Need to set up triple boot after BC

[5683565]

Hi all,

I've done this before, but it was so long ago I can't remember what I did in Windows to get things to work properly.

I have a MacBook Pro 17" 2011, and I currently have Lion and Windows 7 installed. I want to create a third partition to install Mountain Lion (I have a dev account).

How do I do this without:
a) Reformatting the drive (seems easy in Disk Utility);
b) Destroying the ability to boot into Windows after I've messed up the partition table.

Cheers for any help
J

 

[ajcrow93]

Hi all,

I've done this before, but it was so long ago I can't remember what I did in Windows to get things to work properly.

I have a MacBook Pro 17" 2011, and I currently have Lion and Windows 7 installed. I want to create a third partition to install Mountain Lion (I have a dev account).

How do I do this without:
a) Reformatting the drive (seems easy in Disk Utility);
b) Destroying the ability to boot into Windows after I've messed up the partition table.

Cheers for any help
J

I did this for lion last year, but I can't remember everything I did either.... Haha

I do remember needing to install ReFit though, and that removing the third partition when lion was released was a pain in the bum.

 

[jayhawk11]

Can't you just add the third partition in Disk Utility? It will rewrite the partition table for you as part of that. I don't see why you would have issues, but admittedly I haven't tried it.

 

[Comeagain?]

Can't you just add the third partition in Disk Utility? It will rewrite the partition table for you as part of that. I don't see why you would have issues, but admittedly I haven't tried it.

I think windows gets confused when you mess with that. I remember having issues in the past.

 

[imacken]

Correct! I tried that today and now Windows Bootcamp isn't seen in the Boot options, and what I didn't know is that Bootcamp won't install on a partitioned drive.
Any ideas on this? Someone suggested installing Windows after all the partitioning was done, and getting it to format the drive rather than BCA or Disk Utility, but I don't know if this will show Bootcamp in the boot options.

 

[5683565]

Hmm... Since 10.8 is a fairly minor update (comparatively), perhaps it is stable enough to use as my primary OS.

Any people have issues with the latest Adobe suite?

 

[jayhawk11]

Hmm... Since 10.8 is a fairly minor update (comparatively), perhaps it is stable enough to use as my primary OS.

Any people have issues with the latest Adobe suite?

Had some issues with Flash player, but CS5.5 seemed stable enough. Admittedly, I didn't test it too hard.

 

[5683565]

Hmm, on second thought, I'll just install it on an external hard drive to test it for a little while

 

[imacken]

FWIW I've only had a problem with Parallels 7. It won't even load.
Still, I'm not sure what this has to do with this 'triple boot' thread.

 

[JZTech101]

Doing a Triple Boot

The Windows Drive should still be bootable, in the refit menu, choose sync partition tables. After that, you should be able to boot into Windows. Oh, and by the way, You don't need bootcamp assistant to install Windows on a mac. You do however need BootCamp Drivers, that you will need to have downloaded from somewhere. (I've personally triple booted Lion, Ubuntu and Windows 7). I'm assuming that you can replace ubuntu with Mountain, without any problems.