Automatic reboot from Leopard to XP?

December 19, 2007 4:20 PM

I have an Intel iMac with Leopard, and via Boot Camp, a partition with Windows XP. The normal way to boot into XP is--after restarting Leopard or turning on the computer--to hold down the Option (Alt) key and then choose the OS. Is there a way around this? Is there some setting or third-party app that will reboot my computer from Leopard and automatically start Windows so I don't have to wait around holding down that key?

Going the other way is no problem as the default (if you don't touch any keys) will boot up Leopard.

I like my iMac and Leopard a lot, more than XP, but Apple's insistence on using the keyboard is a bit annoying. The delete key being another example. End mini-rant.

posted by zardoz to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

You want some kind of application to guess what OS you want to load when you restart? Without any user interaction?
posted by purephase at 4:28 PM on December 19, 2007

So you want it to look at the last OS that was booted, and boot to the other OS?

So if you're rebooting from Loepard, it'll boot to Windows, and if you're rebooting from Windows, it'll boot to Leopard. Is that what you want?
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 4:33 PM on December 19, 2007

Response by poster: purephase--no, I want the app to choose XP when I restart, to virtually hold down the Option key for me.
posted by zardoz at 4:33 PM on December 19, 2007

No, my understanding is he wants a 'now reboot into windows' button in Leopard.
posted by Brockles at 4:35 PM on December 19, 2007

Best answer: In System Preferences there's a section called "Startup Disk." In Windows XP there should be a similar setting in the Control Panel (it gets added by Boot Camp).
posted by jedicus at 4:39 PM on December 19, 2007

Best answer: There's also an application called rEFIt which will give you a pretty boot menu to choose an OS from.
posted by sbutler at 5:00 PM on December 19, 2007

What jedicus said. The same functionality is present in the Boot Camp icon of your system tray in XP. Great for switching between Team Fortress 2 and getting actual work done.
posted by infinitewindow at 5:14 PM on December 19, 2007

Another thing to look at is Parallels (virtualization software). It'll let you boot your Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine running inside of OSX; performance is about 90% of what it'll be booting into Windows. As long as you don't need fast graphics, it's really quite nice.

Of course if, like me and infinitewindow, you're using Windows to play TF2, Parallels won't help you one bit. Which reminds me, I gotta reboot...
posted by jacobian at 5:55 PM on December 19, 2007

If you have a multi-chip system, Parallels can't use more than one chip, so performance isn't 90% then. I switched from Parallels to VMWare because I like it a bit better and because it's supposed to be able to use all chips. Both programs offer free trials.

I still boot to Windows for development. It gets a little chuggy trying to run VisualStudio, etc. in the virtual machine.
posted by yerfatma at 6:02 AM on December 20, 2007