Extremely Easy Triple boot guide (XP, VISTA, LEOPARD)

[wigworm]

I'm assuming that you start with either a XP or Vista. Within a hour, you will have a system that's running all 3 OS (XP, Vista and Leopard) and you will have a boot screen (an Vista boot screen) that let you choose which OS to boot.

 

If you want a real easy and problem free triple boot system, shell out a few bucks to get a separate hard drive for Leopard. From what I see, if you like the OS so much, that's the least respect you can show for it. It will save you countless hours of headache and your Leopard will roar much much happier. Sorry Laptop guys, this guide won't help you at this moment.

 

I'm a total noob, and I started off in this scene a few months ago when I experimented with Tiger. During the time I built a few systems using different hardware and experimented with different configurations. Now I'm running Leopard, Vista and XP on a Gigabyte P35-DS3L board which is a very common board. Best that you have a Intel CPU (duo core of some sort) to run Leopard smoothly. Nothing else really matters as I found that you can find a solution for everything.

 

OK, first, let's install Leopard:

1. Connect your new hard drive to any available port (SATA or IDE). Boot into your XP or Vista, use some sort of Partition software to partition the new harddrive into FAT32 and flag it bootable. You can use any partition software, such as partition magic or Gparted live CD. Doesn't matter. As long as it is one big primary partition of FAT32 and it is flagged as bootable.

 

2. Disconnect all other hard drive and only connect your new MAC (that's how I named it) drive and DVD Rom. Pop into your favorite Leopard installation DVD and start installation. I used iATKOS simply because I had good experience with uphuck's previous release.

 

3. Erase your MAC drive in Mac OS extended Journaled format in disk utility and go back to utility and install Darwin Bootloader. I'm not sure about other installation releases may have darwin bootloader integrated, but with the first iATKOS release, you need to manually install it from utility. Also, you may choose if you wish to install EFI emulation or not. If you wish to go with Stock(vanilla kernel) which promises more stability and speed (which I doubt but I installed anyway), you must install EFI emulation for easy future update (such as leopard 1.5.2... )

 

4. Now proceed to main installation. Choose only the main package, choose no driver or patch. You can always go back to add driver or patch. I found throug experience that less is often more. Wrong driver often gives you grey apple. Once you finished installation, reboot without the DVD disk in them. You should be able to boot into your new Leopard now. If you can't even see the grey apple, you either forgot to install Darwin bootloader or didn't flag your drive as bootable.

 

5. If you only see grey apple but either getting the restart or nothing, reboot into verbose mode (-v at boot screen) and see where you got stuck. Most likely it's the video card driver as Darwin will boot without sound card or lan card being functioning. But it won't boot into desktop if a video card driver of some sort can be used. Time to hunt for video card driver then. For X19xx series, use Jccool's package, for X88xx series, use nvinject (add your device id), for x8800 GT, use Leopard 1.5.2 GeForce kext package and openGL framework package. All can be found in this forum.

 

6. Let's proceed with triple boot process. You can always tweak your Leopard to perfection later on. Now Connect your window harddrive back to your motherboard. Go into bios and change the boot sequence to Window harddrive first as sometimes bios changed during the Leopard installation process.

 

If you already had a vista installed and don't want to install XP and are fine with dual boot with Leopard and vista, skip to step 10.

 

7.a. If you have only XP, now disconnect your Leopard harddrive from motherboard, you can either use a separate harddrive or you can create a new partition on the XP drive to install Vista.

7.b. If you have only Vista, same thing, disconnect your Leopard drive, install XP either on separation partition or totally separate hard drive.

 

8. If you had XP first and Vista after, your vista boot will be fine without fixing. If you had Vista first but installed XP later, you will need to pop in your Vista installation disk and do a repair and it will fix your vista boot.

 

9. Connect back your MAC drive and reboot into Vista. Once you boot up Vista, download the latest version of EasyBCD and install it on your Vista. Run it and check if you have already boot entry for both Vista and XP and have Vista as default. If you don't, add XP in your boot entry in "add/remove entries" section.

 

10. Ok, download and run EasyBCD if you haven't done so in step 9, in "add/remove entries" section, under "add an entry", click on Mac OS X, and choose generic x86 PC in platform, do not use auto configure setting, instead, manually set the the hard drive number and partition number. Here's how it is: if your MAC drive is plugged into the second (SATA or IDE) slot, pick hard drive number "1". And then pick partition number "1" as you only had one big partition for that drive remember? Click on "add entry" button and close EASYBCD.

 

Reboot and you will see a nice triple boot option and test to make sure all 3 can boot up respectively.

