Dual-Boot Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard on Your PC

Running one cool operating system on your computer is pretty epic, but for an awesome fellow geek like yourself, it’s mandatory to be running more than one on your computer. And what better operating system to dual boot than the greatest ones in history – Mac and Windows. So if you want to dual-boot these two great operating systems on your computer and choose your desired OS every time you boot up, all you have to do is follow the given steps very carefully.

Things to Remember

• It’s good that you’re trying to take yourself to the next level of tech, but it’s recommended that you be a somewhat savvy computer user to avoid screwing up your computer.
• You will need to have installation disks of both operating systems – Mac OS X (Snow leopard) and Windows 7 or Windows 8.
• Make sure you back up all your data since we will be reformatting and partitioning the hard disk.
• Buy the latest version of EasyBCD from here and download it – you’ll need this to dual-boot Mac and Windows 7.
• You need 120 GB of hard drive space or more to install Mac and Windows 7 on your computer

Step 1: Partitioning the Hard Disk to Install Mac

The first thing you will have to do is partition your hard disk to make space for Mac OS X – this can be done by using any OS installation disk, but we’ll be using Windows 7 here.

1. To make a partition, open start menu and enter computer management in search, open computer management.
2. Now click on the Disk Management option and you’ll see all your drives listed on the right side – don’t pay attention to the system reserved space, it has nothing to do with this procedure.
3. Now right click on the drive you wish to divide (must have at least 120+ GB of space) and select Shrink Volume
4. Now enter the amount you want to shrink the volume by, in Megabytes (MB). For example, if you want to make the new partition of 10 GB size, then you have to enter 10000 MB (in megabytes). In this case, we recommend you enter 40000 MB as this (40 GB) is enough to install Mac OS X on.  After you’ve enter the amount in the box, click on Shrink.
5. You will see the partitioned disk space displayed in the computer management window –now you have to make a new volume out if this space. To do so, right click it and select New Simple Volume \
6. The simple volume wizard window should pop up. Keep hitting next and assign your new volume a letter (something like C: D: or E: ). When you reach the Format Partition screen, select the Format this volume with the following settings: option and enter the following settings:
   1. For File System, select NTFS.
   2. For Allocation unit size, select Default.
   3. For Volume Label, type the name you want to give to your new volume drive.
   4. Click on the Perform a quick format.
   5. Then click on the Next button.
7. Take a last look on your volume settings and click Finish.
8. Right click on the new volume you created and select Format… Proceed with the formatting and click Start.

After the volume has been formatted, you’re done partitioning for now – you will use this space to install Mac OS X on it. After you’re done with that, you’ll make another 50 GB partition and install Windows 7 on it. But forget about that for a moment. Now we’ll start installing Mac.

Step 2: Installing Mac OS X on the 40 GB Hard Disk Partition

Installing Mac OS X on your computer isn’t as easy as installing Windows. It requires a lot of time to prepare your Hackintosh and putting together the compatible hardware. But lucky for you, there’s not much hacking involved in this procedure and neither are there any complications that can screw your PC.

1. First you’ll need to prepare the Boot disk in order for the installation to run. To do , you will need:
   1. iBoot – Download it.
   2. A Blank rewritable CD that you can burn iBoot on.
2. You can use almost any DVD burner you want (Infrarecorder is a free DVD burner recommended for this procedure), all you need to do is burn iBoot onto the blank CD. And that’s it; you’ve got your boot disk fully ready and loaded.
3. Now to set up your BIOS settings. You can enter BIOS mode while booting, most computers enter BIOS with the Delete key. But your manufacturer might prompt you to press some other.
4. After you’ve entered BIOS, make sure you enter in these settings:
   1. Change your boot priority to boot from CD ROM first.
   2. Change SATA to AHCI mode.
   3. Change HPET to 64-bit mode.
   4. And select Load Optimized Default.
   5. You can set the rest of the settings according to your computer hardware since you know it better than anybody, but the important ones are listed above.
5. Now Reboot your PC and insert the iBoot disk you made, you should see a disk in the centre and an apple face on top. At this stage, eject the iBoot disk and insert the Mac OS X installation DVD. Press F5 when prompted.
6. If all goes well, you should see the language selection screen. Select your language and click Next.
7. ON the next screen, you will be prompted to select the partition or make a new one – make the installation on the 40 GB partition you created before and proceed.

You’re halfway done! You can set up your Mac for now because you’ll be using it later when you’ve set the dual-boot system up.

Step 3: Installing Windows 7

Now for the easy part, you’re going to have to install windows 7 on your PC. And while you do that, you’ll use the un-partitioned space you left and install Windows 7 on it – or divide it again and use some as storage space, entirely up to you. Let’s begin:

1. Boot your computer up and insert the Windows 7 Installation DVD.
2. Proceed with the installation and set your language, date and time etc.
3. When you reach the partition selection screen, you should see the unpartiotioned disk space in the list.
4. You have 2 options now – use the un-partitioned space, or partition this space and use one for Windows 7 and the other for storage.

After choosing your partition, the installation of Windows 7 will begin shortly.

Setting up Dual-Boot

For now, you can only use Windows 7. Yes, Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) is there – all installed and functional. But when you installed Windows 7 on top of it, it overwrites Mac’s boot up. To fix this up we’ll need a boot selection program – and here’s where EasyBCD comes in.

1. Install EasyBCD on your computer and run it.
2. From the main screen of EasyBCD, select the Add/Remove Entries option
3. Select the Mac tab and then select the Generic x86 PC from the drop down options.

And that is IT! You’re ready to try out your dual-boot selection screen. Restart your computer and you should see options to either boot into Windows 7 or Mac OS X (Snow Leopard).