Triple Boot: XP, Koala, and Snow Leopard in Lenovo s10e

nico — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 16:08:24 +0000

After so many trial and errors, finally I succeeded installing three OS in this cool netbook, Lenovo S10e. Well, actually I just installed additional two, SL and Koala, cause XP’s been there since the beginning. I decided to add SL when I visited this web which says that my novo has a quite compatibility with SL aside from the LAN. So if you want to try triple boot in your netbook, maybe my experience here can give you a clue of what to do.

First thing first. Some notes you need to know.

I used Lenovo S10e with the newest firmware. Update your firmware first. When I did this, I used the 14CN96WW firmware. Install that firmware from your XP. (XP was installed by default when I bought it).
I used genuine Snow Leopard and Karmic Koala
I had 4 partitions. 1 for XP, 1 for SL, 1 for Koala, and 1 for data (shared among the three). It appears that SL cannot be booted if it is installed in an extended partition. So from your XP, create another two (or three like me) NTFS partitions. No need for additional software to do this, just go to Control Panel -> Administration something -> and so on (I forgot the name, cause my XP is in Japanese ) It’s ok using NTFS for now, cause we will format them later when we install the OSs.
I backup my data, docs, pics, songs, and others before I did this, and I encourage you to do so, cause it could get nasty
Do this at your own risk! I won’t take any responsibility if anything goes wrong!

So if you’re ready to get dirty, let’s start moving!

I assume you have XP installed already. Let’s install SL first. Not as easy as installing Ubuntu, but not that hard too actually once you know the drill What you need:
- A Genuine Snow Leopard DVD
- 8 GB or more USB Flash drive or external HD will do too. I used my 80 GB ext HD Btw, I’m not sure but the ext HD should be one partition only. I did with 3 partitions ext HD first, but failed.
- System with Mac OS X to prepare the USB installation medium. Yup, you didn’t misunderstand, you need a mac to install a mac. If you don’t have one, find your friend who has and make the Usb in his/her mac. No friend has it? Well, find one!
Once you upgrade the firmware of S10e, download this S10e Enabler to make your USB installation medium.
In a Mac, format as Mac OS extended journal the USB flash drive/ext hd we’re gonna use for the installation medium.
Copy the content of SL DVD to the usb stick from the Restore menu
Still in Mac, run the S10e Enabler. When you double click the downloaded .dmg enabler file (for example “S10 Snow Leopard Enabler 1.1.2.dmg”, you will have two files: Enabler and Instructions. Run the Enabler. And follow the wizard. IMPORTANT: in “Destination Select” phase, choose your USB Stick from “Change Install Location..” button. DO NOT INSTALL the Enabler in the mac system!!!! It will break the system! Trust me, I made this mistake.
Install Enabler in the USB Stick!
Once it’s done, unplug the USB medium, plug it into the lenovo s10e. Boot from the USB stick by pressing F12 in the beginning.
Congratulations! You’re in Snow Leopard Installation. First, let’s format the partition we’re gonna use for our SL system as Mac OS extended journal. Then just follow the wizard.
Choose SL Partition
It will take time, you can grab a coffee and relax first
Installing Snow Leopard
Once it’s done, unplug the USB stick, then boot to the fresh from the oven Snow Leopard
Snow Leopard in Lenovo s10e
Cannot boot to windows cause no option to boot to it? Just ditch it! Naa, just kidding, don’t worry bout it, we’ll fix it later. Let’s install Ubuntu Karmic Koala first. No external dvd/cd drive like me? Don’t worry. Create Ubuntu USB Installation Medium using UNetBootIn. Just follow the instruction in that page, pretty easy.
Once you have the Ubuntu Usb stick, boot from it. I won’t go step by step installation step, cause it’s so damn easy already Just some notes though: 1. Specify Partition Manually. Don’t install Ubuntu in SL and XP partition! 2. VERY IMPORTANT: On the last step of installation, before you hit that “Install” button, change the location of grub bootloader. Click “Advance” button then change the location to install grub to your root partition. For example, if you install “/” in /dev/sda3, install the grub in the same location, not in /dev/sda. After the installation complete, just reboot.
Still directly boot to Snow Leopard, don’t worry. In Snow Leopard, open /Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist file then edit it. You can do it from terminal, open Terminal from /Applications/Utilities then type
sudo nano /Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist
Change the value of “Quiet Boot” from “Yes” to “No”. Save the file then reboot.
Now you should see all the OSs: XP, Snow Leopard, and Koala like this.
Bootloader
Try to boot to all of them one by one. Make sure everything works!
Enjoy!