Hi,

first, thank you for this great tutorial... really easy to understand..

My question,
I m stuck at the end, well i tried to boot OS X via Darwinbootloader, it works great !
But next i tried to boot my Vista partition, and it says that it s borken (i followed everything you said).. so i repair it and set it active via the Vista DVD.. but i doesn t change anything ... so what can i do ?

thx very much for your help
Guillaume.

MAJ :

Well i finally make Vista worked again, but OS X doesn t boot anymore, i've got the HFS partition error...
i tried what you said :

fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0
Specifies the disc that you have Vista and OS X installed to
The specified location rdisk0 may of course be different if Vista or OS X was installed on a different drive

flag 2
Marks OS X as the active partition (or if you installed OS X 1st and Vista 2nd, change the flag to 1)

update
Update machine code in loaded MBR

write
Write loaded MBR to disk

quit
This will quit fdisk and take you back to the normal single user prompt

reboot
Your machine will restart and boot OS X as normal

But it still samething
(i ve got 3 partition, first is Vista, second Data and third OS X.. so i flaged the 3rd to boot OS X, doesn t work...)

You have to do the same to the OS X partition to fix the HFS+ Partition error.

So you would do it in this order,

Fix HFS+ Error first:

Boot in single user with OS X disc in the drive,

fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0
flag 3 (OS X)
update
write
quit
reboot

Check to see if OS X is fine by letting it load, then:

Boot in single user again,

fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0
flag 1 (Vista)
quit
reboot

Vista will report that there is an error blah blah, put the Vista disc in, repair and restart, Vista will load fine.
Then just use DISKPART to make OS X active again.

Thx for your answer, but it doesn t work when i try to fix the HFS error... it still present... and i tired 5 times without succes... :/
any clue ?

thx

UPDATE : The HFS error occured after i repaired Vista (before OS X was working great)

Really? the Vista repair shouldn't touch the part of the MBR that the Mac uses.
I've successfully installed and dual-booted via this method for 4 machines and never had a problem with a re-occuring HFS+ error.
Perhaps it is because you have three partitions on one drive, with the first and third being OS', but I am unsure how this would change the result.
I suppose you could always try using two partitions as a test, to see if that works, that's if you don't mind backing up all the data on your data drive!

Heya devil,

Thanks for the clarification on that bcedit entry. It looked a bit confusing because you had {current} in the first part, but below that, when you used the {brackets}, it signified inserting something specific to my machine, so it seemed I was supposed to insert something specifc where {current} was also.
Actually, what took care of it was, I disabled UAC, then rebooted, then the bcedit command worked right away. I originally disabled UAC, but somehow I accidentally enabled it again before doing this step. Vista keeps telling you that it's off and to re-enable it (dang stupid warining balloons !@#$%!)

Thanks again!

So you think maybe i should install again (it only take 20mn so...)

Yeah give it a go, I think there might be some kind of confusion going on with the MBR, so you could first try having Vista on 1st Partition, OS X on 2nd, and Data on 3rd.
If that doesn't work, try just having 2 partitions and that's it.

Also, before doing that, run DISKPART on WinXP, 'select disk 1' and then 'select partition 1' and then type 'detail partition' on all of your partitions, see if you do not have multiple partitions set to active, because this could be (possibly) the cause of your MBR getting messed up after re-writing it using fdisk.

So i reinstalled OS X...
This is What i did for right now :

1/ Under Vista, set Active on the OS X partition (before install)
2/ Installing OS X
3/ OS X work with DarwinBootLoader
4/ Vista not.. so i flag the Vista partition (using Safe Mode)
5/ I boot from Vista DVD to repair
6/ I flag back OS X using safe Mode (is it useful ? i don t know, i thought yes cause dawin is the bootloader...)
7/ I try to boot the Vista partition, still broken... :/
8/ OS X still working

So should have done wrong things above, tell me in order what i have to do to have DarwinBootLoader booting both OS X and Vista (and make Vista work again)

Thanks so much for your help

MAJ :

I repaired Vista, and now it boot straight... (without Darwin Boot Loader)
So to get back the DarwinBoot Loader i set my OS X partition as Active with Diskpart under Vista

I restart my computer, DarwinButLoader appear, i try to choose OS X and i get the HFS+ Error !!!
so i follow your tutorial with these command :

fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0
Specifies the disc that you have Vista and OS X installed to
The specified location rdisk0 may of course be different if Vista or OS X was installed on a different drive

flag 2
Marks OS X as the active partition (or if you installed OS X 1st and Vista 2nd, change the flag to 1)

update
Update machine code in loaded MBR

write
Write loaded MBR to disk

quit
This will quit fdisk and take you back to the normal single user prompt

reboot
Your machine will restart and boot OS X as normal

BUT it doesn t work, HFS+Error still here...