 

Notes: if you are using a mother board with Intel ICH9 chipset, unless you patched the kext, your Leopard will not be able to see the Last 2 SATA ports, very important. To solve this problem, you either patch the kext for Intel ICH9 or never ever ever put your MAC drive on the last two SATA port. You may put any other drive on the last two port (namely vista or XP).

 

That's it. Post your question here and I may have left out some info. I'm very new to guide writing and I'm kinda lazy. You have to hunt all the patches and drivers in this forum as everyone's system is different.

[arob92]

thank you....i am sure this guide will be very helpful to many people!

[dnjmarlboro]

Hi,

i installed Vista on HDD plugged at SATA3 and Leo on HDD plugged at SATA1.

I'm able to boot either Vista or OSX by selecting the right HDD in Bios Bootselect.

 

I used EasyBCD many times before, but using EasyBCD like described with my new Leo install i will get a HFS+ Partition error. Before i was running 10.4.10 and EasyBCD worked like a charm. Must be something with my Leo install using GUID and EFI.

[wigworm]

Hi,

i installed Vista on HDD plugged at SATA3 and Leo on HDD plugged at SATA1.

I'm able to boot either Vista or OSX by selecting the right HDD in Bios Bootselect.

 

I used EasyBCD many times before, but using EasyBCD like described with my new Leo install i will get a HFS+ Partition error. Before i was running 10.4.10 and EasyBCD worked like a charm. Must be something with my Leo install using GUID and EFI.

In EasyBCD, make sure you selected the correct Hard Drive number and partition number. In your case, if you OSX is in the first SATA port, you should select hard drive number "0" as the count start with "0" then "1" ... so on so forth. But your partition number would be "1" as the count start with "1" then "2" ... so on so forth.

 

Also, I would highly recommand that you put Vista on first SATA port and your OS X on the second. EasyBCD creates a file called: nst_mac.mbr and I think it put it in the root of first primary drive. Come to think of it, you may also want to partition your MAC drive to FAT32 as this should only work in MBR scheme. Your suspicion may be right.

[121fred]

How is this done? - patch the kext for Intel ICH9

 

cheers

[wigworm]

use the appleviaata.kext from kalyway leopard distro, here's the file:

link to the file

[Yoru]

This will work with Linux instead of XP?

[Badie05]

I will try this on my future build to boot Vista Ultimate 64Bit SP1 and Mac OSX Leopard 10.5.2

[wigworm]

This will work with Linux instead of XP?

 

I believe so, if you install EasyBCD and use Vista boot mgr you can add an linux boot entry and it should work just as well

[NemiCustom]

I have a 680i Mobo, same processor as you, and a 8800 GTS 640mb, i have iAtkos 1.0 i tihnk it is and i burned but ewverytime i try to boot up the disc, the screen flashes white with an apple logo, and then my computer begins to boot all over again, and this repeats any tips? am i missing anything? im new to this

[wigworm]

boot into verbose mode and try to see where it got stuck.

 

When you boot up your installation dvd, while it's counting down, press F8 then key in -v then enter. Also make sure disconnect all other drives from your computer and only connect your dvd drive on IDE master primary and your MAC drive.

[anibalin]

use the appleviaata.kext from kalyway leopard distro, here's the file:

link to the file

 

Hi mate, I have the same mobo P35-DS3L and I used the appleviaata.kext that you posted but sadly nothing changed. I still cannot see whats plugged in the last two sata ports (3 & 4) only 1 & 2 works

Do you happen to know what could be happening? Or maybe do you have the same problem?

[wigworm]

Hi mate, I have the same mobo P35-DS3L and I used the appleviaata.kext that you posted but sadly nothing changed. I still cannot see whats plugged in the last two sata ports (3 & 4) only 1 & 2 works

Do you happen to know what could be happening? Or maybe do you have the same problem?

 

Turn off AHCI mode and turn on SATA native mode in your bios.

[mikeybhoy]

Have tried this using EasyBCD v1.7 and v1.7.1, but I don't get any options under the Mac tab for setting drive or partitions. I only get the generic x86 or Macbook entries, even running in Expert mode, and the option to name the entry whatever I like.

 

What version of EasyBCD did you use that allows you to set the disk and partition under the Mac tab?

[anibalin]

Turn off AHCI mode and turn on SATA native mode in your bios.

 

@wigworm: i tried that but appart from getting a much slower box I only dont get sata 1 and 2 working.

[mtotho]

I dont see any options for choosing hardisk and partition number

[Aratmanecomus]

After gone through the entry part go to diagnostics center button and try to repair OSX HFS+partition error, then choose the correct drive and partition....I guess.

[agentgaurav007]

Hi, great guide but I have one question. At step 6, do I connect the windows hard drive WITH the Mac hard drive or do I just connect it by itself because then in step 9 it says, "Connect back your MAC drive"? Thanks!

