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View Full Version : OSx86 10.6 Install on HP Win Vista Computer


thefan
09-07-2009, 01:42 AM
Okay, I need some help. Before you tell me to read some guide, I have read pretty much every guide in the first five pages of this forum section and insanelymac's forum section dedicated to SL on OSx86.

The problem is, I'm not sure how I should go about installing 10.6 because of the semi-unique way my computer is set up.

I have one fixed SATA hard drive on my computer. It has four partitions:
-WindowsVista (100 GB)
-OSX-Leopard (100 GB)
-Documents (91 GB)
-Recovery (8GB) - Windows Vista restore partition

The hard drive is set up as MBR, which I have heard causes problems.

I also have a 160 GB (really like 149 because of decimal/binary systems) external hard drive with 110 GB available, and a 1GB flash drive that my BIOS recognizes - I assume it can boot)

Other specs are: Intel C2D E6320, 2GB RAM, integrated audio (needs taruga patcher), and NVidia 8600 GT (needs Zephyroth's NVidia patcher for QE/CI)

I want to install Snow Leopard with as little data loss as possible, but I realize that it is likely that I will lose a lot of Leopard data, and perhaps have to deal with the winload.exe bugger again.

I CANNOT lose my Documents partition, though. I could probably back it up on my external hard drive, but it is imperative that I keep it. I don't care as much about Vista, Windows 7 is approaching, and I still have my restore DVD on hand.

I don't know how MBR and my want to keep the Documents and Recovery partitions will play out in installing SL. Would I repartition my external hard drive to have my original stuff along with a 10GB partition (bootable install disk restored here) and a larger partition to install it to, then restore the install partition to my current OSX partition? Or something else completely, like converting my HD to GUID or something?

OSx86 is very confusing for me. It was easier with iATKOS around, but vanilla is all the rage these days and it seems as if those "distros" are not being made anymore.

What I'd like to know is a good way that I could possibly install Snow Leopard onto my computer. I'd be extremely grateful for any help that anybody could provide for my problem.

thefan
09-10-2009, 06:06 AM
Bump? Sorry if this is against forum rules... It's just been 3 days...

thorazine74
09-10-2009, 08:22 AM
You need to modify a file (OSInstall.mpkg) in SnowLeo to be able to install it on a MBR style disk. If you do that you should have no troubles installing it in a MBR partition. If you can do that you could install it straight to the the Leopard partition.
I would not dare to convert the whole disk to GPT without having a backup of the important files, besides you could have troubles booting Vista 32 bits from a GPT disk.
Your plan to install it to the external and then restore the partition to the internal seems the best bet.