how to reinstall osx after xp

N

napatec

Registered
I'm working on a macbook pro that someone had installed bootcamp and windows xp. There is no sign of osx on the drive from winxp.

When I click on bootcamp and select reboot in os x I get the error:
'Could not locate the Mac OS X boot volume'

Also from the bootcamp control panel in windows only shows windows and nothing else, I know this may correct even if osx was installed.

So at this point I am assuming that whom ever did this install wiped out the original os x. (shame)

It looks like the drive is around 186GB with 90GB unallocated at the beginning and a 92GB NTFS at the end with xp on it.

What we want is to install osx back on here and leave the xp install as is.
Is this possible??

You won't believe it but this all started because the owner is a mechanic and needed a laptop to run his diagnostics for his repair business and the software only runs in xp. He couldn't find a laptop with xp right off the shelf at the local big box store...so they talked him into buying a macbook because it would run xp. Then they screwed it all up and lost osx.

I have all the original discs here.

Thanks for reading...
 
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If the Windows partition is formatted in NTFS, of course its not going to see the Mac side. Go into boot mgr and see if there is both volumes listed. If you see the OSX volume through boot mgr, try to boot to it. If no go there, boot to the installers that you have and go into disk utility and see how they have things set up. I don't know what the issue is that you are trying to solve, but if its just reinstalling OSX next to the boot camp volume, that should be an easy fix if its been wiped.
 
Thanks for the reply

What I'm asking is if it's possible to reinstall osx without destroying the bootcamp/xp install, and by that I also mean has anyone here actually done this.
I don't usually do this kind of thing on a mac so I didn't know if this was common knowledge or not. And since this computer is used everyday for work I thought it would be prudent to simply ask before diving right in.

(Judging from the number of people that have read my post it appears that it's not common knowledge.)

Since the current xp install is working I am going to wait and get him going on a pc for his work and then setup the mac so he can actually use it as a mac.
I think he will stay with the mac once he gets to use it.
As soon as he bought it they raped it and put xp on it and he's never seen the mac OS, it was supposed to be dual boot!

I followed your tips and found that there is no boot mgr since there is no osx.
I did boot to the install disc and used the disk utility and found that indeed there is only the ntfs volume onboard.
Also holding down the option key at boot only showed the windows volume was available.

So according to your post I can reinstall the osx next to the bootcamp/ntfs partition and still have it boot to either OS?

I was assuming that the osx installer would want to take the entire drive and I wouldn't have any choice once it got underway.

Thanks again
 
"I followed your tips and found that there is no boot mgr since there is no osx.
I did boot to the install disc and used the disk utility and found that indeed there is only the ntfs volume onboard.
Also holding down the option key at boot only showed the windows volume was available."

Boot mgr is holding down the option key at startup. Don't need an OSX volume for that.


Do you have access to another mac? If so I would download a program called winclone. It is donationware for Macs for cloning Windows partitions. This is going to be necessary if the Windows side is critical. That way if anything blows up you have a good backup of the Windows side. Once that is done go ahead and repartition/reinstall the Mac side. With 10.5 you can actually mess around with the partitions without wiping out the Windows side, but I would still have an image before doing this.

PS. All of this is assuming before just going through the reinstall of OSX, you have a good solid understanding of using disk utility for creating/editing partitions
 
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Great idea...just no other mac around here.

I'll just get him setup with all necessary work stuff on another laptop(pc) before playing with the mac.



Ok thanks again I appreciate your help.
 
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