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Snow Leopard, Windows XP, Windows 7

Hi,

I'm currently using Macbook 13.3" Unibody (bought in May 2009). May I know if it is possible to have all the 3 OS: Snow Leopard, Windows Xp and Windows 7 on my Macbook (in different partitions)?

Does anybody try that before? Will it work?

Thanks a lot.

MacBook 13.3" Unibody, Mac OS X (10.6.1)

Posted on Oct 26, 2009 7:57 PM

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Posted on Oct 26, 2009 8:05 PM

no, this will not work. you can only have one windows partition on one drive and it has to be the last partition on the drive. there is absolutely no way around that. bootcamp assistant will let you create it but you'll have to decide which version of windows to put there. but it's possible to run as many versions of windows as you want from OS X by using a windows virtualization program like VMware, Virtual Box or Parallels. also, keep in mind that, while a lot of people seem to run windows 7 in bootcamp just fine, windows 7 via bootcamp is not yet officially supported by apple. windows 7 bootcamp drivers will only be released later this year.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3920
16 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Oct 26, 2009 8:05 PM in response to kskong

no, this will not work. you can only have one windows partition on one drive and it has to be the last partition on the drive. there is absolutely no way around that. bootcamp assistant will let you create it but you'll have to decide which version of windows to put there. but it's possible to run as many versions of windows as you want from OS X by using a windows virtualization program like VMware, Virtual Box or Parallels. also, keep in mind that, while a lot of people seem to run windows 7 in bootcamp just fine, windows 7 via bootcamp is not yet officially supported by apple. windows 7 bootcamp drivers will only be released later this year.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3920

Oct 26, 2009 8:12 PM in response to kskong

If you must choose one, then definitely Win7. Win7 runs perfectly on my MBP. Originally, the color was good, but I could not run the WEI. So, I installed the latest NVIDIA driver, and all was good, including having the NVIDIA control panel.

V.K. Is it possible to Boot Camp a Windows installation on a bootable external with, say, Sno on the first partition of the drive? If so, then assuming OP is willing to buy the drives, then he could run all three Wins.

Oct 26, 2009 8:22 PM in response to donv_the_ghost

windows is not designed to run on external drives. at least that's true for XP. I don't know about windows 7. you normally can not install XP on an external at all even if you don't partition it or put any other OS on the external. I've seen claims by some posters on this forums that there are some hacks around this limitation but I don't know how to do it.

Oct 27, 2009 7:46 AM in response to donv_the_ghost

donv (The Ghost) wrote:
Thanks V.K. Right; it takes SuperWinMan to get even Win7 to boot from an external in general. I was talking about installing, say, Sno on and external and then using Boot Camp to install Windows on a second partition. I have never tried doing so, and I am short partitions right now, but I suspect it would work. ????

ah, I didn't get that at first. I don't know if this will work or not, sorry. I suspect that it won't but I don't know for sure. maybe somebody on the bootcamp forum will know.

Oct 27, 2009 8:01 AM in response to kskong

You can shrink a partition, the trouble is that it confuses OS X's Startup Disk slightly; you can though then use Windows multi-boot OS manager.

Installing an older version of Windows after you have Vista or 7 can cause problems (I assume the article has a work around like reboot from Windows 7 DVD to repair BCD).

You should always have an external copy of Mac OS though that you can boot from, do repairs, and prior to any updates (in addition to or in place of TimeMachine).

There are some PC motherboards that have the ability to boot from SATA ports, but only because the motherboard and not 3rd party chipset or controller, and you have to configure your devices in the BIOS. Most don't though.

Windows 7 Pro with XP Mode, but I don't know if that will work on Mac if you can't change the hardware VT settings, you can of course use a VM, but XP Mode runs XP applications 'natively' and uses a new XP virtual machine, for apps that are old and won't even run in Windows 7.

Oct 27, 2009 9:44 AM in response to kskong

The instructions don't apply to a Mac. If you were doing a dual boot on a Win machine, it is much better to install XP before Vista. I am not sure if things have changed with Win7, but I doubt it. But, an important question is why run either XP or Vista along with Win7. Win7 has a good XP mode. And, Win7 is sort of to Vista what Sno is to Leo. So, if you would prefer Sno to Leo, you probably would prefer Win7 to Vista.

Oct 27, 2009 8:44 PM in response to kskong

I'm planning to install Win XP because some of the softwares cannot run on Win 7 64 bit. The XP mode does not run smoothly on Win 7 (probably because I don't have sufficient RAM - I only have 4Gb now).

When I tried to install Win XP (after having Win 7 pre-installed), the setup did not continue after the first reboot (i.e. after copying the setup files) - it said:

File:\NTLDR
Status:0XC000000F
and some other messages

So the next thing I did was to boot into Win 7 and replaced the file for the Win XP, but the same message appeared again (tried for few times). Anyone has any idea what to do?

Thanks. =)

Snow Leopard, Windows XP, Windows 7

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