Quad booting XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Mac OS X

C

Casiquey2k

Member
Hi guys, I hope you can help me out with this one. I installed XP in my PC (Quad core 2 @2.66 ghz. 4 Gb RAM, two SATA HD 500gb and with two partitions each one <one for xp, one for Vista, ,one for W7 and one for files at least for now>, Dell mobo), then I installed Vista 64 bit, and recently installed Windows 7 64 bit, they are all working perfectly. Now, I've doing some research on how to quad boot, adding Mac OS X to the mix. Is this something that can even be done? if so where can I find a decent guide on how to do it?. Or can you guys please guide on how to use easyBCD to do it. Thanks for any feedback. I appreciate it.
 
Hi Casiquery2k, welcome to NST

Use Vista's disk management tools to shrink down your partitions and use the free space for a new partition for OS X. Recover the Vista bootloader after installing OS X by following the instructions here. Than you should be able to add an entry to Vista's bootloader with EasyBCD for OS X. I recommend you use the beta version of EasyBCD, which has more support than the current final (1.7.2) and can be downloaded here.
 
Casiquey2k said:
Hi guys, I hope you can help me out with this one. I installed XP in my PC (Quad core 2 @2.66 ghz. 4 Gb RAM, two SATA HD 500gb and with two partitions each one <one for xp, one for Vista, ,one for W7 and one for files at least for now>, Dell mobo), then I installed Vista 64 bit, and recently installed Windows 7 64 bit, they are all working perfectly. Now, I've doing some research on how to quad boot, adding Mac OS X to the mix. Is this something that can even be done? if so where can I find a decent guide on how to do it?. Or can you guys please guide on how to use easyBCD to do it. Thanks for any feedback. I appreciate it.
Click to expand...

Hi Casiquey. Welcome to NST.
I'd say the best method of quad-booting with those particular OSes is to have Win 7 controlling the boot, with the help of EasyBCD. :smile: With Win 7 controlling the boot, you should be able to boot into all 4 (actually 5, since you have Win 7 64-bit as well) just fine. Actually this should be pretty easy for you, seeing as each OS (or close to it...) is on a separate HDD than the rest. Basically, what it comes down to is having one of the the Win 7 (32 or 64 bit) drives as primary in the boot order in the BIOS, and then after installing EasyBCD 2.0 Beta in that OS, copying over your XP boot files into the root of that partition, and pointing boot.ini back at XP's drive and partition with the help of EasyBCD Beta's new auto-configurator for boot.ini.

Cheers, and let us know if you have any more questions.

-Coolname007
 
Last edited:
If you add an entry for OS X yes, but with EasyBCD this is a real simple proccess :smile:
Remember, you'll need to preform startup repair after OS X installation, so have that Windows Vista or Windows 7 DVD handy :smile:
 
Thanks, one last question before I go experiment with os x, I have two different versions of this latter, one is supposed to be retail copy (10.5.1), and the one, I got it from a torrent (10.5.5), does it matter which one I use? I also read something about vanilla kernels and all that stuff related to installing os x, do you know a site that will guide through the process?. Thanks so much again.
 
EasyBCD helps set up a dual-boot with OS X, not get around the proection or any other consequences from using a torrented copy. Use 10.5.1 (your legal copy)... use apple update to get it to 10.5.5. If you don't got a legal copy, we will not be able to help you.
 
Back
Top