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Dual Boot OS X 10.5.X and XP using 1 hard drive with GPT GUID/MBR Hybrid partitions with Darwin Bootloader.


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*** ATTENTION ***

Please do not post if you are going to...

- Reference to a multiple hard drive configuration.

- MBR only partition

- GPT guid only partition.

- OS X and Vista

 

Hello,

 

If I am posting here it is because I have reached the limit of my patience hum I meant resources.

 

I have been searching for the past 5 days for a working solution to dual boot OS X and XP

and all the posts that I have read all fall short of making sense. No offense to the posters but man

try to but your self in your readers shoes.

Some posts make as much sense as as cocaine addicted chickens with there heads cut off.

 

 

The Topic Title sums up what I am trying to do.

 

Dual Boot OS X 10.5.X and XP using 1 hard drive with GPT GUID/MBR Hybrid partitions with Darwin Bootloader.

 

 

What I have found so far.

 

#1 Partition your drive from a stable OS X install. Used the OS X install DVD DISK. : My own findings

 

#2 Disk utility.app will partition you HD in hybrid GPT/MBR. : Some post on this site.

 

#3 XP has to be on the forth partition: http://www.mlvision.com.au/mediawiki/index..._and_Windows_XP

 

#4 Install OS X and XP in any order you want.: http://www.mlvision.com.au/mediawiki/index..._and_Windows_XP

 

#5 this is where I am stalled.

 

- I tried Munkys Boot from EFI partition.: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...=127330&hl=

I did get it to work once but could not see the XP partition because it was on the 3ed partition.

I reinstalled but now will not boot off EFI partition. Just a blinking curser.

 

- Booted off BOOT123 for vanilla install cd : http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=113288

Darwin Boot loader sees both partitions as HD (0,1) and HD (0,3) and not the HD names.

 

OS X is on HD (0,1) and boots up fine.

 

XP is on the 4th partition HD (0,3) and when I select it I get:

 

System config file '/com.apple.boot.s/Library/Preferences/System Configurations/com.apple.boot.plist' not found.

 

- During boot I press F8 to be able to select the HD with XP which has been marked active by fdisk -e.

but this time I get:

 

Windows could not start because of a computer hardware configuration problem.

Could not read from selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware. [...].

 

 

Any one with an identical working setup please I beg you to share your know how.

 

Thank you.

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Well, im about to reinstall myself and this time with XP and OSX only. I realy like the munkys way to use hidde EFI partition, it works great except that it looks like it can only see HFS partitions (also heard from other that it doesnt support mbr partitions atm).

 

Do you mean that it might work if we put XP on 4th partition?

 

I also suspect that munkys efi boot files are modified, so that might be way they dont support regular vanilla ways.

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Well, im about to reinstall myself and this time with XP and OSX only. I realy like the munkys way to use hidde EFI partition, it works great except that it looks like it can only see HFS partitions (also heard from other that it doesnt support mbr partitions atm).

 

Do you mean that it might work if we put XP on 4th partition?

 

I also suspect that munkys efi boot files are modified, so that might be way they dont support regular vanilla ways.

 

Well, im about to reinstall myself and this time with XP and OSX only. I realy like the munkys way to use hidde EFI partition, it works great except that it looks like it can only see HFS partitions (also heard from other that it doesnt support mbr partitions atm).

- From what I personally observed, the Darwin Bootloader is at fault because no mater which boot123 and simular tactics I used, Darwin does not see the XP partition except if it is on the 4th partition and when I try to boot off of it I get loading errors.

 

Do you mean that it might work if we put XP on 4th partition?

-Yes it should. I did for me. Please try it and confirm.

I just finished installing XP on the first partition and the darwin bootloader does not see it

I will try, again, xp on the forth partition and post back.

This time I will try my best to get Munky's the Boot off the EFI partition techneek to work.

I also suspect that munkys efi boot files are modified, so that might be way they dont support regular vanilla ways.

- "don't support vanilla ways", I can not figure out what you are making reference to.

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Sorry was typing abit to fast

 

I also suspect that munkys efi boot files are modified, so that might be WHY they dont support regular vanilla ways. (WHY not way) :)

 

The "boot" file is modified to support com.apple.Boot.plist etc. So i wonder if its looking for same files whatever boot option is selected.

