Dual Boot 7 and SL on 2 Harddrives

[Hangampalli]

So I used to have 7 and Leopard on a single harddrive and was able to boot easily using EasyBCD.

 

However, since my laptop has a extra harddrive slot, I decided to install snow leopard on one and keep 7 by itself on the other. The installation worked fine and both OS's work great, the only problem is getting it to boot correctly.

 

Right now, I have the Snow Leopard HDD are the primary drive and boot using that. However, for some weird reason, the computer won't boot it by itself. I have to hit F12 every time the computer starts and go to the boot menu and manually select harddrive.

 

When I let it boot by itself, it does one of three things. Most of the time, the computer just restarts before it gets to the menu. Other times, it shows a wacky, torn, completely messed up, and 99% unreadable menu. And on occasion, it doesn't even recognize the harddrive.

 

I tried using EasyBCD with the 7 harddrive as primary, but that is no good. I guess EasyBCD doesn't support dual harddrives very well.

 

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

 

 

My Computer:

 

Alienware M17X

2.4 Dual Core Intel

GTX 260m

250 HD (windows 7)

300 HD (Snow Leopard)

4 Gigs Ram

[jkshep]

So I used to have 7 and Leopard on a single harddrive and was able to boot easily using EasyBCD.

 

However, since my laptop has a extra harddrive slot, I decided to install snow leopard on one and keep 7 by itself on the other. The installation worked fine and both OS's work great, the only problem is getting it to boot correctly.

 

Right now, I have the Snow Leopard HDD are the primary drive and boot using that. However, for some weird reason, the computer won't boot it by itself. I have to hit F12 every time the computer starts and go to the boot menu and manually select harddrive.

 

When I let it boot by itself, it does one of three things. Most of the time, the computer just restarts before it gets to the menu. Other times, it shows a wacky, torn, completely messed up, and 99% unreadable menu. And on occasion, it doesn't even recognize the harddrive.

 

I tried using EasyBCD with the 7 harddrive as primary, but that is no good. I guess EasyBCD doesn't support dual harddrives very well.

 

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

 

 

My Computer:

 

Alienware M17X

2.4 Dual Core Intel

GTX 260m

250 HD (windows 7)

300 HD (Snow Leopard)

4 Gigs Ram

 

I'm somewhat n00bish, but from my own research throughout these boards, the first things that come to mind are:

1) Did you unplug the Win7 hard drive after you removed SL and before you installed SL on a separate drive?

2) Have you tried using Chameleon as your bootloader?

 

My guess is that the cleanest way to do this would have been to have wiped the original drive completely and do a fresh install of both SL and Win 7 separately on their respective drives, with one drive being unplugged as you install the other.

[Hangampalli]

I'm somewhat n00bish, but from my own research throughout these boards, the first things that come to mind are:

1) Did you unplug the Win7 hard drive after you removed SL and before you installed SL on a separate drive?

2) Have you tried using Chameleon as your bootloader?

 

My guess is that the cleanest way to do this would have been to have wiped the original drive completely and do a fresh install of both SL and Win 7 separately on their respective drives, with one drive being unplugged as you install the other.

 

 

yea, I tried that. Still no success.

[shenshenshen]

hey dude i am having the same problem too. i hope someone can bring some light to this matter. anyways, bump for you.

[izanaki]

Can someone help me.

 

I have OSX on a separate hard drive and Windows 7 on another hard drive.

 

Now OSX works if I unplug the Windows 7 drive.

 

But if I have both drives plugged in, OSX boots and goes to the desktop, and the mouse moves but i cannot click on anything and the dock doesn't move.

 

Now, I also have the problem if I unplug the windows 7 drive and have another NTFS drive plugged in as well. So literally I cannot have any NTFS drives plugged in if I want OSX to work.

 

I tried installing MacFuse to be able to read the NTFS drives but that didn't help.

[LiLChris]

Ill be interested in doing something like this as well. Got plenty of HDD laying around.

[Hangampalli]

I just realized that I don't have to Hit F12 and go into boot options to load the bootloader. Instead, I can just hit any key and it will boot.

 

Of course, if I don't do anything, it will still give the same problem.

 

However, since any key works, maybe the issue is that the bootloader (PC EFI i think) is sort of buggy and needs a push (in the form of a button press) to load correctly. I was thinking that maybe I could change the code of the BOOT file and add some sort of code in the beginning to fix it.

 

Does that make sense and it any of you guys think it might work, can someone tell me how to do it?

 

 

BTW, for those interested I have a guide on how to install OSX (either iAtkos7 or Snow Leopard) at:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=212102

 

I have everything working, except for sound. (But external sound options are available and work well) And Obviously for the Snow Leopard method, I'm have the dual boot problem.

 

Can someone help me.

 

I have OSX on a separate hard drive and Windows 7 on another hard drive.

 

Now OSX works if I unplug the Windows 7 drive.

 

But if I have both drives plugged in, OSX boots and goes to the desktop, and the mouse moves but i cannot click on anything and the dock doesn't move.

