Does Anyone Know How to Quad Boot Leopard, Vista, Xp and Ubuntu on a 13" Macbook??

Hi, I have been searching for a way to install vista, xp, ubuntu and leopard on my 13" macbook? Does anyone know how to do this or someone who can step me through easily as I am not much of a computer whiz whith this sort of thing??
Thanks Matt

Why would anybody ever need 4 different operating systems on 1 computer? Also, how do you plan on fitting all those OS's on a laptop hard drive?

mattyp_101 said:

Hi, I have been searching for a way to install vista, xp, ubuntu and leopard on my 13" macbook? Does anyone know how to do this or someone who can step me through easily as I am not much of a computer whiz whith this sort of thing??
Thanks Matt

Click to expand...

That's a lot of work and no doubt many hours of fiddling around with your machine.

If MacBooks used a BIOS like typical Win machines, it would not be difficult to do. However, since Macs use EFI (much advanced over BIOS) you're going to need a boot manager which can handle multiple booting on an EFI machine.

Take a look at rEfit: http://refit.sourceforge.net/

As far as someone stepping you through doing the work, you're going to have dig around on your own. The Ubuntu forums have a whole section devoted to installing Ubuntu on Macs. You can start there.

As far as running XP and Vista is concerned, I have to ask why? Settle on one or the other and set your MacBook to triple boot which would be a lot less difficult then running two Windows operating systems on the same machine.

Another suggestion: Why not take a look at using either Parallels or Fusion and run those operating systems as a virtual machine instead? You can have as many virtual machines as you like as long as you have enough hard drive space and memory to support them. The nice thing about doing it that way is you do not have to reboot the machine each time to run the OS of your choice, and you won't need a boot manager.

Regards.

Agree re trying this via Fusion or other VM setup. Quad booting? I am very curious to know why you would need to quad boot off a MacBook (as opposed to a MBP, Mac Pro or iMac with a separate video card). I think we'd all find that interesting. If there's no particular reason why you need the computer to run one OS at a time in purely native mode (as opposed to running 4 OS's, OSX native and the other 3 in VMs), you will find the Fusion/Parallels approach much simpler. If there is a reason, we'd all be very interested to understand it.

Cheers

Hello,
I think that the question why running all those OSs is not relevant. If mattyp_101 is asking it, that's probably cos he needs it. (for testing ? benchmarks ? development ? ... ).

I have another question which is related to bootcamp and the number of possible partitions. I read that bootcamp supports only four partitions. Is that true ? or it does supports more ? Cos if it does support only 4 partitions, it is impossible to install let's say WinXP and linux (with 3 partitions for /, /home and swap) together.

regards,
Tex

Thanks I agree, why does it matter that I have a reason, I like vista and XP and I want to learn how to use ubuntu. I did have a look at parallels but I would prefer to boot each one individually and besides parallels is expensive. I didnt think bootcamp could do anymore than one partition, I only found one guide that explained how to install vista, xp, leopard and ubuntu on a mac but i tried doing it about 7 times over 2 days and had no luck, if anyone wants to have a play with it or thinks they can help me go through it easier, please do. The address is: http://www.fosk.it/quad-booting-a-macbook.html.
Thanks Matt

The problem I had with the guide is when I got to installing xp it just wouldnt work it kept coming up with error after it had installed and rebooted.

You CANNOT quad-boot Mac with all of them residing on your drive. You can have only 4 primary partitions on Mac out of which first is EFI partition so now you can have max 3 partitions. So the only option to quad boot is to run one of them out of external drive. Booting windows out of external drive is pain so I would suggest boot linux out of external drive. Thats lot easier.

would you be able to step me through it?

fosk.it/quad-booting-a-macbook

mattyp_101 said:

. . . . . I only found one guide that explained how to install vista, xp, leopard and ubuntu on a mac but i tried doing it about 7 times over 2 days and had no luck, if anyone wants to have a play with it or thinks they can help me go through it easier, please do. The address is: http://www.fosk.it/quad-booting-a-macbook.html.
Thanks Matt

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Yes, I tried that guide on my iMac 24" but after 3 days I gave up; strangely it was Ubuntu that kept clobbering the setup - it's bootloader always seemed to overwrite Vista's MBR. Even before that XP and Vista kept eating each other - it seemed rEFIt wouldn't hide the other partition when booting either XP or Vista; this always leads to trouble in my experience.
I am going to try again shortly, but I will use easyBCD next time as this handles the dual boot of XP and Vista properly - I'll let you know how I get on.
Incidentally, Vista64 Ultimate boots and works REALLY well on my iMac - you do have to download the Bootcamp 64bit drivers (only available from torrent downloads at the moment) but well worth the effort!

