How to Zen an Intel Mac Part II

This is a rough draft, I just wanted to get something up ASAP. More details to come.

UPDATE: See the post How to Zen an Intel Mac Part III


All credit goes to Jeff Abernathy, Ameer Abdelmalek, Corey Webb and Queanna Jones. I just sat around and watched HD Movie Trailers in a Parallels Virtual Machine. 😉

To make things quicker you will need more than one Mac.
One to image with windows from your Zen imaging CD
One to serve the image you just created
One which will be your target Mac you want to have the dual boot set up on.
Once you Create your Windows image you can reuse that on multiple dual boot macs.

Creating the Windows image
1) Stick your Zen imaging cd in your mac and install the zen image, just like you would on a PC. This will wipe everything and make your shiny mac a Windows only machine. With our setup the Windows partion is on partion(1). This is bad. EFI/GUID wants Windows to be on the 3rd partition. This is why just installing windows from an intall cd works while just imaging that zen partition from the imaging cd does not.
2) Once imaged, don’t restart it!
3) Boot into Target Disk mode
4) Use NetRestore Helper to create a master disk image of the drive. I would save this as something informative like zenbase.ntfs

Create the OS X image
1) If you have a base image you use to deploy over multiple machines, image the target mac with your image.
2)Install and Run Bootcamp to create your partitions

Install the Windows image
3)Use NetRestore Helper to restore the zenbase.ntfs image to the newly created windows partion.

Fix the boot.ini
1)boot off of XP SP2 disk and run bootconfig /restore

a good boot.ini will look like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Professional” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

See that partition(3) part? That’s the kicker.

If you fix the boot.ini before creating the .ntfs file, then you only have to do it once, instead of at every deployment. This could be done with a WinPE CD or by bringing down an add-on image with the right boot.ini in it. Unfortunately, Linux mounts the NTFS partition read-only, so editing it at the command line is not an option. – Corey Webb