 

I've just reinstalled. Was using this setup:

 

Partition 1: Hidden EFI (HFS)

Partition 2: OS X (HFS)

Partition 3: Data (HFS)

Partition 4: XP (NTFS)

 

XP Partition is still active, boots fine into XP. I did just bootup with my Boot-132 CD now to fix the EFI Partition.

So far the XP partition didnt show up with my bootcd, only OS X and Data Partition. Gonna do some testing and report back.

 

Now, i have a working EFI partiton with .kext etc. But Still dont see XP on Part 4.

 

Will do some more testing, else i will try to put chameleon on the hidden part instead, that way i could change back to munkys efi setup when it support mbr disks.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

Any luck with this? I am in a similar situation. I have Windows 7 and Leopard installed on separate partitions. My Leopard install boots through Munky's efi partition technique.

 

I tried EasyBCD on the windows side, but I just get the missing plist error. Booting from the darwin bootloader, the windows partition does not show up. Any sugestions?

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  • 2 months later...

Hi,

 

I am also interested in this topic, and have tried a lot. Now, I have successfully installed OSX and XP under GUID/MBR hybrid partition with munky's EFI method + chameleon 2.0. Everything except XP worked perfectly.

 

Actually, when I install XP I got some problems. I boot XP install disc and it can see my partitions (first 4, including the hidden EFI) and it is ok when copying files in the first stage. But when reboot to second stage of XP installation I got stock in the black screen with cursor blinking. Then, I tried to install XP to another mbr disk sucessfully. I used Hiren's BootCD to ghost XP from the mbr disk to the GUID/MBR Hybrid disk successfully.

 

When everything on this GUID/MBR disk is ready, I reboot and the chameleon works. It sees all my partitions including the ghosted XP. But, when I select XP, I got the same as I try to install XP to the GUID/MBR disk.

 

I suspect that it is the XP's problem. Maybe, it's the ntldr can't see its partition. Or, it is possible to find a way to modify the XP's boot loader?

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Hi

 

I basically gave up trying to make this work. I put in way to many hours!

 

I ended up using the USB Key boot method.

I am using 2 USB keys one as the official and the other one is for a backup and tests.

 

In the bios I tell it to boot off the USB key then I manually select the OS X partition.

 

If I want to boot off XP I simply overide the auto USB key boot to get the BIOS disk selection and select the Harddrive.

The hard drive has the XP partition flagged as active.

 

It's been a flawless setup. Kind of manual but at least it works. I never shut off my system, the longest stretch was 1 month!

I rebooted cause I wanted to play a game.

 

When you look at the pros and cons, the USB key setup is the most logical solution. I am sure you will reach the same conclusion.

 

But if you find a solution your gonna be a hero!

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Hi,

 

I did some experiments last night, and now I confirm that it is Micro$oft's dark trick to boot XP. I actually made 6 partition on my GUID disk as

 

Partition 1 :EFI (hidden--can't see under osx, but visible under ghost & XP's disk manager)

Partition 2 :MSDOS FAT <--this is first I install and ghost back XP on, can't boot

Partition 3 :MSDOS FAT

Partition 4 :MSDOS FAT

Partition 5 :HFS+ <-- this is where I install Retail OSX loepar 10.5.6 with any modification

Partition 6 :HFS+ <--I just made one more HFS+ volume for no purpose

 

the experiment I did last night is I ghost back the XP I install previously on another MBR disk, which boot normally as expected, to patition 3 and 4. Eventually, my partition 2,3,and 4 become NTFS and ghost. And then, I reboot. The Chameleon worked as usual and I can see all the 5 partitions (3 NTFS + 2 HFS+), when I selection NTFS in partition 2 I got stock as before, then I selected NTFS on partition 3, miracle happened, it booted into XP prefectly.

I also tried to boot into NTFS on partition4, I got a message saying something that the installation is broken.

So, it is possible to dual boot XP and OSX using munky's method to install chameleon 2.0 to the hidden EFI partition with the restriction to install XP to the 3rd partition.

