Creating a dualboot Windows XP and Mac OS 10.6 machine with FAT32 common partition
Steps:
- Install Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard
- Run Bootcamp assistant to partition your drive to 2 partitions
- Install Windows XP on the bootcamp partition after reformatting it to NTFS
- Boot back into Mac OS
- Reduce the size of the Mac OS partition in disk utility and add a common FAT32 partition in the space you’ve freed. Don’t touch the windows partition at all.
- Install MacFUSE and NTFS-3G so that you can edit the boot.ini file on the Windows partition.
- Change where it says partition(#) in the boot.ini file to partition(#+1) (This worked for me – you may want to try adding 2 or 3 on some setups).
- Voila! You should be able to boot into Windows and Mac OS by holding option at start up (that’s alt for all you new Mac users)
Disclaimer: this worked for me – your mileage may vary…