What did i miss ???
I m pretty sure it s when i set back OS X partition active under Vista via Diskpart after i repaired Vista the first time

any clue?


(ps : I checked what you said about multiple active partition under Diskpart, only one is active, the one i choose)

Hey man,

I see you have also a guide. Thanks for the effort mate. I've tried installing OSX multiple times without luck (got stuck at the blue screen with cursor). I went with the Acronis boot selector all the time but after the OSX installation it couldn't boot to XP anymore. I used Ubuntu CD to set the XP partition bootable again but I don't feel like going through that hastle again.

Anyway, before I go ahead and try your guide I would like to ask if you know the way to go if you have a Core Duo T2250 1,7Ghz and a Mobility Radeon X1600? Im trying all this on a Acer Aspire 5672AWLMi with XP already installed and about 10 GB unallocated disk space). Should I disable a core in the BIOS? If so, how? And for the customize screen, should I choose ONLY SSE3 and ATI Mobility Radeon support?

I have the OSX 10.4.6JAS (if I remember correctly).

RESUME

I can have Vista working when i repair it, no problem, the problem is OS X

i tried three differents things after i repared Vista :

1/ Boot Vista, set OS X partition Active
I ve got HFS+Error

2/ Boot Vista, set OS X partition Active and Flag OS X partition (in Safe User mode)
I ve got HF+ Error

3/ Boot Vista, Only Flag OS X partition using Safe User Mode
I ve got HFS+ Error

I tried to repair this error like i said above, but it fail anyway...

Yes, SSE3 and ATI Mobility I believe is correct.
Even though your laptop is an Acer, read through my Dell Inspiron guide on how to disable a core using the boot plist instead of BIOS: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=15474

However, I do recommend using 10.4.8 instead of 10.4.6.



Very weird, did you try scrapping your 3rd partition and trying it with just 2?

Not yet... i ve to find a way to backup my Data !!

I was wondering, after you install OS X, you get the Darwin boot loader, which boot OS X and Vista.. at this point i need to repair vista, so i ve to insert the DVD, make the vista partition active again (via Diskpart), reboot and reinsert the Vista DVD to repair the partition...(two times, because the first time Vista don t see the partition for repairing it, it s why i need to active it first vi Diskpart)

so after this is done, i don t see anymore DarwinBootLoader... to get back with DarwinBootLoader, do i ve to active form Vista the OS X partition with diskpart ? or Flag OS X partition in Safe Mode with OS X DVD, or both ?

thanks for your answer.

After repairing Vista, just let Vista boot fully and then load up DISKPART to make OS X the active partition again, that is pretty much the last step, you don't need to edit anything after that.
I can't really think of any other solution other than trying it with 2 partitions instead of 3.

Ok so i do not have to user OS X safe mode and flag whatever partition...

I m gonna try with two partition..

thx a lot

I did exactly what you said with only two partition, 1 is Vitsa, second is OS.. i juste reparaied Vista and make partition OS X active.. and again i ve got HFS+Error !!!!!

fu******* !!!

any other idea ?
thx

MAJ

I tried to repair HFS+ error as you said, but it still here..

Havent got a clue, the fix is supposed to work perfectly.
I've never personally encountered a case where it hasn't worked. I've installed Vista/OS X dual-booting on both old Intel 875P and new 975X/945GM computers, mainly dealing with Gigabyte, Asus and Dell motherboards.
All set-ups are using SATA as well.

My hardware is a Asrock esata2 with a SataII harddrive...

i m kind of lost with this error !

Devilhood, I followed your tutorial ad verbatim. It is great. I am getting an unusual error. Every time I set my OSX partition to active that is the only OS that boots up. If I change it to Vista (active) I see the bootloader with the option for OSX & Vista, but when I select OSX it just takes me back to the choice screen. If Vista is active, it logs in fine, but doesn't see OSX.

I believe that this is caused by the Darwin boot loader not seeing the Vista side. Can you confirm this?

Hardware is an HP nc8230 laptop w/80gb HD partitioned in half.

