for windows on the other. That's what I do and I just use the built in bios boot menu to boot into windows if I want to run windows as the host OS. If I just need to run a windows program I use vmware fusion and boot my windows partition as a virtual machine in OSX.

 

SMF

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MikeHunt,

 

I've had success with XP x86 and Vista x86 and x64. I first partitioned the drive with diskutility which creates a synced gpt and mbr. I then installed windows (any version) to the 4th partition (counting the hidden EFI partition as partition 1). I never did figure out why windows likes the fourth partition.

 

A couple of items - did you partition with diskutility and are you installing to one of the first four partitions (EFI hidden is partition 1) ?

I only have 1 drive. There is no way to install OSX into an MBR partition, I have to use a GUID partition table.

 

I found I was getting the error above when trying to use the XP to partition the drive, I tried again with diskutil, and it see's a fat32 partition.

 

Now, I can get as far as the first reboot, but then I get the "NTLDR is missing" error...

 

I don't think Windows creates a synced gpt and mbr like OSX does... Is there any way to manually sync the GPT and MBR?

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Couple of questions:

 

I have been very interested in running my Notebook as a GPT drive. It's currently a 160gb SATA on MBR with OSX 10.5.5 and Windows 7 using PC_EFIv9 as the bootloader. Windows 7 is 32bits.

 

Since 7 is still in pre beta i can't find much info on installing it to a GPT drive. I might do it as soon as i backup all my stuff.

 

What do you mean by Diskutility creating a synced MBR/GPT drive?? As far as i know, 7 would act as Vista32bit when installing so what are the odds of it working?

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get it working on asus P5K Pro.

 

But i have to install XP x86 in IDE mode. Behind i have to install manually the AHCI Drivers to XP to get it work in AHCI mode.

 

But i cant use XP Boot Camp in VMware fusion because i get a boot0. error because XP has no activ flag.

 

How could i change the flag in a GUID table Disk or is there a way to get it work?

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I only have 1 drive. There is no way to install OSX into an MBR partition, I have to use a GUID partition table.

 

I found I was getting the error above when trying to use the XP to partition the drive, I tried again with diskutil, and it see's a fat32 partition.

 

Now, I can get as far as the first reboot, but then I get the "NTLDR is missing" error...

 

I don't think Windows creates a synced gpt and mbr like OSX does... Is there any way to manually sync the GPT and MBR?

MikeHunt,

 

XP will only create a MBR drive.

 

I'm not sure why you say OSX can't install to MBR. Use diskutility to partition the drive but select the options button near the bottom of the diskutility partition window and you can choose MBR for the partition type. OSX installs fine to MBR - just make the partition for OSX HFS+.

 

If you really want to use GUID try what I described earlier in this thread - use diskutility to partition the drive with 3 partitions - HFS+ for OSX and two FAT32 partitions. Install OSX to the HFS+ partition and also install chameleon. After install set the second FAT32 partition as the active partition using FDISK and then install XP to that partition formating it as NTFS during install. You will need to use AHCI and F6 during install to install AHCI mode drivers for your XP install. When the XP install is done you will need to reinstall Chameleon and then you can use Darwin to boot OSX or XP.

 

SMF

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Great news guys :)

 

I downloaded Windows 7 Build 6965 off a torrent site and formatted my drive as a GUID drive as follows:

 

1:200MB GPT Protected

2:15GB Mac OSX

3:128mb Unallocated (i dont know why it created that...)

4:133GB Windows 7 6965

 

Windows installed perfectly fine no problems, no warnings, nothing. I can dualboot OSX and 7 on my GPT drive now :)

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  • 9 months later...
Great news guys :(

 

I downloaded Windows 7 Build 6965 off a torrent site and formatted my drive as a GUID drive as follows:

 

1:200MB GPT Protected

2:15GB Mac OSX

3:128mb Unallocated (i dont know why it created that...)

4:133GB Windows 7 6965

 

Windows installed perfectly fine no problems, no warnings, nothing. I can dualboot OSX and 7 on my GPT drive now :D

 

I assume that you installed Windows 7 x86, is this correct?

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