Dual-booting OS X & Windows XP – Limited to 10.6 Snow Leopard?

[dalinian]

I have an October 2008 vintage MacBook Pro 17-inch*, which will shortly be revitalised with an OCZ Vertex 4 512GB solid state drive, and with the boost in available disc space, I’m exploring options for dual-booting OS X and Windows.

* Model ID: MacBookPro 4,1 – Order No: MB766LL/A – Mfg. Part No: A1261 – full spec at EveryMac:
» http://everymac.com/systems/apple/m...ore-2-duo-2.5-17-early-2008-penryn-specs.html

I have installation discs for:
• Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
• Windows XP Home Edition SP2

My understanding is that the Boot Camp version in OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard will allow me to set up dual-booting between these two OS versions. My natural geek instinct would be to upgrade OS X → 10.7 Lion → 10.8 Mountain Lion, but as I understand it the Boot Camp versions in 10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion only support Windows 7.

Q. Does this mean that if a successfully dual-booting ‘10.6 Snow Leopard + Windows XP’ MacBook Pro has its OS X upgraded (→ 10.7 Lion → 10.8 Mountain Lion), it will no longer dual-boot Windows XP?

BTW, I’m aware that I can run a virtualised Windows XP inside Oracle VM VirtualBox under OS X 10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion (and other virtualisation software is also available); I’m interested in the reduced-complexity full-throttle option of dual-booting Windows XP.

 

[kylera]

I have an October 2008 vintage MacBook Pro 17-inch*, which will shortly be revitalised with an OCZ Vertex 4 512GB solid state drive, and with the boost in available disc space, I’m exploring options for dual-booting OS X and Windows.

* Model ID: MacBookPro 4,1 – Order No: MB766LL/A – Mfg. Part No: A1261 – full spec at EveryMac:
» http://everymac.com/systems/apple/m...ore-2-duo-2.5-17-early-2008-penryn-specs.html

I have installation discs for:
• Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
• Windows XP Home Edition SP2

My understanding is that the Boot Camp version in OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard will allow me to set up dual-booting between these two OS versions. My natural geek instinct would be to upgrade OS X → 10.7 Lion → 10.8 Mountain Lion, but as I understand it the Boot Camp versions in 10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion only support Windows 7.

Q. Does this mean that if a successfully dual-booting ‘10.6 Snow Leopard + Windows XP’ MacBook Pro has its OS X upgraded (→ 10.7 Lion → 10.8 Mountain Lion), it will no longer dual-boot Windows XP?

BTW, I’m aware that I can run a virtualised Windows XP inside Oracle VM VirtualBox under OS X 10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion (and other virtualisation software is also available); I’m interested in the reduced-complexity full-throttle option of dual-booting Windows XP.

To the best of my knowledge, you could install SL first, do XP Boot Camp, and then install ML. I could be wrong, though.

 

[balamw]

To the best of my knowledge, you could install SL first, do XP Boot Camp, and then install ML. I could be wrong, though.

I believe you are correct. You can also probably use Lion Boot Camp Assistant to partition the drive and install XP manually if you have the Snow Leopard Boot Camp Drivers.

B

 

[dalinian]

Resolved

Thanks for your response. My plans were somewhat undermined by those two discs I mentioned in my OP:
• Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard – lacked any Boot Camp software
• Windows XP Home Edition SP2 – was an Upgrade version

So I tracked down a torrent version of Windows 7 (thanks to iso Hunt.com), upgraded OS X to 10.8 Mountain Lion, and used its Boot Camp software to create a dual-booting Mountain Lion/Windows 7 set up – all of which works beautifully well. The first fruit of this endeavour, and the primary motivating factor for creating the dual-boot setup, was un-bricking my Samsung Galaxy Note with a Windows-only program, and getting it to share files with Mountain Lion via USB cable. So I'm pleased to report that I got to where I wanted to be.