DUAL BOOTING WITH WINDOWS 7
For some reasons, I haven’t been able to dual boot with windows 7 using EasyBCD like all of my other laptops and desktop, may be it’s the bios and the Western Digital Green 750GB hard drive. Whatever the reasons are, I always get the “chain booting error”, I uninstalled EasyBCD and found 3 ways to dual boot with Windows 7.
1. The Easy Way-Safe-Slow-Dual boot using boot disk/usb (keep the factory windows 7 & software) (must carry idogboot usb or cd inside DVD drive).
A. Use windows 7 shrinks a small partition for mac os x or lion or both.
B. Use external usb hard drive Mac OS X to restore to this partition.
C. Fix the windows 7 boot, use my idogboot cd to boot OS X whenever needed to use, leave the cd in the DVD drive or restore it to a usb flash drive.
To create a usb bootable to Snow Leopard and Windows 7 (this one will boot to menu faster than my idogboot cd)
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Dog, great tutorial and videos. Before I give this a shot, I wanted to ask a few questions to make sure that this will work well for me:
1) Will this setup (once completed via dual boot option #2) be capable of using MacOSX’s Software Update utility to install future Snow leopard OSX updates, or will I have to stay at 10.6.8? (It’s no big deal, just curious if future updates for either Snow Leopard and/or Lion will require additional work to install on the laptop).
2) Is there any special tricks to backing up the dual boot system so that I can easily restore the entire setup without repeating all the steps again? In addition, would a single boot (MacOSX only) simplify the backup/restore significantly?
FWIW, I would like to use continue to use SuperDuper for my full backup/restores, and TimeMachine for my incremental ones… I am not opposed to using other software if necessary, mainly curious if superDuper would/should work for full backups/restores.
NOTE: My main concern is to have a simple restore solution in case the hard drive fails, be SUperDuper or some other package you recommend. I figure it’s important to know before starting since HDD manufacturer’s don’t make ’em like they used to 😉
3) Speaking of HDD failures, is this setup at all tied to the WDD 750GB drive? For example would I be able to upgrade to an SSD or hybrid in the future by doing a simple restore (sort of tied to question 2 in a way).
Thanks in advance, and again, great job on the tutorial.
I believe Snow Leopard ends @10.6.8, Lion is the new operating system and it doesn’t upgrade with hackintosh at all because we have to buy the OS @29$ on line.
Very good question, I haven’t thought of this yet, I backed up the hard drive BEFORE the Mac OS X installation using Windows 7 image back up. It doesn’t work after we installed Chameleon over the MBR. The best is to try Tom’s dual boot with Easybcd (which does keep the windows MBR), back up the windows images only.
This set up is for all Hard drives, but WDC750 seems to be the most problem ones. SSD, I have no idea.
I you install LION, it will upgrades well without doing anything, the only problem you will have is the AppleHDA.kext that needs to be removed before reboot for the VoodooHDA.kext to work.
It’s good that you do research before messing with the original Hard drive. That’s why I strongly recommend to install Mac OS X onto an EXTERNAL USB HARD DRIVE and back up all original Hard drive images.
Hi,
I have used this process, your process and it works great. There is one thing I noticed. Random crashes. Where I will just have to reboot. Strangely enough, i found these only happen when i use the Ethernet port. With wireless, it is rock solid. Is it possible i need a kext other than what you have here?
Thanks a lot.
Hello,
I haven’t used ethernet much to connect to the internet so I don’t notice the crashes. If the ethernet works, the kext you’re using is correct, when it crashes, it’s the software you’re running. Why not Lion?
Cheers,
Hi,
I am looking at your lion install and have created the bootable usb. Using LION 10.7.2 and MY Hack. But some of the instructions on what to do with the extra folder is confusing.
Also, I understand what you are saying about the kext. But I have been doing heavy multitasking and copying large files to and fro across the lan using wireless with 0 crashes. If I connect via Ethernet, then start a transfer across the LAN and say, browse the web. It will crash. I didn’t believe the results either.
Ooops BTW thanks for your timely response. And this site is great.
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