Chameleon installer on EFI partition [Solved]

[Twinnie]

I'm having problem getting Hackintosh to boot without using a CD or USB, namely because I seem to require a more up-to-date version of Chameleon but I'm getting a chain booting error and while I can get to 'normal' Chameleon using EasyBCD it uses an old version of Chameleon for it's weird workaround way which doesn't work for my comp. I tried updating to the latest beta version of EasyBCS which supposedly uses a more recent version of Chameleon but that still isn't recent enough, not to mention I'd rather have a Hackintosh as close to vanilla as possible.

 

I followed some instruction I found to manually install Chameleon but I'm still getting a chain boot error, I'm not sure if that's because I didn't install properly or what but the instructions did seem to be pretty out of date. I've used a piece of software to sort of mount my EFI partition (I think it does it by imaging the EFI partition and mounting it, which I'm led to believe is a common way of doing it). This would be ideal for me to use the Chameleon installer but the installer doesn't find the EFI partition that I mounted (or whatever) and I can't seem to find a way of manually forcing it to install to the place I choose, it'll only use the drives it lists.

 

Can anyone help me out getting Chameleon onto my EFI partition and get rid of the chain booting error please?

 

Thanks.

[Gringo Vermelho]

If you saw a newer version of Chameleon loading on your PC after updating EasyBCD then I would very much like to see a download link.

EasyBCD doesn't "use Chameleon". It can chainload Chameleon if you have it installed but it does not come with any version of Chameleon.

 

Here's a manual install guide and the final version of Chameleon 2.0:

http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,649

You must register to view/download attached files.

 

You don't have to install Chameleon to the EFI partition. The only advantage to doing that is that you can format your system partition and re-install OS X and Chameleon will still work.

[Twinnie]

EasyBCD creates it's own folder in your root Windows drive, on mine it's at the path c:\nst and inside there there's an nst_mac.iso, it's a bootable iso that contains Chameleon.

 

You can read more about it from the developer (Computer Guru) here:

http://neosmart.net/forums/showthread.php?t=6327&page=1

 

I want it installed on the EFI partition so I can image it when it's working and if I stuff up my OSX86 (I do that a lot) I can just whack my old EFI image to make my booting easy as it's always the bit I have trouble with and I like to keep things modular like this.

[Gringo Vermelho]

woah...that was news to me, thank you. I wonder why they are using such an old version of Chameleon though.

 

I know less than I thought I did about EasyBCD, but I would think that EasyBCD should be able to chainload Chameleon 2.0 final (attached to the guide I linked to above) as well.

 

Are you aware that Chameleon is able to boot Windows by itself? No need for Grub, EasyBCD etc. The simplest way is with two hard drives - Windows on one and OS X with Chameleon on the other.

It's not quite 100% though, there are issues with sleep/hibernation and you can't install SP1.

There is a work in progress here.. http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,2091.0.html

..that has these issues fixed, testing is still under way but when it's ready for inclusion in Chameleon 2.1 you won't need Grub or EasyBCD.

I want it installed on the EFI partition so I can image it when it's working and if I stuff up my OSX86 (I do that a lot) I can just whack my old EFI image to make my booting easy as it's always the bit I have trouble with and I like to keep things modular like this.

Consider making your own Chameleon boot CD that replicates the configuration on your EFI partition. This is much easier than having to use imaging software every time you mess up something.

You can follow my guide here: http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/...31.html#msg2131

[Twinnie]

Well in my efforts to get it working I actually have Chameleon on my Mac partition as well as the EFI partition and I'll use whichever one I can get working. I have considered using Chameleon for my main boot manager but Windows is the only really stable part of my computer and having to make sure OS X was working just to edit my boot menu would bother me, especially as Windows is by and far my main OS.

 

Now I don't really know a lot about chain loading, is it in no way possible to use the Windows 7 BCD just to tell the computer to boot using a different HD instead (I don't think it is)? What I think may be part of the problem is that the order of my disks comes up differently in Windows as it does in Mac. When in Mac they come up in the same order as they're in my SATA ports:

 

Windows

Archive (Just an NTFS drive for dropping files into, no boot sector or anything)

Mac OS X

Ubuntu

 

In Windows they come up wrong for some reason:

Mac OS X

Archive

Windows

Ubuntu

 

Is it likely that chain0 would be respecting the disk order from the Windows layout and moving from Windows then moving onwards from that and ending, not looping around to try and boot the Mac drive. It's not the extended partition on the Ubuntu drive causing it to fail (i.e. that whole rule where you can't have the Mac partition after an extended partition) because it still fails with the Ubuntu partition removed.

