Swad Posted February 27, 2006 Share Posted February 27, 2006 Indeed, I think Airman has done more than Nak did, not the least of which is the whole XP thing... which shows a lot of promise! Plus the discussion here is half the fun! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Elliott Posted February 27, 2006 Share Posted February 27, 2006 As you're trying to get windows to boot from a USB harddrive have you taken the necessary steps to ensure that windows doesn't take over the USB ports mid boot and mess things up? There is an article about it here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atx840 Posted February 27, 2006 Share Posted February 27, 2006 http://www.flickr.com/photos/32436196@N00/ Good work, would be cool to see it then I will get my macbook, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chiefsalami Posted February 27, 2006 Share Posted February 27, 2006 As you're trying to get windows to boot from a USB harddrive have you taken the necessary steps to ensure that windows doesn't take over the USB ports mid boot and mess things up? There is an article about it here. This is a good point, and I had thought about that when people first started talking about a USB install or boot from a USB device. At some point, the system may take over the USB channel and cause the device to get disconnected, stopping the installation. Maybe you can copy all of the files to the hard drive first and then try the installation again. Just make sure you copy the i386 folder, and onto a different partition or hard drive than where Windows will be installed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soundguy Posted February 27, 2006 Share Posted February 27, 2006 And this is a good thing. Since the EFI can only see Apple and FAT partitions (no NTFS) this means that ultimately we can get vista going without worying about an NTFS driver. The catch is its tricky to get vista onto a FAT32 drive.... -Install Vista normally on a PC in an NTFS formatted drive -Remove the Hard Drive and hook it up to a USB enclosure -Connect the drive to the iMac via USB and copy the contents to a directory in OSX (I personally could not get windows to copy the hard drive contents as I kept getting access denied errors). -Connect the USB Drive to a PC and reformat as FAT32. -Connect the drive back up to the iMac and transfer the files from the directory you put the hard drive contents in back onto the newly formatted FAT32 Drive. -Remove the drive from the enclosure and hook back up to the PC -Startup from the Vista install DVD and run the recovery tools from the main install screen. -Run the repair utility and reboot (you may have to start the DVD again, go to the repair tools, start a console, and run bootsect.exe in the boot dir of the install DVD to fix the bootsector) If all went well you'll have a fully functional vista install on a FAT32 drive which the EFI can see if hooked back up to the imac. Of course tweaking that install to run on the imac is another story... Also I am now at the same point that NAK managed where he could access the Vista boot menu and try and boot into safe mode. Just as in his case I reached the point where crcdisk.sys loads and vista is supposed to boot into the desktop but instead the iMac reboots entirely. I'm gonna try to run sysprep on the vista install and see if that helps any. Have you tried syspreping the drive before you move the files to the mac and back to the external drive? I know Windows XP when it has to regenerate SSID's when it unpackages and this could be the cause of your error since you're moving it from one hardware to another. Sysprep isn't an exact science either, so it may take several tries to make it work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AirmanPika Posted February 27, 2006 Author Share Posted February 27, 2006 I did try syspreping vista but that seemed to be a nogo as the version that comes with it (3.14) seems to be limited and lacked documentation. Older versions don't work either. Seems MS is trying some new way of imaging and some deployment software thats still in beta and unavailible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soundguy Posted February 27, 2006 Share Posted February 27, 2006 I did try syspreping vista but that seemed to be a nogo as the version that comes with it (3.14) seems to be limited and lacked documentation. Older versions don't work either. Seems MS is trying some new way of imaging and some deployment software thats still in beta and unavailible. Ok, how bout Windows XP? Or are you only working on Windows Vista right now? By the way, what options are you choosing when you sysprep, or are we sure that any syspreping is useless? I've found that if I use certain options sysprep works great, and if it use other options, it blows up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AirmanPika Posted February 27, 2006 Author Share Posted February 27, 2006 Prolly gonna try XP sysprep for kicks later after my brain starts working again. As for vistas sysprep it only has 2 options....OOBE or Audit with a checkbox called "generalize" which i can only gather means it clears hardware info and the SSID but I'm really not sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nevermind1331 Posted February 27, 2006 Share Posted February 27, 2006 the nak article was posted before vista 5308 came out, he was referring to 5720. notice how he even says at the bottom we should wait for the next build. supposedly he said somewhere that 5308 has efi taken out, which i never believed, but ive never seen the article. i finally got my intel imac and vista 5308, so ill probably start messing around wednesday when i have the time. After all, who doesnt want to ruin a perfectly good osx install? