[jansan]

Gentlemen,
Is there anybody that wants to do something exoctic as just installing and addtitional xp on his macbook?
After 2 days of hours of installing and reading, i am back at square one, a dualbooting osx and xp setup.

I have been using my macbook with XP and OSX for the last 3 months. My job requires me to use XP for business. For many reasons i want to be able to install a second XP and keep the first in pristine condition. And for now do not wish to install vista.

With the instructions on "diskutil resizevolume" i have created 3 visible partitions (apart from the efi partition and 128 mb)
partition 2 osx-hfs
partition 3 ntfs (intended second XP install)
partition 4 ntfs current bootable xp setup

Installation of XP on partition 4 goes without a hitch, and has been working without problems since i bought the macbook.

When i install XP on partition 3, the installation runs until XP wants to reboot and boots for the first time from the partition. then it crashes with saying lsass, password missing, ntldr missing etc.

I was assuming that with rEFIt booting into partition 4 (the last partition as designed by bootcamp) allowed me to select partition 3 and 4 from XP bootmenu (boot.ini), however part4 works fine, part3 doesnt.

Questions:
- Is it possible to have multiple bootable XP partition on my macbook ?
- Is it possible at all to have this setup with XP also booting into an partition3
- Do others have a working setup with xp 32bits?
- Am i forced to install vista and its bootmanager, since i read about this setup enough?
- Is there another bootloader i might try that will give me a osx/xp/xp setup.

Any tips or the multimilliondollar-answer are greatly appreciated.

Jan

[C.A.T.S. CEO]

I don't think its possible, unless you do major hacking.

[peeb]

Could you use an external disc to boot the second XP?

[jansan]

Originally Posted by peeb 

Could you use an external disc to boot the second XP?

Given what i read here and there running it from an external disk must be possible. But that is not the desired result.

My desired setup:
- osx, personal use
- xp, personal use
- xp, business use.

So question possible or not

[Cadaver]

Originally Posted by jansan 

Given what i read here and there running it from an external disk must be possible. But that is not the desired result.

My desired setup:
- osx, personal use
- xp, personal use
- xp, business use.

So question possible or not

Not sure. Apple's Boot Camp setup utility can create only one Windows partition. But, try this...

Set up with Boot Camp a Windows partition big enough to hold both your Windows XP installs (i.e., if you want 10GB for each, set up a 20GB Boot Camp partition).

Insert the Windows XP SP2 install CD and boot the machine according to the Boot Camp utility's instructions.

From the Windows installer, re-partition your new blank 20GB partition in to two partitions (make sure you don't accidentally blow away your MacOS X partition).

Install Windows for personal use on one of those partitions, and Windows for business use on the other.

Not sure if you'll have to use the Windows OS selector to choose which XP install to boot, or if the MacOS's boot selector will work. I have 3 operating systems on my Mac (OS X, Win XP and Win Vista), and each is recognized by the Mac's boot selector (Option key during boot), but each is on a separate hard drive, not all on one drive.

Try it and let us know if it works.

[ghporter]

I don't trust the Windows partition manager to not screw up the rest of the disk. Windows can't even see an HFS+ partition, and in rewriting the drive's partition table it may screw EVERYTHING up.

And Windows does not like booting from an external drive. It "can" be done, but it's a royal PITA to set it up and I wouldn't recommend it. On the other hand, two separate user accounts in XP would be almost as good as two separate instances of XP. You can completely isolate them from each other so that even programs you install in as one user aren't visible to the other (and vice versa of course).

[peeb]

Out of interest, why do you want two installs?

[C.A.T.S. CEO]

Originally Posted by peeb 

Out of interest, why do you want two installs?

Yeah, why doesn't he just make another admin account?

[jansan]

Originally Posted by Cadaver 

Not sure. Apple's Boot Camp setup utility can create only one Windows partition. But, try this...

From the Windows installer, re-partition your new blank 20GB partition in to two partitions (make sure you don't accidentally blow away your MacOS X partition).

Install Windows for personal use on one of those partitions, and Windows for business use on the other.