[jpdraven421]

There's an even easier way if you are using leopard guys. I just completed this task, well a triple boot NOT using Boot Camp

Here's the steps:

 

1- Setup mac OSX Leopard ( I did not do any updates just Leopard 10.5.2 )

 

2- Install REFIT and WinClone

 

3- Open Boot Camp Utility and partition the drive. The key here is to leave the OSX partition the actual size you want it to be.

 

4- Install Windows XP via Boot Camp. ( MAKE SURE IN XP SETUP TO FORMAT IN NTFS!!!! )

 

5- After XP Installs Load all the drivers from the boot camp CD. ( This is actually the OS Disc that came with your Apple Computer, Disc 1 to be exact )

 

6- Reboot into OSX Leopard

 

7- Open Winclone.

Ok now use Winclone to make a backup Image of your Windows Installation. I saved mine to my desktop. Its about 800MB, I know looks small but trust me its correct. Make sure you have a Winclone Image on your desktop, or wherever you saved it.

Once you have verified you have a disc image go to next step. If you dont have an iamge DO NOT proceed!

 

8- Open Disk Utility

In Disc Utility find the Boot Camp Partition and DELETE IT! Yup I said DELETE it. Now quit Disk Utility and then reopen it.

Ok now go back to the partition menu and add 1 partition. Now add another one. OK If you do this right you should have 3 partitions right now, one for OSX, and 2 new ones of EQUAL size. Once those are created QUIT Disk Utility again and reopen it. OK Now go to the erase menu and choose each NEW partition one at a time and erase them in MS-DOS Fat32 format.

You now have one OSX Partition and 2 MS-DOS FAT32 Partitions. Quit Disk Utility.

 

9- Reboot your Computer and open Winclone

In Winclone RESTORE your image to either of the 2 MS-DOS FAT32 partitions you created.

At this point you should now have 2 Operating Systems resided on 2 partitions with a 3rd empty partition. The Windows XP partition is NOT going to work yet dont worry its normal for a blue screen of death if u attempt to boot into it right now.

We are now gonna fix that.

 

10- Put your Windows XP CD in and boot from it.

Reinstall Windows XP ON TOP of the existing Installation. When Windows XP is finished installing you should be able to boot into it with no problems.

 

11- Eject the XP CD and load the Boot Camp Disk OR Disc 1 that came with your system. This will reinstall the Bootcamp Drivers and all your hardware, EX: Soundcard, Wireless, ETC ETC. ( DO NOT SETUP WINDOWS XP TO LOOK HOW YOU WANT IT YET. )

 

12- Reboot into Leaopard and open WinClone. Make a NEW backup of your windows XP Partiton. This NEW Image will work when you image other partitions AND other identical MAchines!!!!

 

13- Use Winclone to Image this NEW Image to that 3rd empty partition. So now you have 1 OSX partition with Leopard and 2 Windows XP partitions running Windows XP. Now what you ask? SIMPLEEEEEEEEE

 

14- Choose which XP partition you want to Upgrade to Vista and Upgrade it, Its really that freakin simple. Vista will reboot quite a few times during the install so be sure you pick the right partition each time it reboots.

 

15- After Vista finishes run the Boot Camp Disc again to repair any drivers that might not have carried over properly, usually its the sound drivers.

 

16- Finally go back into Leoaprd and use Winclone to make an Image of the Vista Installation.

 

VIOLA YOUR DONE AND ARRE BOOTING IN TRIPLE FASHION!!!!! ENJOY GUYS!

 

15-

 

12-

[jpdraven421]

NEVERMIND lol.

 

Vista and OSX work XP got all Mucked up and doesnt boot. Working on a fix stand by

[venusk]

Hi Wigworm,

 

Great guide, i have couple of questions before starting working on it.

1. As you said i need set this partition as Bootable, but i think in windows their canbe only one bootable partition, how can i do it?

2. Which easybcd version you are talking about because i just downloaded 1.7.1 from neosmart website but its not giving me any option of manually configure drive and partition.

 

please reply

thanx

[rock831983]

Wow..just wow...this was simply one of the most amazing and simplest guide for triple boot. I was so scared, thought would be hell lot of job. But thanks to your guide wigworm I am triple booting Windows Vista, Windows 7 and iAtkos Leopard 10.5.5 with ease. Great guide..thank you

[ProOne]

Thanks a lot. Worked like a charm for my desktop PC.

 

I'm assuming that you start with either a XP or Vista. Within a hour, you will have a system that's running all 3 OS (XP, Vista and Leopard) and you will have a boot screen (an Vista boot screen) that let you choose which OS to boot.

