Mac OS X on x86 Hardware 2008–2024 Technical Archive
InfiniteMac OSx86 › OSx86 Core & 10.X › Dual Boot Windows 7 and Snow Leopard on a Dell Dimension E52…
17,622 reads · 2009-08-17 – 2009-10-09
Report 10.X Core Chameleon / Boot-132

Dual Boot Windows 7 and Snow Leopard on a Dell Dimension E520

I am already dual booting 7 and Leopard. But I have a copy of Snow Leopard. Has anyone tried to install snow Leo in a dual boot setup? Is there a guide to do it? If not could someone outline how this could possibly be achieved? Do I need…

Primary Author
@bucketofried Published 2009-08-17
Collection
OSx86 Core & 10.X
Archival Footprint
17,622 historical reads · 5 curated field notes (from 6 dispatches) · 2009-08-17 – 2009-10-09
Credited Voices (4)
@Jabolcnik (2)@thorazine74 (2)@bucketofried@DocShadow

I am already dual booting 7 and Leopard. But I have a copy of Snow Leopard. Has anyone tried to install snow Leo in a dual boot setup? Is there a guide to do it? If not could someone outline how this could possibly be achieved? Do I need to use chameleon 2? Any help tips advice would be great!

Synthesized Community Field Notes

5 technical responses curated from 6 original dispatches

Field Note #1 @DocShadow 2009-08-17

I have Chameleon 2 installed on my boot drive. When I boot into Chameleon I can choose either the OSX or Windows 7 drive.

Field Note #2 @Jabolcnik 2009-10-08 ↳ Re: @DocShadow
@DocShadowI have Chameleon 2 installed on my boot drive. When I boot into Chameleon I can choose either the OSX or Windows 7 drive.

Can you please post how did you did that? What is you configuration?
I'm trying to achive that on single drive - partitioned in GPT scheme, but my last 3 attempts does'nt work. :

What is your boot partition? EFI or Snow Leopard?

By

Field Note #3 @thorazine74 2009-10-08

You can multiboot Leo & Snow from a single chameleon with a bit of trouble when it comes to loading the right kexts, other than that it would depend on your disk an partition layout how to do it.
If you boot from EFI partition you should be able to just install it to a new partition and split the Extra folder into 10.5/10.6 subfolders.

Field Note #4 @Jabolcnik 2009-10-08

I'm asking how the heck did he manage to dual boot Windows 7 and Snow leopard.

Field Note #5 @thorazine74 2009-10-09

I thought you wanted to triple boot, I guess I didnt read it right.
I think you misread too as it looks like the OP has separate HDs, which is kinda easy with chameleon.
If you are multibooting Windows 7 & Leo from a single GPT drive you maybe have one of those hybrid GPT-MBR partition tables, maybe thats what screwing you when you install Snow.
How is your partition layout? What do you have in EFI partition, Windows 7 bootmgr or chameleon? I think in either case you would need to update chameleon in the right partition, after installing snow, but I'm just guessing...
Sorry I'm not familiar with GPT/MBR hybrids, it looks too complicated and "hacky" to be stable to me.

Sources & Contributor Provenance (4 credited usernames · Thread #3670)
UsernameDossier ContributionDispatchesActive Window
@JabolcnikContributor22009-10-08
@thorazine74Contributor22009-10-08 → 2009-10-09
@bucketofriedPrimary Author12009-08-17
@DocShadowContributor12009-08-17