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Jun 14

Dual boot Vista & OS X86 w/ Darwin Bootloader

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We’ll talk here about the most easy and clean way to dual boot Vista & OS X86.
And guess what boot manager we will use? Yes, Darwin Bootloader from OS X.

You will need for this tutorial:

- Windows Vista installation DVD
- JaS OS X86 10.4.X installation DVD

I recommend the following disk partitioning:

- 3 primary partitions: 1- Windows Vista / 2 - OS X86 / 3 - OS X86
- 1 extended partition (containing several HFS+ or FAT32 or NTFS partitions)

Having 2 primary OS X86 partitions is really cool for testing new OS X86 install.
For instance, you can have Mac OS X86 10.4.9 running on the first, and the latest
Leopard WWDC Preview build 9A466 running on the second… ;-)

Click on the link above to read the full tutorial in the extended post.Thank you for looking further in this post, let’s begin the tutorial.

Step 1: Install OS X86 10.4.x on the second primary partition

Step 2: Make the first primary partition active to install Vista

Boot up OS X and in a terminal window,

sudo fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0
flag 1
quit
reboot

Step 3: Install Vista on the first primary partition

Step 4: Restore OS X86 in the MBR

Boot off JaS OS X86 dvd in single user mode (press F8 & type -s). At single user prompt,

fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0
flag 2
update
write
quit
reboot

Step 5: Make the first partition active back to boot up Vista

At this point OS X86 should boot up and in a terminal window,

sudo fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0
flag 1
quit
reboot

Step 6: Restore Vista on the MBR

Upon reboot, Vista will show “\Window\system32\winload.exe” corrupted.
Insert Vista disc & follow directions to recover.
Reboot & check that Vista boots up fine.

Step 7: Make second primary partition active to use Darwin Bootloader

Boot off JaS OS X86 dvd in single user mode again (press F8 & type -s). At single user prompt,

fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0
flag 2
quit
reboot


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written by macgeek

One Ping to “Dual boot Vista & OS X86 w/ Darwin Bootloader”

  1. Mac OS X86 and Vista in perfect harmony at kyleabaker.com Says:
    August 12th, 2008 at 1:37 pm

    [...] loader to dual boot Vista and OSX. You can find a guide for this here. There are also plenty of other guides out there that you can [...]


15 Responses to “Dual boot Vista & OS X86 w/ Darwin Bootloader”

  1. 1. Henry Says:
    July 1st, 2007 at 1:58 pm

    How can I obtain this OSX86 installation DVD? I doubt Apple sells it and I can’t seem to find a torrent. Anyone have a link they want to share?

  2. 2. macgeek Says:
    July 6th, 2007 at 7:28 am

    http://www.demonoid.com/files/details/1204936/826386/

  3. 3. Totte Says:
    June 4th, 2008 at 8:24 am

    Thank you very much!

  4. 4. Bule Says:
    June 8th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    Hello from Bosnia
    http://www.zeragbi.blogspot.com

  5. 5. Moon Says:
    June 28th, 2008 at 11:26 am

    OMG!!
    I love you so much!

    This is the only thing that works as I wanted. It’s working unlike easyBCD crap! Thank you thank youi

  6. 6. QuickQuestion Says:
    July 6th, 2008 at 10:54 pm

    Thanks to your guide I got dual boot running on a ThinkPad T61.

    Do you know how I can have the darwin loader boot windows by default?

    Thanks!

  7. 7. click2max Says:
    July 26th, 2008 at 9:42 am

    hai all,

    i installed MacOs X leopard 10.5 in my desktop succesfully.i already having ubuntu and windows XP in my system. i am not able to boot into MacOS from the boot start up…can anyone help me..”when am clickin into MacOS link in the boot loader am getting a message tht “NLTR is missing”…waiting for ur replay…

  8. 8. McMillan Says:
    August 25th, 2008 at 6:19 am

    You’ve messed up something with directions on where the system files/partiton are. Ntldr is a file used by win2000 and xp in order to boot win.
    Boot with osx dvd and flag the correct partition and you’ll be able to boot osx and all other os’s trough Darwin.

  9. 9. X Says:
    August 30th, 2008 at 10:44 am

    This works great, however I’d like Vista to be the default selection in the Darwin/x86 boot menu. How can I change this to be the default selection?

  10. 10. kapil Says:
    September 6th, 2008 at 5:43 am

    i have two sata hdds, one with mac os x 10.5 loaded and the other with windows vista. when i connect them both only vista starts up. how can i get the dual boot option?

  11. 11. ncnoman Says:
    September 9th, 2008 at 3:56 pm

    to X:
    some people on the web say you can add kernel flags to your mac OS’s com.apple.Boot.plist file to set other BSD partitions to boot by default.
    I’ve tried this and gotten kernel panics when using that method to boot Windows.
    google editing com.apple.Boot.plist for more info.
    I put a Timeout string and key of 5 seconds in my Boot file. this makes it so you can have 5 seconds before boot up. If you install mac after windows the installer will automatically write Darwin to the MBR. Mac is always the default but who cares?, you are sitting in front of your computer when you turn it on right?

    to kapil:
    you have 2 physical discs. I personally think that is the best way to dual boot, because you don’t have to do it by bootloaders if your BIOS allows you to select individual drives to boot from. it’s how i do it on my desktop where i can have multiple hard drives. check you BIOS and see if you have the option to have a SPECIFIC hard drive in the boot order. this will make it so you just change the hard drive that boots, (say SATA 0 or SATA 1)

  12. 12. Chris S Says:
    September 13th, 2008 at 12:32 pm

    After completing step 4, I can no longer boot into OS X. It just puts me back into Vista without any Darwin countdown. And from Vista it won’t allow me to modify anything with BCDedit or easyBCD saying “The boot configuration data store could not be opened. The requested system device cannot be found.” so attempting http://dailyapps.net/2008/03/hack-attack-dual-boot-leopard-and-windows-vista/ this method hasn’t worked. Nor can I boot into -s single user mode from the DVD as I get a “still waiting for root device error” that I haven’t been able to fix (I installed OS X by plugging the hard drive into a friend’s computer that didn’t have that error, installing, then returning it to mine).
    I have Vista on a primary master IDE, and OS X on a SATA.

  13. 13. Tpain Says:
    September 18th, 2008 at 8:40 am

    how do you install OS X86 to second partition. i can’t even get it to install

  14. 14. tH0pAp Says:
    September 18th, 2008 at 9:02 am

    Thank you so much, i was looking months looking for this and it works fuck…ng great, thank you

    tH0PaP

  15. 15. admin Says:
    September 18th, 2008 at 6:49 pm

    @Tpain, if you got a Core2Duo processor, you could run a vanilla Kernel (unmodified/unpatched) and be able to partition your drive using GUID Partition scheme which will allow you to repartition your disk with Disk utility from the Apple Mac OS X Install DVD. Then you can simply install Mac OS X on the first partition, and Windows on the second ;) Then be sure to mark the Mac OS X partition as active, and you will have Darwin bootloader as dual boot manager. Go Vanilla if you can afford it, it much simpler and close to a real mac!

    @tH0PaP You’re welcome man!

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