 

If you want a real easy and problem free triple boot system, shell out a few bucks to get a separate hard drive for Leopard. From what I see, if you like the OS so much, that's the least respect you can show for it. It will save you countless hours of headache and your Leopard will roar much much happier. Sorry Laptop guys, this guide won't help you at this moment.

 

I'm a total noob, and I started off in this scene a few months ago when I experimented with Tiger. During the time I built a few systems using different hardware and experimented with different configurations. Now I'm running Leopard, Vista and XP on a Gigabyte P35-DS3L board which is a very common board. Best that you have a Intel CPU (duo core of some sort) to run Leopard smoothly. Nothing else really matters as I found that you can find a solution for everything.

 

OK, first, let's install Leopard:

1. Connect your new hard drive to any available port (SATA or IDE). Boot into your XP or Vista, use some sort of Partition software to partition the new harddrive into FAT32 and flag it bootable. You can use any partition software, such as partition magic or Gparted live CD. Doesn't matter. As long as it is one big primary partition of FAT32 and it is flagged as bootable.

 

2. Disconnect all other hard drive and only connect your new MAC (that's how I named it) drive and DVD Rom. Pop into your favorite Leopard installation DVD and start installation. I used iATKOS simply because I had good experience with uphuck's previous release.

 

3. Erase your MAC drive in Mac OS extended Journaled format in disk utility and go back to utility and install Darwin Bootloader. I'm not sure about other installation releases may have darwin bootloader integrated, but with the first iATKOS release, you need to manually install it from utility. Also, you may choose if you wish to install EFI emulation or not. If you wish to go with Stock(vanilla kernel) which promises more stability and speed (which I doubt but I installed anyway), you must install EFI emulation for easy future update (such as leopard 1.5.2... )

 

4. Now proceed to main installation. Choose only the main package, choose no driver or patch. You can always go back to add driver or patch. I found throug experience that less is often more. Wrong driver often gives you grey apple. Once you finished installation, reboot without the DVD disk in them. You should be able to boot into your new Leopard now. If you can't even see the grey apple, you either forgot to install Darwin bootloader or didn't flag your drive as bootable.

 

5. If you only see grey apple but either getting the restart or nothing, reboot into verbose mode (-v at boot screen) and see where you got stuck. Most likely it's the video card driver as Darwin will boot without sound card or lan card being functioning. But it won't boot into desktop if a video card driver of some sort can be used. Time to hunt for video card driver then. For X19xx series, use Jccool's package, for X88xx series, use nvinject (add your device id), for x8800 GT, use Leopard 1.5.2 GeForce kext package and openGL framework package. All can be found in this forum.

 

6. Let's proceed with triple boot process. You can always tweak your Leopard to perfection later on. Now Connect your window harddrive back to your motherboard. Go into bios and change the boot sequence to Window harddrive first as sometimes bios changed during the Leopard installation process.

 

If you already had a vista installed and don't want to install XP and are fine with dual boot with Leopard and vista, skip to step 10.

 

7.a. If you have only XP, now disconnect your Leopard harddrive from motherboard, you can either use a separate harddrive or you can create a new partition on the XP drive to install Vista.

7.b. If you have only Vista, same thing, disconnect your Leopard drive, install XP either on separation partition or totally separate hard drive.

 

8. If you had XP first and Vista after, your vista boot will be fine without fixing. If you had Vista first but installed XP later, you will need to pop in your Vista installation disk and do a repair and it will fix your vista boot.

 

9. Connect back your MAC drive and reboot into Vista. Once you boot up Vista, download the latest version of EasyBCD and install it on your Vista. Run it and check if you have already boot entry for both Vista and XP and have Vista as default. If you don't, add XP in your boot entry in "add/remove entries" section.

 

10. Ok, download and run EasyBCD if you haven't done so in step 9, in "add/remove entries" section, under "add an entry", click on Mac OS X, and choose generic x86 PC in platform, do not use auto configure setting, instead, manually set the the hard drive number and partition number. Here's how it is: if your MAC drive is plugged into the second (SATA or IDE) slot, pick hard drive number "1". And then pick partition number "1" as you only had one big partition for that drive remember? Click on "add entry" button and close EASYBCD.

 

Reboot and you will see a nice triple boot option and test to make sure all 3 can boot up respectively.

 

Notes: if you are using a mother board with Intel ICH9 chipset, unless you patched the kext, your Leopard will not be able to see the Last 2 SATA ports, very important. To solve this problem, you either patch the kext for Intel ICH9 or never ever ever put your MAC drive on the last two SATA port. You may put any other drive on the last two port (namely vista or XP).

 

That's it. Post your question here and I may have left out some info. I'm very new to guide writing and I'm kinda lazy. You have to hunt all the patches and drivers in this forum as everyone's system is different.