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Anyone know much about dual-booting mac on windows?

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LuigiHann
Resident Skinner
4,432 posts
Here since the beginning
Topic Starter
LuigiHann
My google-fu is failing me a bit here, since most of what I've found is about installing Windows onto a Mac computer. So I'm asking here since we seem to have a pretty tech-savvy community.

My girlfriend is looking into getting a new harddrive for her existing PC laptop, and wondering if it's possible, from a clean slate, to install a Mac OS and a Windows OS onto two partitions. She wants to use the Mac side for video editing, primarily, since they have better software for that. Let me know if I'm totally off-base on any of my assumptions here.
mm201
osu! Alumni
4,495 posts
Joined August 2008
mm201
http://www.tonymacx86.com/home.php

I don't have any personal experience (yet) but will be doing so for my next build.
Also welcome back LH!
Oinari-sama
osu! Alumni
3,403 posts
Joined July 2010
Oinari-sama
I've never tried dual booting os-x and windows myself (and probably never will) so try this at your own risk. I got that by googling afterall.

EDIT: This guide puts windows 7 on partition 3. Since you're gonna start fresh you can try this too.
boat
2,369 posts
Joined February 2010
boat
This depends on the rest of the hardware in the laptop itself. You might want to post some specs and consider running a virtual machine in case it is not compatible. I'm not particularly literate within the subject as I've only done it once and never really looked into it all that much, but do at least tell what laptop it is for starters.
Cropzy
388 posts
Joined July 2012
Cropzy
Why would you even want to?
AlexSant
16 posts
Joined January 2013
AlexSant
I don't know much about dual booting with Mac, but I've done it with Linux.
Windows doesn't support dual boot natively so if it's the last system you've installed it will be a little hard to make your Mac OS booting again.
Linux Uses GRUB 2 to select the OS, maybe there's one version for Mac it detects OSs very well, I think you should try it.
Mara
4,906 posts
Joined November 2009
Mara
I only clicked this thread because LH.

Good luck on whatever you are doing.
LuigiHann
Resident Skinner
4,432 posts
Here since the beginning
Topic Starter
LuigiHann
Dell Inspiron 15r from two years ago.

- 6GB of RAM
- (currently) 640GB Seagate 5400 hard drive
- Intel HD Graphics Family
- Blu Ray drive/CD Drive
- Windows 7 64-bit
- Intel i3 2.10 GHz

It isn't super powerful, but I'm really running out of ideas. My laptop is two years old, been through some wear and tear but he still works okay, but I would like a larger hard drive and maybe start anew with the cheapest option, that MAYBE being installing a new hard drive. Luigi and I don't have too much money to spare on a new laptop for me (and I'm starting college this year and have no actual money to spare) and I really want Final Cut... I'm not a Apple fan myself, but I wanna be able to know how to work every editing software possible. Anything would be helpful.

Thanks,
Luigi and Aoi
mm201
osu! Alumni
4,495 posts
Joined August 2008
mm201
http://www.tonymacx86.com/61-unibeast-i ... ed-pc.html

The hardest part could be that you need access to a Mac to buy OSX and make the bootable media. You might be able to pull this off inside an apple store.
You may also have problems with drivers, especially on a laptop.

To dual boot Windows, leave a spare partition when you're formatting the drive for OSX. Installing Windows could be a pain if the CD boots in BIOS mode. (It'll say the disk is GUID partitioned and can't be installed.) There should be some way in your firmware to force it to boot to EFI mode, at which point it should install fine.

You don't need to worry about bootloaders with EFI, the firmware takes care of that on its own.
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