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ASeriousMan

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 1, 2011
14
0
I have had snow leopard on my macbook for a while, but installed windows xp on it so i could play Age of empires 2 with my friend. I now would like to install it a second time on either the same partition or a different one. could anyone help me out?
 
You'd have to make a separate partition. OS's cannot occupy the same partition at the same time natively.

Why do you want to do have XP on there twice?
 
that is what i thought, but whenever i put in the xp install disk to create another partition, it never boots from the cd, ive tried the option key, f8 key, etc etc..... it just starts the regular operating system.... thanks for the reply
 
I guess the question is now how do i boot from the windows disk? nothing seems to work....
 
no, i'm afraid option, c, f8, or any other boot key do not work. is there some kind of driver that i could use? bios doesn't open. are there other alternatives to bios that i could download? drivers?
 
wow, well i didnt already say something about that did i? it doesnt do anything.
 
wow, well i didnt already say something about that did i? it doesnt do anything.

You mostly said it doesn't work, which doesn't mean nothing at all happens. I just wanted to clarify what exactly, if anything, happens when you hold down the opt key at boot. You said it just boots the normal OS, but that could mean it goes straight through the boot process like normal or the boot disk selector comes up but only lets you select the internal HDD. I just wanted to be clear :)

A couple more clarifying questions: are you using an external keyboard? If so, what connection is it using (USB, RF wireless, Bluetooth wireless, etc)? How soon after the startup ding are you holding down the opt key?

If everything is being done properly and your Mac is not reacting to holding the opt key at startup, then something is seriously wrong with your Mac. You may be able to use the Startup Disk pref pane to boot off the XP CD
 
sorry, yeah nothing at all happens. it just goes straight to the os selector, and doesn't give me anymore options. no i am using the keyboard on the mac. and ive tried holding it down right away, waiting a little bit, practically everything. thanks for the help. is there anyway the keyboard is reading the wrong key because its windows xp and not leopard anymore? ahhh!!
 
Wait... so you removed OS X and then installed Windows XP? Why did you remove OS X completely?

Also, what do you mean by the OS selector? That doesn't sound like the normal XP boot process. Does it look like this?

apple-bootcamp-photo10.png
 
no, thanks thoug, it just says Microsoft Windows Xp, 25 seconds type thing. its a new harddrive i didnt install mac again. thanks again for the help
 
It may very well have to do with the fact that you completely erased OS X. Try holding down the command key, Windows may have remapped the key. It's a long shot to be sure, but maybe?

You're probably best off reinstalling OS X and using Boot Camp to install Windows.
 
well, it was a new blank hdd, i put windows on and it is working fine. but now i want to boot from another disk, possibly ubantu or something. it just wont boot from the disk
 
ok guys thanks for the help; but (haha) i went in to the mac store and they told me to press apple opt P and R during start up, it usually fixes some probelems, and it did! now i can get to a boot screen
 
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