Triple booting mac mini with windows xp, 7 and SL.

[almac68]

Hi all,

I managed to finally installed 3 OSes into my mac mini but not all in the same disk. I basically dual boot windows xp and windows 7 from internal disk and SL from external FW drive with another partition for data.

So far I have done this without installing bootcamp into my windows. I partitioned the internal drive with Disk Utility and formatted with NTFS-3G. I don't want to install via bootcamp as bootcamp may mess up my drive and render my windows unbootable. So I am trying to install all the drivers from SL DVD one by one. So far so good as I managed to install the Broadcom network driver and the Nvidia Graphic driver. Can you guys advice me on how to proceed at this stage? I basically copied all the drivers from my SL disk onto my wndows desktop and trying to retrieve each driver. But there are so many. Which do I install specific to mac mini.

If this is done correctly, when I press option key at startup, I am presented with windows and OSX. When I select windows, it will again give another option to either boot into windows xp or windows 7.

Not sure if anyone has done this. But I have read many people doing triple boot on one internal HDD. Thought this is easier but you do need an external drive though.

Any comments and advice on how to proceed to fully setup my triple boot? Thanks.

Alex

 

[Omega777]

XP, Windows 7 and Snow Leopard - Triple Boot SUCCESSFUL!

Alex,

I have actually just produced a true, working triple boot of Windows XP Pro x86, Windows 7 x64 Ultimate and OSX 10.6.2 on my 15" MacBook Pro. Let me begin by saying it was quite painful...it seems few individuals have the need for XP or for putting two MS O/Ss on their machine as few posts exists on how to actually do it with these 3 O/Ss. Many people seem to have suggestions without actually doing it. Here's what I did:

1. Repartition and Reinstall (actually did this about 12 times yesterday). I have a 320 GB HDD so I simply divided each partition equally using the Disk Utility with my Snow Leopard installation disc. Create first partition with Mac OS extended journal. Create the other two in MS-DOS FAT. After that, i installed OSX.

2. Download and Install rEFIt. Just google it, download it and install it.

3. Windows XP. Restart and hold option to boot from Windows XP install disc. Probably could use rEFIt menu to do this, but i didn't. Dunno why. Anyway, this is where it gets wierd....I began the install on the last partition, formatting in NTFS. When it rebooted (held option and used rEFIt menu to select the windows partition), i got NTLDR error.....no joy.

4. Windows 7. But i marched on anyway installing Windows 7 on the other partition formatting in NTFS as well. This time i used rEFIt menu to select the correct partition assuming to get the same results as XP install. IT WORKED! Windows 7 continued installing and booted fine. I installed Boot Camp drivers from OS/X disc at this point. Reboot.

5. Anomolous? At the rEFIt menu i selected the failed XP install partition....to my amazement it continued to install. I AM MAN!!! Installed Boot Camp drivers from OS/X disc. Called it a day.

Conclusion: All though this is not all inclusive and results may vary, this is what worked for me. I now can boot into all 3 O/Ss flawlessly.

GOOD LUCK!!