Friday, September 12, 2008

Dual Booting an Asus Eee PC 1000h

I got my new Asus Eee PC 1000h and have to say - I love it!
It comes pre-installed with Windows XP on a 40 GB partition and has a free 34.5 GB partition just begging for OS X. Here's how to do it:


WARNING: I'm not responsible for any damage, loss of data, etc. that this could do to your new machine. Use these instructions AT YOUR OWN RISK. They worked for me, but I can't guarantee they will work for you. OK - you've been warned. Still want to continue? Good...


You should read & understand:
http://www.maceee.com/how-to-mac-os-x-1054-for-the-eee-pc-901-1000h-27.html
before continuing here. Make sure you have everything you need.

1. Boot into XP

2. Verify that your Eee PC is setup like mine - 3 partitions:
40 GB
34.5 GB
32 MB
The 34.5 GB partition should be the D: drive and should be completely empty. That's the partition we're going to use for OS X.

3. Next, we want to delete the 2nd partition and re-create it as an "af" partition and make it "active." Here's the deal - once you change the active partition to the 2nd partition, your machine will no longer boot.

Ready? Here's what you do

Make sure you're on the desktop of your Windows installation.
Press WIN+R to open the Run prompt, then type DISKPART and press Enter.
Now we're going to use DISKPART to create a HFS+ compatible Mac partition that we can boot off.

Follow these next set of commands:

DISKPART> select disk 0

DISKPART> select partition 2

DISKPART> delete partition

DISKPART> create partition primary id=af

DISKPART> select partition 2

DISKPART> active

DISKPART> Exit

4. Follow the excellent instructions here:
http://www.maceee.com/how-to-mac-os-x-1054-for-the-eee-pc-901-1000h-27.html
(I DID NOT DO STEP 6)
Be sure to "Erase" this newly created partition and format for Mac OS X.

5. So, you followed the instructions and can now boot into OS X, but NOT into XP. That's OK - we're going to fix that now. You just need to modify one file:
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist. Here's my complete file (the bold faced lines are the lines I added):

<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string></string>

<key>Boot Graphics</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>Quiet Boot</key>
<string>No</string>

<key>Timeout</key>
<string>5</string>
<key>device-properties</key>
<string></string>
</dict>
</plist>



You can edit this file directly from a terminal window using:
sudo nano /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist

that should keep the file permissions and ownership intact and just allow you to add the 4 additional lines.

That's it!
The system will boot OS X by default, but if you press F8 when prompted, Darwin will show you a menu and you can select either Windows XP or OS X.

I'm writing these instructions using my eee pc now (OS X of course) - however, i'm doing this from memory, so, if I missed anything or there are any errors PLEASE let me know and I will fix it. Hopefully, everything will go smoothly for you, but just remember, it's only a computer and you can always fix it ;)