Mac OS and Windows 7, Dual Boot or Virtual Box

[Gustave]

Hopefully this thread has not been posted before but should make for some decent discussion either way.

Right now I am looking to install Mac OS X Snow Leopard on a Virtual Box on my Windows 7 64 pc for software installation and testing purposes ( very basic software install and stuff since only a few of our Reps use Mac).

I was wondering if this was the best way to go about things so I can before a little more familiar with the Mac OS if I get any help desk calls and such. Is there a way to dual boot without having to reinstall my Windows 7? I have a backup and system image of it that keep updated regularly. If I need to reinstall Windows I'll just stick with the Virtual Box install.

[rezn0r]

i can't really offer any help although i'm very interested in this too. i spent a few weeks (not constantly) trying to get both to work in dual booting on a dell inspiron 1545. i could get os x working fine (except for sleep mode which i don't care about), booting from chameleon, but the second i'd add windows 7 all bets were off. i tried dozens of combinations of what order to install OSs, what kexts to use (i'd figure if os x worked fine off of a boot disc this wouldn't matter with chameleon but who knows), etc.

i could easily be wrong i'm going to go ahead and say you almost definitely would have to reinstall windows 7 if you were going for dual boot, as almost every guide i saw that supposedly worked had me install os x first (creating 7's partition during snow leopard's setup).

keep us updated either way with how it goes! hopefully someone with better experience shows up.

[Gustave]

I also have a TB usb hard drive and slew of usb thumb drives 4g - 16g if that would be an option.

I'll keep you posted but I'll probably try the virtual box tonight.

[Franzer]

Typically installing in virtualbox is a breeze for any OS. If you're just looking to play around with the OS and get familiar with it, this is your best bet. If you need any help with virtualbox i'd be more than happy to help. Once you have it installed, look up how to add guest additions to your virtual session. As far as dual booting, I don't know much about how mac osx boots, but typically with Linux, when dual booting, you always install windows first, since the bootloader for windows is stubborn to say the least, GRUB on the other hand is very easy and configurable. I would imagine mac would be around the same.

[avelle]

I use Virtualbox for Linux and it's incredibly easy to setup and use. If you're not wanting the Mac OS on your machine long term, I'd go that route. No problems under Win7 64bit here either.

[Purrrfect]

I had a virtualbox set up for osx 10.3 I believe, that was the most recent iso I could find that had been tweaked to install on a PC. I'd like to get a more recent version (and installing from a source that hasn't been doctored up would be a nice bonus), but it seems like a lot of work.

[Gustave]

I used Virtual Box 4.0.2 and iatkos v3 s2 (Which is Mac 10.6.???). Seems to work great so far. I tried many different tutorials on installing from a retail cd but no dice.