Dual boot MT LION/Windows 8

[madman1234]

I am very dissapointed from Windows 8. I guess if you have a Tablet its fine, but on a Desktop it is very strange to navigate.

I will Stick with Windows 7. ;-)

 

[danct]

I would really like to give it a try on my system. However, it took me a week to get ML running smoothly with Chameleon and I do not want to screw over my current setup.

As of right now, I have one GUID SSD with ML and an MBR HD with a Chameleon partition and a Backup partition.

Any chance I could split my SSD between OS X and Win 8, while maintaining chameleon intact?

 

[Going Bald]

I would really like to give it a try on my system. However, it took me a week to get ML running smoothly with Chameleon and I do not want to screw over my current setup.

As of right now, I have one GUID SSD with ML and an MBR HD with a Chameleon partition and a Backup partition.

Any chance I could split my SSD between OS X and Win 8, while maintaining chameleon intact?

You can. Do you know how to create a second partition on your SSD? Create one at least 80Gb and format it MSDOS FAT32. Boot the Win8 install media and select the FAT32 partition. Click on advanced button, click on format button, click on continue and install Win8.

When you have Win8 stable and are ready to be able to dual boot, use the UniBeast installer to boot with, select your OS X partition to boot and at desktop reinstall Chimera boot loader.

 

[pgr1]

I currently have this setup with Win8 RTM/Enterprise Eval. I split my 256GB SDD up into 160GB for ML and 96GB for Win 8. I did this partitioning in the initial OSX install using UniBeast. I got everything stable then I booted from a Win8 USB stick (prepared with the USB tool on a Windows VM) and installed Win 8. I initially had problems with getting Win8 to let me format the 96GB partition. Be sure you have OSX format it as FAT (it will be over-written with NTFS on install).

Win 8 installed without any problems but the machine would only boot to Win 8 at this point, bypassing the Chimera bootloader. I used Unibeast to boot to my OSX partition, reinstalled Chimera from the standalone installer. After that it works perfectly! I even have a 1TB ExFat partition on a spinning drive that Windows can see.

The system will automatically boot to ML, if you press a key you are given the option to boot to OSX or Win8. Only thing I notice so far is that OSX and Win8 set the clock differently. I believe that's a Unix using UTC and Windows using local time on the BIOS issue. Hope this works for you as well as it did for me!

 

[Saigon8n8]

>>>>>>>>Is Windows 8 released already, or are you talking about the pirated/leaked version??????!!!

I think they got the public beta of windows 8 that came out about 8 months ago. I also have it, downloaded it directly from Microsoft's site.

 

[danct]

I currently have this setup with Win8 RTM/Enterprise Eval. I split my 256GB SDD up into 160GB for ML and 96GB for Win 8. I did this partitioning in the initial OSX install using UniBeast. I got everything stable then I booted from a Win8 USB stick (prepared with the USB tool on a Windows VM) and installed Win 8. I initially had problems with getting Win8 to let me format the 96GB partition. Be sure you have OSX format it as FAT (it will be over-written with NTFS on install).

Win 8 installed without any problems but the machine would only boot to Win 8 at this point, bypassing the Chimera bootloader. I used Unibeast to boot to my OSX partition, reinstalled Chimera from the standalone installer. After that it works perfectly! I even have a 1TB ExFat partition on a spinning drive that Windows can see.

The system will automatically boot to ML, if you press a key you are given the option to boot to OSX or Win8. Only thing I notice so far is that OSX and Win8 set the clock differently. I believe that's a Unix using UTC and Windows using local time on the BIOS issue. Hope this works for you as well as it did for me!

My only concern was booting back into ML after the Windows installation.
I have never used Unibeast as I own a Mac Pro 1,1 (I am using Chameleon to circumvent the EFI 32 restriction). Will give it a try and report results. Thanks all.

 

[Going Bald]

My only concern was booting back into ML after the Windows installation.
I have never used Unibeast as I own a Mac Pro 1,1 (I am using Chameleon to circumvent the EFI 32 restriction). Will give it a try and report results. Thanks all.

UniBeast is not a must have - any boot stick that will get you back to desktop so you can re-install Chameleon will do the job.

 

[jamakr]

The System reserved shows up when I run the boot loader. I am using ML and Win8. I think the trick was to unhook the ML drive, install Win8, then hook the drive back in (Or you could install Win8 first). Anyway, check that you have the latest Chimera (I also used Easy Beast). Best of luck.

EDIT
If you are attempting to dual boot from one drive, this is difficult, and my advise holds no water.

 

[rkdus]

I currently have this setup with Win8 RTM/Enterprise Eval. I split my 256GB SDD up into 160GB for ML and 96GB for Win 8. I did this partitioning in the initial OSX install using UniBeast. I got everything stable then I booted from a Win8 USB stick (prepared with the USB tool on a Windows VM) and installed Win 8. I initially had problems with getting Win8 to let me format the 96GB partition. Be sure you have OSX format it as FAT (it will be over-written with NTFS on install).

Win 8 installed without any problems but the machine would only boot to Win 8 at this point, bypassing the Chimera bootloader. I used Unibeast to boot to my OSX partition, reinstalled Chimera from the standalone installer. After that it works perfectly! I even have a 1TB ExFat partition on a spinning drive that Windows can see.

The system will automatically boot to ML, if you press a key you are given the option to boot to OSX or Win8. Only thing I notice so far is that OSX and Win8 set the clock differently. I believe that's a Unix using UTC and Windows using local time on the BIOS issue. Hope this works for you as well as it did for me!

So your disk is GUID? Which one you installed first, W8 or ML?

 

[bmkmanoj]

Finally managed it!

- Unplugged all my discs that wasn't supposed to hold the Win 8 installation​

- Entered the cmd prompt at the first win 8 installation screen (choosing language etc.) through shift+F10 and then:​

Select disc 0
Clean
create partition primary size=xxx (xxx=whatever you disc size is or how much size you want to use of your disc)
Exit

- I then went with advanced installation to make sure that no extra partitions had been created (system reserved). Here I also had another chance to format and resize the partition I just created.​

- Completed Win 8 installation
- Plugged in my other discs
- Restored boot order in BIOS to make the Chimera disk have highest prio
- Booted OSX Mountain Lion
- Reinstalled Chimera

Voila!​

Hello.

I need few clarifications - the commands mentioned are they "diskpart" windows utility commands ? And in the last step - "Reinstalled Chimera", can you please let me know why we need to reinstall Chimera (asking out of curiosity) ? And are there any specific settings we need to set in this step ?

Thanks,
Manoj