 

Now, I also have the problem if I unplug the windows 7 drive and have another NTFS drive plugged in as well. So literally I cannot have any NTFS drives plugged in if I want OSX to work.

 

I tried installing MacFuse to be able to read the NTFS drives but that didn't help.

 

 

That's seems odd. Can you tell us more about your configuration. Also, what OSX do you have and whats your primary Harddrive?

[izanaki]

So I fixed the issue. The problem was when I selected the GIGABEAST drivers from the [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] installer, I didn't select my motherboard. I selected just gigabeast which installed all the drivers for all the gigabyte motherboards. This obviously created conflicts. So I reinstall OSX and then selected the right motherboard from the [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] installer under the gigabeast option and I got it working fine. Now I can dual boot between Windows 7 and OSX.

 

Cheers to all the help!

 

 

 

I just realized that I don't have to Hit F12 and go into boot options to load the bootloader. Instead, I can just hit any key and it will boot.

 

Of course, if I don't do anything, it will still give the same problem.

 

However, since any key works, maybe the issue is that the bootloader (PC EFI i think) is sort of buggy and needs a push (in the form of a button press) to load correctly. I was thinking that maybe I could change the code of the BOOT file and add some sort of code in the beginning to fix it.

 

Does that make sense and it any of you guys think it might work, can someone tell me how to do it?

 

 

BTW, for those interested I have a guide on how to install OSX (either iAtkos7 or Snow Leopard) at:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=212102

 

I have everything working, except for sound. (But external sound options are available and work well) And Obviously for the Snow Leopard method, I'm have the dual boot problem.

 

 

 

 

That's seems odd. Can you tell us more about your configuration. Also, what OSX do you have and whats your primary Harddrive?

[nuCCk]

It F*** whit me...

[ij2k]

Hi friends Greetings to all

 

my configuration

 

AMD athlon X2 64

MSI motherboard with nvidia chipset :: single ide channel and single sata channel

2 gb ddr 2 ram

additonal (old ) Realtek lan card in addition to the integrated nforce lan card

 

40 gb IDE HDD :: 2 partitions 20 gb each :: GPT partition table

 

80 GB IDE HDD :: win xp sp3 and ubuntu 10.04 :: MBR

 

i am using the HDD induvidually since i have only one IDE channel so i can use DVD and one HDD at a time

or both the HDD's at time

 

MAC boots fine individally

win xp linux boots fine individually

 

now I am trying to make a dual boot with these HDD (or rather triple boot now)

 

SCENARIO NO .1:::::::

 

made the mac HDD as master -- windows as slave -- no dvd drive connected (it is not possible)

 

Chameleon boot loader detects the windows (NTFS) partitions, loads mac all perfect when mac is selected

when windows is selected windows will not load and shows the blinking cursor(under score)

 

SCENARIO NO 2 :::::::::::::::::

 

Made the mac HDD as slave windows boot loaded could not detect Mac, which i think is obvious due to GPT on mac HDD

 

SCENARIO NO 3 ::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

installed the ubuntu 10.04 as dual boot with win xp on 80 gb HDD

able to dual boot windows xp and ubuntu , connected the mac (40 gb HDD ) as slave

ran the grub config in ubuntu detected mac 32 bit and mac 64 bit (i did not understand why !).

updated the grub(grub2 is the version) . restarted the computer, grub boot loader shows two macs neither one of them loads :: MESSAGE is specified device not found xnu kernel is not loaded

 

 

NOW SUGGESTIONS PLEASE FOR THIS SITUATION !!! ?

[DD9200]

I would recommend starting from scratch. Backup everything, obviously then this is how I did it.

I ran a virtual machine in Windows 7 with Leopard on and made a bootable USB Drive of Snow Leopard, you should be able to this in your current Leopard installation anyway. You've then got to install Chameleon to the USB drive while you're still in Leopard. You should also add any kexts you need to the Extra folder in the root of the drive.

Then set your computer to boot from USB.

Using disk utility, partition your first hard drive to a GUID Partition table, mac osx extended journaled. Also click on info, still in disk utility, and look for your partition number, will probably be disk0s2, right that down. Format your other hdd with your Windows install so it doesn't interfere at boot. Install Snow Leopard on your primary drive. It'll probably say install has failed, that's fine.

Boot up to USB again you should see your Snow Leopard install, select it but don't push enter yet. Type in rd=disk0s2 or whatever your disk was. You should now be in Snow Leopard, install chameleon to that drive, install your kexts etc... That's done.

Now boot up and go into your BIOS. Firstly take USB boot off the boot menu, make your leopard hdd the 1st boot then dvd drive second. Still in BIOS disable your drive with snow leopard in.

Put your windows 7 dvd in and boot to that, you'll probably have to click drive options, delete, then new so that windows can install. The reason for disabling the snow leopard one is because windows creates another partition and usually does it on a separate drive but then it just gets messed up is sl is there too. Once you've installed re enable your sl hdd and that should be that, to boot into windows choose the system reserved partition if there is two not Windows NTFS, if just one then it's just Windows NTFS.