Try it and let us know if it works.

Hi Cadaver, tried this, doing partitioning with windows screws the whole disk, had to start all over again. AS confirmed, vista and xp works, as for xp and xp, i have not found a definite NO, but thats what i expect.

Originally Posted by peeb 

Out of interest, why do you want two installs?

XP install with many tools, which i am only willing to abandon after my clean install works for 3 months. Paranoid?

greets
Jan

[peeb]

Paranoid

Probably a little - a backup that you can restore to might be an easier strategy.

[utw-Mephisto]

Mmm... use Partition Magic to split the Windows partition and install it there .. so when you switch on your Mac and choose Windows from the bootmenu you will get a 2nd menu asking which Windows you would like to boot .. I didn't try it, but see now reason why it shouldn't work...

[ghporter]

Partition Magic does not recognize HFS+ partitions. It could hose your boot disk but good. If you do this, go VERY carefully and make sure you have a full back up. IRRC Boot Magic depends on Partition Magic's ability to mark partitions, so that would be a suspect route too.

[utw-Mephisto]

Ok, maybe you missunderstood me ...

I mean you boot up your Windows partition (bootcamp) and once windows booted up you will be able to see the Windows partition which you have created with bootcamp only anyway. You partition the bootcamp Windows partition within windows. This will split the windows bootcamp partition within windows .. Insert the CD then and install another windows copy on that newly created partition.

So when you installed bootcamp and created a windows partition of 20 GB you can then use partition magic within windows to split this partition to 10 GB ..

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by utw-Mephisto 

Ok, maybe you missunderstood me ...

I mean you boot up your Windows partition (bootcamp) and once windows booted up you will be able to see the Windows partition which you have created with bootcamp only anyway. You partition the bootcamp Windows partition within windows. This will split the windows bootcamp partition within windows .. Insert the CD then and install another windows copy on that newly created partition.

So when you installed bootcamp and created a windows partition of 20 GB you can then use partition magic within windows to split this partition to 10 GB ..

Partition Magic STILL has to access the drive's partition table-which is a structure ALL partitions depend on, including the HFS+ partition OS X is on. Since PM doesn't handle or even recognize HFS+, it could corrupt the settings in the partition table and lose your OS X partition. It doesn't matter what OS you're running--ANY partition manager MUST access the one and only partition table for that disk.

If there's a trick around this, I'm not aware of it.

[jansan]

Originally Posted by utw-Mephisto 

So when you installed bootcamp and created a windows partition of 20 GB you can then use partition magic within windows to split this partition to 10 GB ..

ghporter is right, it will hose the whole disk. i tried the partition manager that comes with XP's install, that kills it.

So far i have only heard about "in theory this must be possible". Have not heard from anyone that has a dual XP setup running.

[RamonetB]

Originally Posted by jansan 

Hi Cadaver, tried this, doing partitioning with windows screws the whole disk, had to start all over again. AS confirmed, vista and xp works, as for xp and xp, i have not found a definite NO, but thats what i expect.


XP install with many tools, which i am only willing to abandon after my clean install works for 3 months. Paranoid?

greets
Jan

Hey Jansan,

I know this post is a bit outdated, but you've confirmed that OS X, Vista, and XP works? This is what I'm after. I don't suppose you can detail for me how you managed this little feat? Is it really as simple as using diskutil to partition 2 additional partitions and use rEFIt?

[jansan]

Originally Posted by RamonetB 

Hey Jansan,

I know this post is a bit outdated, but you've confirmed that OS X, Vista, and XP works? This is what I'm after. I don't suppose you can detail for me how you managed this little feat? Is it really as simple as using diskutil to partition 2 additional partitions and use rEFIt?

yes it is. Actually only this week i bit the bullet and installed vista in partition 3 (XP is always the last part, in my case part 4)

now i am triplebooting osx, vista and xp.

Not sure if refit is required, as i had it already, but works fine.

cheers,
Jan

[RamonetB]

I'm assuming XP always needs to be the last partition otherwise the HAL complains?