I also tried to find the trick M$ is using, I used winhex to view the raw data on my MBR and MBR/GUID hybrid disks. And I found that, on the MBR disk, M$ put a stranger 8k boot loader(not boot loader in MBR nor boot loader at the beginning of the NTFS partition) right after the MBR starting at location 512h and repeat four times.

But, when I open my GUID/MBR hybrid disk, starting from the 512h is the GUID partition table, and in some location after the GUID partition table and before the 2nd NTFS partition, I also found the similar stranger boot loader but only 1k.

I think this must be associated with partition 3, that's why the XP on the partition 3 boots.

Since I am not a programmer, I can't really know what the codes are doing. Maybe, other experts can do more detail investigation on the stranger boot loader to make it possible to boot XP on other partition.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Very, very interesting....

Let me explain my setup:

 

A) disk partitioned by Mac OS X DiskUtility

:blowup: the EFI partition reformatted to HFS+ to stick Chameleon related stuff on it

C) Mac OX X factory install (with tiny modifications) on the first non-EFI partition

D) An XP installation cloned over into the XP Partition with WinClone mac program.

E) Chameleon 2.0RC1 boot loader, sees both OSX and XP

 

First booting XP failed with boot errors. I searched the web, and it turns out the boot.ini needed modification, since it still referred to the partition it had on the original install, which was the first partition.

Since I have Paragon's NTFS driver installed under Mac OS X, read/write access to the NTFS partition is trivial for me, so I fixed this.

Now when I try to boot XP, the XP boot screen flashes up for a fraction of a second, and then I'm back at the BIOS, and from there it goes back to Chameleon, etc. Booting Mac OS X works just fine.

 

It's only from the post that referred me to this thread that I knew that Mac OS X actually has a hybrid partition scheme. That gives hope. So I checked out my partitions, and this revealed something odd:

eeyore:~ rcfa$ sudo fdisk /dev/rdisk0
Disk: /dev/rdisk0	geometry: 60801/255/63 [976773168 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
        Starting       Ending
#: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*1: EE    0   0   2 -   25 127  14 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>
2: AF   25 127  15 - 1023  38   6 [    409640 -  842555440] HFS+        
3: 07 1023 119   8 - 1023 254  22 [ 843227224 -  133283760] HPFS/QNX/AUX
4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused      
eeyore:~ rcfa$ sudo gpt -r show /dev/rdisk0
gpt show: /dev/rdisk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
     start       size  index  contents
         0          1         MBR
         1          1         Pri GPT header
         2         32         Pri GPT table
        34          6         
        40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
    409640  842555440      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
 842965080     262144         
 843227224  133283760      3  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
 976510984     262151         
 976773135         32         Sec GPT table
 976773167          1         Sec GPT header

 

This is the partitioning job by Mac OS X' DiskUtility. I have no clue what these unused ~100MB sections before and after the XP partition are all about.

I'm also not sure if the partition code in the MBR partition table is correct for an NTFS partition. The reason is the way WinClone works: you have to create an MS-DOS partition, and it clones to that and somehow converts it to NTFS. Obviously, it changed the code, since it's not an MS-DOS partition, but I'm a bit surprised at the HPFS/QNX/AUX type...

 

Also, I'm not clear, does XP now have to be on the 4th or the 3rd partition to boot? Because right now it's on the 3rd, but I could edit the partition table to make it the fourth. After all, I could have a zero size partition in between, or I could (ab)use these seemingly empty sections of ~100MB before and after the NTFS partition to make a mini-partition to satisfy the fourth position requirement, if it exists.

 

Do you have similar empty sections created by DiskUtility, or is this a fluke?

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Don't give up so easily.

Check these out,

 

GPT/MBR hybrid dual-boot (osx+xp) -> http://www.vimeo.com/3307428

GPT/MBR hybrid tri-boot (osx+xp+win7) -> http://www.vimeo.com/4004619

MBR quad-boot (osx+xp+vista+win7) -> http://www.vimeo.com/4102102

 

MBR quad-boot.. how do you do this?(osx on MBR) im currently setup as MBR and i want to have as much knowledge as possible before i proceed, i dont want messing up anymore and doing it all over again

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I'm stumped, and cannot seem to clear a msftres flag that gparted added to a partition when trying to install win7

 

I am running a lenovo s10, mac osx retail install, and want to add windows 7 now that it has hit RC.