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rjtd Posted February 28, 2006 Share Posted February 28, 2006 I think it is pathetic that we can run MacOSX on regular whiteboxes but we cannot run Windows on an Mac. I think Apple really drop the ball on this one, with the all greed to get more money and not opaying a small royalty to CSM manufacturers. Way to go Apple. Thank god Max give us the choice you denied! Back on topic, great to see some progress in this matter. I'm holding on my money for a Mini. I will just get one when I can run Windows + Games on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MightyBatgar Posted February 28, 2006 Share Posted February 28, 2006 Under XP there is an F6 option right at the beginning of the installation that allows you to choose a third party or SCSI driver. It seems like you have everything but that driver punched in. I would revisit your technique of the external drive, but add the F6 step of finding and placing the SATA driver for the iMac / iBook into the mix. Of course, this might require you to go out and purchase a card / machine with a matching SATA chip... Yuck. Of course there is also the option of getting an ExpressCard/34 SATA card (check out newegg), installing XP via this card on a non-Mac based Intel machine. Mount the drive in an external SATA drive, move the ExpressCard/34 and drive over to the MacBook Pro... And: Ala Peanut Butter Sandwiches! Just throwing this all out there, I seem to remember experiencing exactly what you see because of this step when I did a Ghost swap of Windows XP. I will do a little research and see if I can get you the SATA chip used. It sounds like you have circumvented this whole "EFI" BIOS thing (just as the people out at Intel Australia said). Awesome. --MightyBatgar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MightyBatgar Posted February 28, 2006 Share Posted February 28, 2006 I am just guessing here, but the driver suite for the Intel 945 Express Chipset. http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-020683.htm You probably need to match this driver set exactly on the XP / Vista install to get the boot to work. --MightyBatgar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickcirc Posted February 28, 2006 Share Posted February 28, 2006 wicked Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neosublime Posted February 28, 2006 Share Posted February 28, 2006 Anyone try installing Vista on a a firewire drive, and cutting out USB, so there are no USB driver loading issues when vista boots? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
REVENGE Posted February 28, 2006 Share Posted February 28, 2006 In addition to sysprep, there exists the old and very risky method of deleting your entire ENUM key using regedit. It has been reported to work when moving XP from system to system. It's worth a shot, try it out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dirtymatt Posted February 28, 2006 Share Posted February 28, 2006 The behavior sounds a lot like what happens when you take a hard drive with XP on it and move it to a different computer. As soon as it gets to the point where it loads the mass storage driver the machine reboots. You can get around this in XP with sysprep and the build mass storage option. Unfortunately it seems like Vista's sysprep is really broken at the moment. Is there anyway the vista hdd could be moved to a vastly different PC to see if it shows the same behavior? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
REVENGE Posted February 28, 2006 Share Posted February 28, 2006 The behavior sounds a lot like what happens when you take a hard drive with XP on it and move it to a different computer. As soon as it gets to the point where it loads the mass storage driver the machine reboots. You can get around this in XP with sysprep and the build mass storage option. Unfortunately it seems like Vista's sysprep is really broken at the moment. Is there anyway the vista hdd could be moved to a vastly different PC to see if it shows the same behavior? Well, as deleting the ENUM key would remove all information regarding hardware enumeration and etc, it should theoretically work. However, this is all dependent upon whether or not Vista will automatically redetect hardware upon encountering the missing ENUM key. If Vista doesn't, then you're SoL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