Yeah, this problem with the Vista Boot Loader happens to a lot of people, as I stated on the guide, so I would recommend deleting the Mac OS X Vista Boot Loader entry and using Darwin instead (which is what I did).
It's easy to bring up the Darwin Boot Loader;

1) set OS X to active
2) restart
3) tap F8 during the boot process just before the Apple Logo.

The Mac will see Vista fine

Easy but doesn t work for everyone :/

Have you tried searching for your hardware on this forum in-case anyone else has had a similar experience?



It works for 99% of people.

I remember seeing an ASRock torrent up on Demonoid once to fix any incompatibility problems that may arise, perhaps your motherboard is just extremely picky.

Lot of people have the same hardware which is known for good compatibilities.. but it did nt find someone doing dual boot with vista and darwin boot loader

Is your board the ConRoeXFire-eSATA2?
Reply back to my PM when you can

Hey Devil,

It all worked out, OSX runs perfectly but the ethernet and WLAN are not working yet. I can boot both OSX and XP now.

Thanks for the perfect guide.

Wybl

No problemo Wybl

devilhood - I get the same problem as loki936, so I use the darwin boot loader.

Have you tried using boot camp as the dual booting program instead of the darwin boot loader? Does it work and if it does, can you post a tutorial (since it's prettier than darwin and allows a "preferred" OS to be loaded automatically)?

Preparing for Dual-Boot:
This is one of the best and simplest DUAL-BOOT Guide I have run across so far. It worked flawlessly for me.

Thank you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Thank You

The chain0 method does not work with the Vista Boot Manager, at least with Hackintosh machines. Sure, the boot menu is created fine but it fails to load OS X. You should put a warning in the beginning of your thread so people don't waste their time with this.

Using Darwin sucks because you have to press F8 every time and there is no way to set the default to Vista. Vista is still the main OS for many Hackintosh users and osx86 is merely experimental, so booting Vista by default is a must.

I think I will try grub or lilo now.

Knocks: You are completely mistaken, because you do not have to use F8 when Darwin is set to default, you just edit the plist to include a time-out feature, as stated in my guide.
It is working perfectly on my Dell E1705 Laptop, ASUS P5W64-WS Pro, Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 and Gigabyte 8IK110 boards just fine.

Also, I already put a clear warning regarding the Vista Boot Loader method.

I honestly couldn't care less if Vista isn't set to default

What works on your E1705, the Vista loader or darwin?

Thanks for the link, DevilHood.
I'm linking this guide in the EasyBCD Documentation - they're going live sometime this week.

Darwin works perfectly every time, though I haven't tried the Vista Boot Loader method on every one of my machines, but on my E1705 it did not work.

There is an issue regarding the JaS disc itself I believe, because there have been many cases where real macs and other distributions have worked just fine with the Vista Boot Loader.

It would be nice if I could get an answer from a guru regarding the exact issue why the chain0 method seems to be very temperamental. As it's always been like that since the earlier OS X hacks.

devilhood, I've struggled with EasyBCD users experiencing the chain0 failure off and on for almost a year now, it's definitely related to how the installation disc is compiled.

Basically, I've only had people experience this if they used JaS. BUT not everyone with JaS experiences this.
I haven't had a single complaint from Myz users or users of the VMware -> Hard Drive installation process that was the original method of getting OS X on a PC.

I think it has something to do with the hardware that JaS is installed on, maybe it's the AMD, or the SSE2 issue, I don't know.

I hope this helps, I'm not into Mac-debugging all that, just reporting what others have complained about to me.

Oh, and also, you'd have to look at the source code for chain0 to find out why it doesn't work always. It should be available, it's a part of Darwin, isn't it?
Then again, since Darwin's been discontinued I don't know if the source is still available or not...

Computer Guru: glad to see you on board. I'm definitely a fan of EasyBCD and hope eventually it will help us maximize the utility of the Vista loader, especially for all the people who are struggling with it now. I can add that this is probably not an AMD or SSE2 issue. The chain0 method does not work on my Inspiron E1505 (Core 2 Duo, JaS installation).

devilhood: does the Vista loader method work on ANY of your machines?

Thanks for the warm welcome, Knocks.. I haven't been at IM since the days of Windows-on-Mac --- I missed this place!!

I was just telling DH about EasyBCD 1.6, I'm aiming to have it automate all diagnostics for the rebuilding of boot.ini (for XP and 2k dual-booting), BCD (for Vista & LH dual-boots), and hopefully find some way to automagically (and invisibly) deal with the HFS+ Partition Error.

