Boot camp within boot camp

[tnbriggs]

I have a Bootcamp drive running OSX Snow Leopard & WinXP in an external enclosure. When I connect that drive to any of my Mac computers, each also running Bootcamp (MacPro 1,1 running El Cap or Lion, MacbookPro 8,2 running High Sierra, MacbookPro 5,2 running dosdudex’s patched Catalina) I can select it and boot into Snow Leopard, but the ability to boot into XP is not there. Is there any way I can do that?

Thanks.

 

[DeltaMac]

The Snow Leopard install on that external drive will boot any supported Mac, generally without a problem. A Mac does not care what the system was installed on originally. A Mac boot system would not be affected by a Boot Camp install -- it would simply be another partition on the same drive, bootable with Snow Leopard (in this case)
Windows/Windows XP, on the other hand, is very dependent on the hardware that was used when it was installed, and usually will give challenges/boot errors, or won't boot at all on different hardware - at least not without setting up that Windows install to allow for different hardware. Mac OS does not care. Windows definitely does. This is NOT a Boot Camp issue - it is a Windows "feature"
Are you saying that your WinXP boot camp install will definitely not boot on the Mac that you used to install it using Boot Camp? Boot Camp does not, by itself, provide for booting on hardware that is different from that used to originally install that Windows system.

 

[tnbriggs]

I understand your reply. Thanks for the explanation.

The Snow Leopard/XP Bootcamp drive was originally installed as an internal drive in the MacPro 1,1 and if I were to put it back in that machine as an internal drive I'm sure I could boot into XP as well as Snow Leopard at start up. It's not really that I need access to XP and was more just a point of curiosity for me.

Since I can boot into SL from any of the machines to which it may be connected as an external drive I thought perhaps there was a way to get it to boot to XP as well while connected as an external drive but that is obviously not the case.

To your point about the hardware sensitivity issues with XP, when that external drive is connected to the MacPro 1,1, which has the same hardware as was originally present when it existed there as an internal drive, there must be something about the fact that it's external rather than internal that is preventing XP showing up a a boot drive on that machine. But again it's not an issue of real concern for me -- if I really need XP for something I'd just swap that drive from the external case back into one of the MacPro's internal bays.

Thanks again.