Installing with 3 partitions

[macorama]

Hello forum,

i don't know if I have done anything wrong except for creating a 3 partion setup. If you try this, you most likely end up with nothing happening when you try booting first time the xp setup. It will hang for over 5 min and nothing will hapen. On second boot it will show some crypting things (at least to me, who is a nobody) like EAX=000322f3 EBX=0005dfc4... Does anyone knows what that means? Does anyone knows if there is a workaround to use more than 2 partions or is it a must have because it is somehow hard coded into the efi?

Best regards,

[macorama]

I've done everything else right, it turns out that it is only possible with two partitions, everything else will fail (that's what I've expierenced).

Hope this will save someone some time ;)

[kami]

dunno what the problem is.
I created 3 partitions: OSX, XP, FAT32
but in windows i only see my xp-partition ... i have no idea why

[jpesteves]

I successfully installed a MacBook Pro and an iMac with 3 partitions
partition 1 - xp (MS-DOS)
partition 2 - osx (HFS+)
partition 3 - data (MS-DOS)

it works fine.
but I had to format it with windows tools to use it, that'all...

Partition 3 is my Windows Drive D:
I use the "data" partition to share docs between OSX and Windows.

Jean-Paul

[harris7]

1. BACKUP OS X WITH CARBON COPY CLONER (external usb works fine)

2. Boot Mac OS X using the backup source

3. Partition the main hard drive to a single partition using disk utility

4. Copy OS X back to the main hard drive using carbon copy cloner

5. Reboot Mac OS X using the main internal hard drive

6. Install rEFIt (third party boot-loader application)
a. download the dmg and run the installer (make sure to install it to your internal hard drive, not the backup usb)
b. open up the Terminal in Mac OS X and type (without the quotes) "cd /efi/refit" and hit enter
c. then type "./enable.sh" and hit enter

7. Reboot into Mac OS X using the main internal hard drive

8. Open up the Terminal again.
a. type 'sudo diskutil resizeVolume /dev/disk0s2 40G "MS-DOS FAT32" data 68G "MS-DOS FAT32" windows 40G' - then hit enter

NOTE: you can replace either of the '40G' or '68G' depending on how large you want your individual partitions to be (in gigabytes) - I used a 160 GB hard drive

b. if prompted for a password, type in your administrator password

9. Reboot into Mac OS X using the main internal hard drive

10. Open up the Terminal again - Now you need to set the last partition active by the following steps
a. type "sudo fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0" and hit enter - you will get an error/warning - ignore it
b. type "p" and hit enter
c. type "f 4" and hit enter
d. type "write" and hit enter
e. type "y" and hit enter
f. type "exit" and hit enter

11. insert the Windows XP SP2 install cd and reboot, selecting to boot from the cd when the rEFIt screen pops up. (NOTE: if at any time you have a black screen for more than 30 seconds, simply turn off the power and restart and it should work. Hopefully you have a backup of your Mac OS X still on the usb so that your nerves don't go ballistic!)

12. Install windows XP on the C: drive formatting it as NTFS (THIS MUST BE THE 4TH PARTITION!!! IF IT ISN'T, YOU HAVE A BIG PROBLEM!!!)

13. Let the installation program restart the computer, now select the windows partition from Partition 4 and continue with the installation (again, my computer showed a black screen for awhile at this point, but after turning off power and restarting, it worked fine)

14. Windows will reboot once more after completing the installation. Again select the windows partition from Partition 4

15. If windows boots up without problems, you are almost finished. First make sure that you can see the data drive from My Computer (IT WON'T WORK YET THOUGH)

16. Reboot into Mac OS X

17. Open Terminal once again.
a. type 'sudo diskutil eraseVolume "MS-DOS FAT32" data /dev/disk0s3'

you can call it whatever you want (just type your customer name in place of 'data' above)

18. It should now appear on your Mac desktop as well as your windows desktop when you reboot into windows.

[botanick]

1. BACKUP OS X WITH CARBON COPY CLONER (external usb works fine)

2. Boot Mac OS X using the backup source

.
.
.

18. It should now appear on your Mac desktop as well as your windows desktop when you reboot into windows.

Harris7, thanks for the clear and detailed instructions. Helped a lot! I just finished the winXP setup on my 17inch iMAC. Flawless, did not even get a black screen during installation... works great!