Quad-boot...wow!

mattyp_101 said:

Thanks I agree, why does it matter that I have a reason, I like vista and XP and I want to learn how to use ubuntu. I did have a look at parallels but I would prefer to boot each one individually and besides parallels is expensive. I didnt think bootcamp could do anymore than one partition, I only found one guide that explained how to install vista, xp, leopard and ubuntu on a mac but i tried doing it about 7 times over 2 days and had no luck, if anyone wants to have a play with it or thinks they can help me go through it easier, please do. The address is: http://www.fosk.it/quad-booting-a-macbook.html.
Thanks Matt

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If you want to learn Ubuntu why not try one of their live CDs?

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Eric559 said:

If you want to learn Ubuntu why not try one of their live CDs?

This thread has been rated Excellent!

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Can't run Compiz-fusion on Ubuntu live-CD (at least I couldn't), that's one of the main attractions!

I dont mind if I cant use ubuntu. I would be happy with just a triple boot of vista and xp?

Quad Boot Update

Finally got it working!

I didn't have any success with easyBCD as both my Vista64 and XP operating systems were separate Ghost12 backups and restoring each did not go through the multi-boot installation process so easyBCD had nothing to work on.
So, went back to the fosk method (http://www.fosk.it/photos/show/recent/page/1/photo/2310220114/) but this time I checked the Ubuntu forums first (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=767677 and http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=3303463&postcount=11) and discovered that there is a bug in Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron grub installer that does clobber the main mbr which stops all the other legacy operating systems (including Ubuntu) from booting from rEFIt.
This time around I changed the installation procedure a bit and did the following:
Booted disk1 of Mac OSX and partitioned drive as per fosk method
From the utility menu (still on the Mac install screen) selected install from Time Machine backup to the Mac OS partition.
Rebooted when finished and checked Mac worked ok which it did - my restore also installed rEFIt.
I inserted the Ubuntu live cd and rebooted, chose Ubuntu cd from rEFIt menu and installed Ubuntu as per Fosk method.
Rebooted and usual problem of rEFIt not being able to start Ubuntu, so did the partition sync fix in rEFIt (as per http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=767677) booted the Ubuntu live cd and then did the grub fix (as per http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=3303463&postcount=11).
Rebooted and Ubuntu worked from the rEFIt menu!!!
Next inserted Ghost12 cd and booted to this from rEFIt and restored XP Ghost backup from an external usb drive then did the same for Vista64
After a minor fix to XP (using http://icrontic.com/articles/repair_windows_xp) everything worked. Even rEFIt seems to activate the correct partition for Vista or XP and back again - so no conflicts!!
Instead of Ghost restores you could just do complete installation of Windows Vista and XP - if Vista 64 then download the Boot Camp with 64 bit drivers from "http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3991487/Apple_BootCamp_2.0_Drivers_(including_new_64bit-drivers)"
Now to see how long they all work!
Hope the above is of some use.

Hey, Thanks so much I will try your method tonight and see how I go. If it screws up I will let you know.
Matt

Hi, I tried booting it the way you said last night and it didnt work when I went to install windows xp.
Matt

The problem I keep having is when I install windows and it reboots the screen comes up and says " disk error". This happens every time even when I change the partition into a different format and then partition as fat 32 or ntfs. The only time I have yet to get Windows XP to work is when I install tiger go back and install bootcamp beta in tiger change the date so that it will work and then install XP and update back to leopard. Got any ideas????? This is really annoying?

Matt

telted said:

Finally got it working!

Instead of Ghost restores you could just do complete installation of Windows Vista and XP - if Vista 64 then download the Boot Camp with 64 bit drivers from "http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3991487/Apple_BootCamp_2.0_Drivers_(including_new_64bit-drivers)"
Now to see how long they all work!
Hope the above is of some use.

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The piratebay.org is suppose to be a warez site... isnt it??

As Quad boot, I run Mac OS, Vista, Opensuse & Mandriva. I haven't tried booting 2 versions of windows. I am running Mandriva natively and Opensuse from USB. For booting 2 versions of linux, I use the bootloader of Mandriva itself and mounted the kernel & initrd.. thereafter pointed to USB device to boot further. If anyone's interested in this quad-boot structure, I can give step-by-step instructions.