 

I had a OSX running just fine, per this guide: http://s10lenovo.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2166

To add windows 7, i picked up at the "now on to windows" step, used gparted to shrink my osx partition, created a fat32 partition for windows.

Gparted, of course, added the msftres flag, and win7 will not install.

 

MacOSX no longer booted on it's own, now that gparted had done it's work to shrink the partition.

i used the usb drive w/ syslinux and dellefi to boot back into OSX, used the modified dellefi program to reinstall dellefi. Boom, OSX works again.

 

Still, no win7...

 

I have tried the tip here: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?sto...080130022147512

but like others, i cannot mount the disk using disk utility or diskutil in terminal. a tip in the comments of that link suggests rEFIt w/ a modified diskpart, but i can't seem to get that to work. i have installed rEFIt and when i boot up, it boots as normal, never entering rEFIt. I can't seem to get rEFIt to boot off a usb drive either. another comment on that tip suggests setting the partition as a "boot" flag, but win7 still won't install, saying it doesn't play nice with GPT.

 

It seems i need to clear that msftres flag to get win7 to install, but how?

 

my next thought is to clone my OSX install to a new hard drive, partitioned fresh from the start with with 2 partitions MBR instead of GPT or Hybrid, but i don't want to spend the money, and i would rather use the hard disk i have now.

 

Any advice?

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  • 3 months later...

After a lot of tying, the only way to boot XP in the GPT/MBR hybrid disk is to install XP in the 4th partition(include EFI).

 

This is because XP can only install to the 1st or 4th partition of a MBR disk with multi-OS and to be able to boot. But, the vista and w7 can be install to either 2nd or 3rd partition.

 

The story is that M$ always think the user will only use M$ OS. So, the when M$ think multi-boot they think user will boot DOS(Win31,W95,W98,W2k) and WinXP. And since the 1st parition is DOS(....), the XP can only goes to 4th partition(because M$ does not want user to use other OS).

 

After XP, M$ might find that XP occupied the 4th partition, so Vista and W7 can goes to 2nd or 3rd partition.

 

If you does not install follow this rule, in successfully install M$ OS will not boot!

 

One more thing to mention, when install XP(in 4th partition of a GPT/MBR disk) make the 2nd and 3rd partition HFS+, otherwise XP will install it boot information in the 2nd or 3rd partition whichever it can recognizes.

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One more thing to mention, when install XP(in 4th partition of a GPT/MBR disk) make the 2nd and 3rd partition HFS+, otherwise XP will install it boot information in the 2nd or 3rd partition whichever it can recognizes.

 

Your findings match mine. The first partition is the EFI partition that I reformatted in hfs+ to install Chameleon on it.

The second partition is HFS+ with Mac OS X on it. The third partition I set to be Linux Swap, this way it won't show up in either Mac OS X or WinXP. The size of that partition is minimal, it's just there to force XP to be on the fourth partition. The fourth partition is WinXP on NTFS.

 

With this setup, dual-booting WinXP and Mac OS X works just fine.

 

Thanks to all who contributed to that solution.

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I got it to work at my first try. So simple.

 

I used PMagic 3.5 to format my hard drive into 3 partitions, 1st one HFS+, the 2nd one NTFS and the 3rd partition I left it unformatted.

 

Installed XP on my 2nd partition.

 

I then installed OSX on the 1st partition.

 

Booted in safe mode -x once.

 

I had to flag just once my partitions (using PMagic 3.5)

 

Using OSX, I formatted the 3rd partition into HFS+.

 

I installed MACDRIVE8 on XP so it can read write and access the HFS+ format.

 

This is so cool! I just love this dual boot OSX 10.5.8 / XP PRO SP3.

 

I really don't understand how this can be difficult :thumbsup_anim:

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  • 2 months later...
I got it to work at my first try. So simple.

 

I used PMagic 3.5 to format my hard drive into 3 partitions, 1st one HFS+, the 2nd one NTFS and the 3rd partition I left it unformatted.

 

Installed XP on my 2nd partition.

 

Did you use a GUID or an MBR partition schema?

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  • 3 weeks later...
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