Dual boot Vista & OS X86 w/ Darwin Bootloader

We’ll talk here about the most easy and clean way to dual boot Vista & OS X86.
And guess what boot manager we will use? Yes, Darwin Bootloader from OS X.

You will need for this tutorial:

– Windows Vista installation DVD
– JaS OS X86 10.4.X installation DVD

I recommend the following disk partitioning:

– 3 primary partitions: 1- Windows Vista / 2 – OS X86 / 3 – OS X86
– 1 extended partition (containing several HFS+ or FAT32 or NTFS partitions)

Having 2 primary OS X86 partitions is really cool for testing new OS X86 install.
For instance, you can have Mac OS X86 10.4.9 running on the first, and the latest
Leopard WWDC Preview build 9A466 running on the second… 

Click on the link above to read the full tutorial in the extended post.Thank you for looking further in this post, let’s begin the tutorial.

Step 1: Install OS X86 10.4.x on the second primary partition

Step 2: Make the first primary partition active to install Vista

Boot up OS X and in a terminal window,

sudo fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0
flag 1
quit
reboot

Step 3: Install Vista on the first primary partition

Step 4: Restore OS X86 in the MBR

Boot off JaS OS X86 dvd in single user mode (press F8 & type -s). At single user prompt,

fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0
flag 2
update
write
quit
reboot

Step 5: Make the first partition active back to boot up Vista

At this point OS X86 should boot up and in a terminal window,

sudo fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0
flag 1
quit
reboot

Step 6: Restore Vista on the MBR

Upon reboot, Vista will show “\Window\system32\winload.exe” corrupted.
Insert Vista disc & follow directions to recover.
Reboot & check that Vista boots up fine.

Step 7: Make second primary partition active to use Darwin Bootloader

Boot off JaS OS X86 dvd in single user mode again (press F8 & type -s). At single user prompt,

fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0
flag 2
quit
reboot