Triple Booting my macbook.

[ankit.minglani]

I want to Triple Boot my Macbook . !! NEED HELP !!
I re-formated my macbook in a hope to triple boot it with Mac OS 10.5 ie leopard , Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP. so after lots of working i figured it out that bootcamp can only be used to create one partition. these are a few steps i followed :

1. i booted my macbook with Mac OSX cd .. used the disk utility to choose 4 partition scheme as : one for leopard(mac format).. one for windows xp( MS dos fat format).. one for ubuntu(mac format) .. one for ubuntu swap area(mac format).

2. installed leopard in the respective drive for it ..

3(PROBLEM!!). booted the macbook with windows XP cd. it went fine .. i formated the same partition for ntfs for windows.. when all the file copying is done. the system asks for a reboot. so when i reboot it .. there is a error as :windows boot> some .dll file missing in system 32 folder..

i error disappears when i partition the drive using bootcamp. but since i cannot use bootcamp to tripleboot my macbook. is there a another way out?


4.(PROBLEM!!) i installed ubuntu also ver 9.10 in the respective drive with ext4 as file format along with the swap space. i reboot the system after installation. the grub loads .. showing ubuntu .. the screen just blacks out after i press "ENTER" to it ..

is there a solution? can the grub be creating a problem to boot linux?

i have been trying to work this out for quite a while. it would be so greatful of anyone of you to help

May you be blessed.. Keep smiling

 

[Makosuke]

Under 10.5 Windows will very specifically not install properly on a drive unless you add the Windows partition with Boot Camp--Apple says it doesn't work, and I learned the hard way that they're telling the truth. I'm gonna guess it has something to do with simulating a BIOS for Windows to get around the computer using EFI, but never looked into it in detail.

It's possible this limitation has been removed with 10.6, but I haven't researched or tested, so maybe someone else can help on that possible workaround (not exactly expensive, anyway). There might also be a hack to do this--try Googling it.

That said, it seems like if you first installed the MacOS, then added a partition for Windows through Boot Camp, and THEN used Disk Utility (or another on-the-fly partitioning app, if it refuses) to split the Mac partition in half, you could get three OSes installed by going that route.

Though I admit I haven't tried it.

 

[ankit.minglani]

can you name one partition software that will help on partitining mac os drive apart from bootcamp ??

will refit help in anyway in partition ?

 

[Makosuke]

Well, OSX's built-in Disk Utility can repartition drives (including the current boot drive, I believe) on the fly as of 10.5, so I'd try that first. I haven't had any issues using it that way.

If it won't do it the only other app I have experience with is iPartition, which worked fine but isn't free.