Tri boot Mavericks, Catalina (Or any other 13.5 or higher), with Windows 7

[Jeff__100]

Hello, I am trying to Have 3 different installs on my mac book pro (2014 mid). I have been able to use and install Mavericks; I have installed windows 7 normally with mavericks. Everything had worked, until I tried to install Catalina. I want to boot from windows 7 as my main os, Mavericks as my 2nd, and any other Mac os that can run the current version of Final cut pro, and compressor.

Here is the process of events.

I have installed Osx Mavericks, then windows 7 with the boot camp installer. (I had to installer the drivers by hand, and delete the applessd.sys file from system 32, not part of any problem, but something to take note of just in case). Both os’s are working normal. I then try to resize my primary mac partition from 60 gigs to 25, after that I install Mac os Catalina on the new space I have created. I select the Catalina os at boot time, and notice that the windows boot option is missing. I go back and try to use the boot camp installer in mavericks. I get the error message saying I can install windows onto the disk as it’s not one single partition. I know that the boot camp installer uses something called a “uefi mbr hybrid” partition scheme, and I’m not too sure how it works. I would assume it changes something in the boot loader to show that windows is Available. I have check my dis, and the partition is still there, with all the data too (don’t worry about any personal files, I don’t have any on the entire pc).

So, my question if windows 7 can been installed to a mac book pro that has a different partition scheme then what the boot camp installer wants, being able to boot more then 2 different os’s.

My other question is if can Windows 7 be installed onto a different disk then just mavericks. I would assume you could copy the boot camp installer from mavericks to a newer mac os, (That does not use the APFS, and does use HFS). As I assume that the installer would have trouble installing anything on a non Hfs disk.

My last question is if windows 7 can be installed in Uefi mode. Without using bootcamp. I have installed windows 7 in uefi before, but not on a Mac. Would this be possible?

My goal is to try and Try boot all 3 os's. I thank everyone who can help me, and answers my questions.

 

[Jeff__100]

Can someone help me please?

 

[carylee2002]

There maybe a conflict of having two different Apple OS in your system. It maybe apples programming that only allows one Apple OS and one Microsoft via bootcamp. You may have to just have to install the most the other Apple OS a zipdrive or external HD.

 

[Snowlover]

If I were trying this, I would :
1. clone my mac installs to external drive(s) using carbon copy cloner.
2.Use windows installer to erase internal drive , format and install windows.
3. Use free MiniTool partition wizard to create free space at the end of the windows partition.
4. Boot into mavericks clone, use disk utility to partition the free space hfs+ , and clone mavericks back onto that partition.
5. Boot into new Mavericks internal partition, use disk utility to create new apfs partition for catalina.
6. Boot into catalina clone, and clone it back to internal apfs partition.

Now you will have a triple boot set up that shouldn't affect your windows install if you decide to change anything on the mac partitions.

 

[istme1]

hi there, i read your past reply and just posting to ask your opinion if you can help me on another triboot with different setup in a recent post of mine. thanks

tri boot with ssd and hdd thread

 

[schnaps]

I don't know about MBP 2014, but on MBP 2012 I install Windows 7 before.
The only difference is in the drivers. More on that below.

But I didn't install it via Bootcamp installer, but use WinClone. I created a regular partition on the disk, deployed a previously prepared Windows 7 image, downloaded from somewhere, probably for Mac 2010. After rebooting into Windows, I installed the drivers and activated it.
WinClone somehow corrects the partition with Windows so that it boots, and can also fix a broken boot.

I'm sure that you can install Windows on MBP 2014 this way too. But whether all the drivers will be found for it is another question. Video and Wi-Fi drivers definitely exist, but I'm not sure about sound, touchpad, etc.
I selected the drivers manually from the Bootcamp packages , and also searched the Internet by hardware ID.

To prevent Bootcamp broken boot after changing other partitions, there should be more than 4 partitions of any size on the disk before installing Windows.
For example: [Macos] [Bootcamp] [any] [any] [any].
With this option, after installing Windows, other partitions can be deleted, added, and resized, and used to install any supported versions of MacOS or Linux.

ps: Two versions of Windows can only be installed on different phisical drives on multi-drive Macs only.