I am trying a long time now to have a dual booting system with Vista and Leopard. I have already installed Vista and I have installed later Leopard.

Until now I haven't succeed to enable dual booting on my system and even Ihaven't succeed to boot to Leopard without the installation DVD.

I have decided to start from the beginning and make clean install for both systems Vista and Leopard in the same drive in different partitions.

What is the best guid that I can use which is going to be 100% working since I don't want to spend one day with installations of operating systems and software and not working at the end.

Since I can't get a working reply for dual boot, can someone give my the below info.

Please advice the way that I can change the active partition from MAC terminal, in order not to have to put the Vista installation DVD in order to change it.

Thanks

There is a way to dual boot XP (I know you want Vista, but this might work) and Mac OS X using Windows´ boot loader. If you have both systems installed, use this tutorial: http://www.digitmemo.com/articles/658/howto-the-complete-mac-leopard-installation-and-windows-multi-boot-setup-guide/

The trick is `tboot´, that allows you to boot Mac OS X from Windows Boot Loader.

D.

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Gigabyte P35C-DS3R
Intel Core2Duo Quad 6600 OC@3GHz
3GB RAM
nVidia 9800 GTX+ 1GB
2 x 1 TB Samsung F1 (SATA)

one question is this going to be on the same hard drive or 2 different ones?

your best bet with booting with the vista boot loader is use easybcd, it is simple as can be to add an OS to the windows bootloader

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Current Rigs:
Main Hack:
Processor:Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale
Motherboard:Gigabyte EP35-DS3L
Ram: Gskill 4GB DDRII 800 PC2-6400
Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB
Running Retail OSX 10.5.6 PC-EFI V9

TV Hack:
Processor: AMD Athlon x2 3800+
Motherboard: MSI K9mm-V
Ram: 1GB DDR2 667
Video Card:ATI Radeon X1650 (AGP)
Running iDeneb 10.5.6 with Voodoo XNU 9.5.0 Kernel

laxattack, the problem is that the default os that darwin boots is Windows NTFS. I want it to boot Leopard by default anytime I select Leopard from the Windows bootloader. It seems like I ran out of options. I also tried GRUB by installing sabayon linux, and the same issue appears. Is there any way I can make darwin boot Leopard by default (without me pressign enter and selecting the appropriate O/S), instead of Windows Vista? Please let me know thanks. I will be posting a screenshot of what I mean in the next post.

never mind, I just fixed it (now I have mac osx, windows on one disk) all I did was the following is -s mode.

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

that's all =)

I have made previous post in another discussion in the forum, that I have tried easyBCD, sudo within the Leo install DVD, format my disk partition my disk with Guid and mbr, but no luck at all with dual boot.

So since it seams impossible to configure my pc to dual boot, so instead of this I can change each time the active partition and boot to the other OS, but I don't know how to I do this within Leopard from Terminal.

What was exactly your problem? Maybe you can give me a working solution.

SOLUTION for Dual/Triple booting Mac OS X, Windows, Linux (All distributions)
This tutorial is subject to future revisions by WinLinMac01
===========
IMPORTANT (Backup up all existing data before proceeding with the procedures below)
Tutorial created by: WinLinMac01

1). Download and Burn a bootable copy of Acronis Disk Director

2). Assuming that your hard drive is fully formated with zeros, insert your Mac OS X DIsk and press ENTER when the disk starts up.

3). Select your language and in the next screen, go into Disk Utility.

4). Create one HFS+ Journaled partition dedicated to Mac OS X.

5). For the remaining space, set that as Free Space--> Before you commit the changes, in options, choose the MBR Partitioning Scheme.

6). Quit Disk Utility, and quit the installer.

7). Now, insert your Acronis Disk, and go into disk's safe mode when the menu appears.

8). You will see the already created Mac OS X partition, but the remaining Free Space is unallocated.

9). Create one NTFS partition using that Free Space, This NTFS partition is only for Vista/XP. Create other necessary partitions after setup is successfully completed. (NOTE: If you are planning to use Linux, you will have to leave some Free Space, Do NOT create an Ext3 partition YET)

10). Now is the time to reinsert your Mac OS X DVD.

11). Select the appropriate packages and install on the OS X partition you created.

12). After installation, heres a tip, you can quit the registration by simply doing Command-Q.

13). After configuring your post-installation, it is optional if you want to install the latest kernel, 9.2.2.

14). The main thing now, is to go into disk utility again, and format the NTFS partition you created for Windows Vista as FAT (MS-DOS).

15). Now it is time to insert your Windows Vista DVD.

16). When you get into the partition selection, highlight the partition you created in Disk Utility (FAT). Format that partition as NTFS.

17). Now you should be able to install Windows Vista without any problems. Note that this will overwrite the existing MBR that Mac OS X configured initially.

FOR USERS DUAL BOOTING JUST MAC & WINDOWS ON ONE DISK READ BELOW, FOR THOSE THAT WANT TO TRIPLE BOOT, SKIP THE FOLLOWING STEPS, AND RESUME AFTER STEP 21)
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18). After installation is complete, and after confirming that your installation is successful, restart and insert your Mac OS X DVD.

19). Instead of Booting of the DVD, press F8 and boot with -s.

20). To use the Darwin bootloader, you will have to write a new MBR. Follow the commands below-

fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0
flag 1
write
yes
quit
reboot

21). Now after reboot, you should see the Darwin bootloader active again, and when you press enter, Windows NTFS will be the foreign O/S installed on your system in addition to Mac OS X. By default, after 8 seconds, Darwin should boot off the Mac OS X partition. However, you can always select the Windows Vista partition anytime you have to access that O/S.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

22). Insert your Linux DVD after you are done installing Windows Vista

23). Follow the prompts as you go along until you select your leftover unpartitioned HD space.

24). Create an Ext3 partition for this installation, instead of swap.

25). Proceed to the bootloader configuration, and select GRUB.

26). If Mac OS X is not on the configuration list, add the boot information manually by going into "edit" or "add."

27). After doing this, GRUB will automatically detect your Mac OS X partition and add it to the grub.conf file after the installation is complete. You really don't have to edit the .conf file, only if you want to change the appearance of the name, timeout seconds, and the default O/S to boot into.

28). Proceed with the installation for Linux (any distribution).

29). After installation is complete, you SHOULD be able to see three options to choose from the GRUB bootloader list.

30). Windows Vista will be displayed as Other, unless you change this manually to Microsoft Windows Vista manually in the grub.conf file.

If you are going to tri-boot Mac OS X, Windows Vista, and Linux, do steps 18-21 in Darwin after selecting Mac OS X Leopard from the GRUB Bootloader. That way, by default, the Darwin will boot Leopard instead of Windows Vista. Because chances are the default value may be set to Vista. Therefore, performing those steps should resolve your problem if you face any.
================================================== ============

After all of these procedures are completed, you should be able to enjoy and the most of your system on just one hard drive.

I hope this helps, and this tutorial once again was written by me, WinLinMac01. =))

-- Enjoy

@WinLinMac01 - I show you new discussion, but will this works if intead of making a fresh installation of Vista will restore an image of them with Ghost?

Since I hate installing all the software and drivers from the beginning.