Dual booting Windows Xp on a GUID partition

[dragon]

Hi All,

I discovered what was keeping OSX from running on my Asus M50SV. It was the partition type of the drive. It was set to MBR (Master Boot Record). I changed this to GUID and OSX installed. However, Windows XP32 can not boot from a GUID parition.

Does anyone have a solution to this? I would like to dual boot to XP.

Thanks

[dragon]

I discovered a workaround.

After reading on Microsoft.com they state that Windows XP, 32 bit, does not work on the GUID partition type. However, Windows XP 64 does.

So here is how I did it.

When you get your Asus M50SV it will have Vista installed on a single MBR parition.

Take your OSX install disk and install over top the Vista partition. Make sure you change the Disk Type to GUID and format the space as Mac OS Extended Journaling. This blows the entire Vista OS away. Backup files as you see fit.

Install OSX and make sure you use the EFI, this is the only thing that will make the graphics drivers work in the end. Don't worry too much about this install attempt, all you really want out of this is to get EFI installed on the hard disk and OSX booting.

You can verify that EFI is installed because when you boot your laptop, it will say checking for VRAM.

Now take the XP64 ISO disk and install Windows XP 64. In the install process you will have to reformat the disk drive. I created two paritions, 1=150Mb and 2=The rest of the space. Install XP64 on the FIRST partition.

After you have installed XP64, launch the OSX installer and bring up the disk utility. Sure enough, the XP64 installed turned the disk type back into MBR. Just leave that as is and format the second parition as Mac OS Extended Journaling.

Install OSX on the second parition. This will be the final time you install OSX so get your settings right in the customize section.

I don't know whether this is magic or a bug, but if EFI is installed on a GUID drive type and then the drive type is change to MBR the EFI still remains active on the drive.

Now I have two boot options, one is XP and the other is OSX. OSX can actually see the XP drive and copy to and from it as well.

Hope this help...

No Boot Camp needed.

[aquamac]

Thanks for the info!