randomblame Posted February 28, 2006 Share Posted February 28, 2006 I wish I had a mactel that I could play with... As far as apple not including the bios compatability part of efi - didnt they say they would do nothing to keep windows off their systems? That seems like a step towards blocking windows, why else would they do it? Somebody should make a custom piece of firmware and include the bios compatibility layer or better yet find a developmental version of a mactel that may include it... *Edit* Here's something that may interest you Barts PE Builder make a windows xp live cd, think ubuntu It's not hard to do, I'm working towards a vista live dvd cuz I dont wanna screw with my partitions right now I got um all set up nicely but I do wanna play with the jan ctp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davemen Posted February 28, 2006 Share Posted February 28, 2006 How did you tell the EFI to load Vista? Did you have to load the intel EFI menu or did the mac magically start booting from the vista USB drive? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AirmanPika Posted February 28, 2006 Author Share Posted February 28, 2006 OK my nap is over. I figured people would want some more detail to at least get the bootmanager up so here goes (The initial part is from my FAT32 instructions in the first post I did) -Install Vista normally on a PC in an NTFS formatted drive -Remove the Hard Drive and hook it up to a USB enclosure -Connect the drive to the iMac via USB and copy the contents to a directory in OSX (I personally could not get windows to copy the hard drive contents as I kept getting access denied errors). -Connect the USB Drive to a PC and reformat as FAT32. -Connect the drive back up to the iMac and transfer the files from the directory you put the hard drive contents in back onto the newly formatted FAT32 Drive. -Remove the drive from the enclosure and hook back up to the PC -Startup from the Vista install DVD and run the recovery tools from the main install screen. -Run the repair utility and reboot (you may have to start the DVD again, go to the repair tools, start a console, and run bootsect.exe in the boot dir of the install DVD to fix the bootsector) -After this and verifying Vista booted ok I hooked the drive up to the iMac again while in OSX (this was mainly preference at the time as you can do this next couple steps in windows too). -Create the directory /EFI/Microsoft/Boot on the root and copy the contents of /boot to that last subdirectory. -Delete the Fonts subdirectory in /EFI/Microsoft/Boot -Load up your hexeditor of choice and open up the BCD file in /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/ -Where ever you find an entry for winload.exe change it to winload.efi and leave the rest as it is -Save the file and reboot the PC into the EFI Shell -Navigate down to Boot Maintenence Manager>Boot From File and choose whatever partition has vista -Once there you should see your usual windows directory structure. Navigate to /Windows/Boot/EFI/ and choose bootmgfw.efi and if you did everything right you shall be greeted by your friendly Windows Boot Manager (if not immediately press F8 as it only shows up automatically if you have multiple OS entries). From there you can try to load windows in various ways such as safemode, debug, etc. Hope this helps and makes sense Also if you want to fiddle with XP too then create 2 partitions on the HD and load XP onto the first partition before installing vista so that it shows up in the bootmanager properly after installing vista. Make sure you use FAT32 for the XP install also as the /boot directory will be placed here and you will want to create the /EFI/Microsoft/Boot in this partition also. Like I said I onlt got activity once and then it ceased finding NTLDR after that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
REVENGE Posted February 28, 2006 Share Posted February 28, 2006 actually randomblame, you reminded me that it might be a good idea to try and deploy bart's pe to a usb flash drive. from there, you can try and use the vista loader to load xp from usb. this sounds better than messing with a real xp install because winpe does not require syspreping when moving from system to system and all hardware is dynamically detected. if you can boot up bart pe successfully, you can then try loading an sata driver and then running the vista installer through bartpe and install directly to the os x harddisk. GL! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
randomblame Posted February 28, 2006 Share Posted February 28, 2006 yuppers that was my thought, just wish I had a mactel so I could fiddle with it, honestly bart pe is freaking easy to use you just download the program point it towards an xp disk and check the box for it to output an iso. burn it and play. lol if that method works tha prize winner should totally buy me an imac haha jk ...or am I lol either way play with it if it proves to be a viable method of installing and running xp then thats the most wonderful news in the world for the community and I'm sure apple will be getting a lot of orders of their systems from us Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nevermind1331 Posted February 28, 2006 Share Posted February 28, 2006 i knew i shouldve set up partitions on my mac when i first got it....... i wanted to play tho. ill try alot of this stuff out tomorrow night or wednesday. lets keep the ideas flowing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
torncanvas Posted February 28, 2006 Share Posted February 28, 2006 Ha, yeah, I just repartitioned and reinstalled everything for the second time on my MBP today since I was gonna play some more and try to use a partition to house the Vista files. Then I heard this news and thought "yes! I'm so glad I just did that." Oh, hey, in the EFI shell, try to load UsbMassStorage.efi and maybe VgaClass.efi. That could help Vista/XP with it's display and HD problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
randomblame Posted February 28, 2006 Share Posted February 28, 2006 here's another idea, elilo is a version of lilo that supports efi if you're having issues with the bootloader look into it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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