I have no idea where to start as far as the HFS+ error, I'm open to any and all suggestions

BTW, Knocks, the Vista loader method works great for me with Myz.

Great guide devilhood,

Vista and OSX both boot from the Darwin bootloader. I also increased the Timeout <string> so I don't have to 'mash' the F8 key, just to choose between either OS.
I do have one small emergency now, though, that I'm hoping someone can give me some corrective advice on:
I was looking at different posts on the forum regarding making XP or Vista the default boot partition (from within the Darwin bootloader) instead of 10.4.8 - one of the posts suggested updating the MBR after adding the rdisk0s1 string to the Boot.plist file. It said to do a 'fdisk -u /dev/rdisk0' then save and reboot. Now all I get is that it goes black instead of going into the Darwin bootloader. I haven't been able to 'repair' the MBR with any CDs (10.4.8, XP, Vista, UBCD, etc.).
A N Y advice that can get my system bootable again would be welcome. Thnx!

update:
Using the repair modes on both the OS X install disk & the Vista install disk, then using 4 different partition tools from my UBCD 8.1, I was not only able to restore my partitions so they're both bootable now, but Vista is now the default OS, which is what I was trying to accomplish in the first place.
*Caveat: During this process (and in my desperation), I did copy the chain0 file, as well as NTLDR and boot.ini over to the root of my C: drive. I believe what happened to restore me (most likely), is that while using the partition tools, I changed the active partition a couple times, to try to get the BIOS to re-recognize the MBR. While initially this dual boot configuration won't work with the first partition marked active, once both OSes are installed and running, it seems that the active partition can then be changed to allow the system to see the chain0 file.
* Big Note: I don't recommend anyone trying to copy this based on my notes, as this whole process was very confusing and stressful, so it's not like I had a firm recollection of every procedural step I was taking to try to restore balance and order to the force :-)

Hey guys, you look very experienced with the dual booting problem.....i have a big one....i have a working os x jas 10.4.6 and parallel a working win XP (darwin bootloader) so far....i've got another 2,5" HDD, which i wanted to use to build up a new installation....therefore i dd'd a image of the mac os partition, dd'd it to the other disk and it worked....then i installed winxp, everything went fine....after that i installed winVista and got the HFS+ partition error....i read this thred several times, but don't know what to do! my id=af (changed that with a linux live cd) and still get that error...what can i do?? is it perhaps i didn't repair it with the install dvd of mac os?? please help me.....thanks a lot man

An Excelent tutorial much more indept than the one i posted in Sept 06:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?act...sult_type=posts

Cheerz, glad it was helpful

Click on the link to the E1705 guide on my signiture, it will tell you how to install the AppleHDA codec to get your sound working too

i have a problem. i keep reading all the guides and i keep reading that Windows and mac osx is installed on one disk drive. i have windows xp pro on my 112 GB drive and Mac OS X on an 18 GB drive. hpw can i dual boot two seprate drives? any help please?

Use the same chain0 method, it works for almost any setup.

thanks for your reply and help. how can i do chain0 method?

ok i just did the chain0 method and it worked like a charm. thanks big time Computer Guru

CG: have you made any progress in regards to automating an HFS+ fix within EasyBCD?

I got the same result... Anyway, I used gparted to set the flags of my Mac partition which is "Hidden" from "Yes" to "No"

I am trying to dual boot xp and os x. My partition 1 is xp. Partition 2 is supposed to be os x (I already did the install). But, I have to boot from the install disk everytime to use darwin boot loader. Is there a solution to this??????

i guess im missing something, but first i wanted to say good job with the guide, first one i could really follow, so im going on 2 days of installing osx i can only get ti to run if its on its own hd, i have a 300g with xp mce and i made 100g primary partion on the rest but after install of osx it boots to a blank screen and then for a few sec's and then restarts, and ive tried boot magic and that starts loading all the file on the screen and then restarts. so confused also im using 10.4.4 if that helps

I think I have about the same problem; I can't access mac os x without booting from dvd.
Also, in order to get on mac os x, I must press F8 before the darwin prompt shows up; otherwise, it leads me to installation again.
What more, darwin doesn't let me pick to boot my windows or mac...it just goes straight to booting mac...

Your method was not foolproof for me.
I followed the instructions to the letter.

And then I followed them again. And then again. Once I install, and it reboots, it just spits me back to the windows vista bootup.

Off to try another guide.