 

Thanks for the help so far.

[verdant]

@ Twinnie

 

In my OSX86 PC, I have Windows 7 Pro Main and Windows 7 Pro Backup on one MBR HDD; Vista Ult 32 and Pinguy OS on second MBR HDD; OS X Leopard systems, OS X Lion and a NTFS data volume on a third MBR HDD; and OS X Snow Leopard systems and OS X Lion on a fourth GPT HDD; and Fat32 and HFS+ data volumes on a fifth GPT HDD.......

 

I can multiboot using either EasyBCD 2.0.2 installed on the Windows 7 HDD; GRUB installed on the Linux HDD in a static Boot volume (as Windows Ult 32 uses the MBR bootloader on the HDD); and/or Chameleon 2.0 RC5 r1191 installed on the two OS X system HDDs.......

 

EasyBCD brings up the Windows Boot Manger menu with a choice of:

 

Windows 7 Main

 

OS X (on MBR HDD)

 

Linux

 

Windows 7 Backup

 

Vista Ult 21

 

If I choose OS X, I then boot up via the Chameleon bootloader on the MBR HDD, from which I can boot into OS X, Linux or Windows.....

 

If I choose Linux, I the boot up via GRUB on the Linux HDD, from which I can boot Linux, or go back to the Windows Boot Manager, (or the OS X volumes I believe.....have yet to try this)......

 

BTW I use Chameleon with the /Extra directory, rather than using the GPT HDD 200 MB EFI partition.

[Gringo Vermelho]

@Twinnie.. how many hard drives do you have? Where is each OS installed? You could save yourself a lot of grief using your motherboard BIOS boot selector instead of GRUB+EasyBCD. If you keep OS X on a separate drive you can do like me.

 

I have one HDD with Windows 7, another one with Snow Leopard.

 

My PC boots Windows 7 by default, you would never know I have OS X installed.

 

When I want to boot Snow Leopard I use my motherboard's built-in boot selector (press F8 during boot) and pick the 2nd hard drive. No need for EasyBCD.

 

Once the fix I linked to above makes it to Chameleon 2.1 I will place the OS X drive on SATA port 0 and use Chameleon to select which OS I want to run, instead of the BIOS boot selector.

[Twinnie]

Well I fixed the problem with the wonky disk orders. It was a case of installing Intel Rapid Storage Technology (I'm on a P45) and it didn't fix it.

 

I have four HDs in my computer:

 

HD1 - Windows

 

HD2 - Archive

 

HD3 - Mac OS

 

HD4 - Ubuntu

 

It dawned on me last night that obviously I can just use the boot menu to get to the Chameleon I've been trying to use (got a kernel panic from it but I can probably fix that) but after buying a new wifi card and motherboard I was really hoping to get it close to perfection and having to do a workaround with the boot would really bother me, especially since I remote into my computer a lot and I was planning on using iReboot to be able to switch operating system remotely.

 

@verdant

 

When you get to Chameleon did you just use chain0 or did you get the BCD to actually boot another drive from scratch?

[verdant]

@verdant

 

When you get to Chameleon did you just use chain0 or did you get the BCD to actually boot another drive from scratch?

 

EasyBCD via the Windows Boot Manager takes me straight to Chameleon on the MBR partitioned OS X HDD......however, it does not pickup the GPT partitioned OS X HDD......not a problem for me as Chameleon on the MBR OS X HDD does.......

 

As Windows is your main system and if your MOBO is using the traditional BIOS rather than the newer uEFI BIOS, then I would advise that you install OS X onto a MBR partitioned HDD for ease of multi-booting......

[Twinnie]

Well to be honest the whole EFI thing is something that I've never been to clear about. My Hackinstosh has usually worked when I've followed instruction and stuff and EFI is just some word I've heard knocking around of which I only have a "theoretical" understanding. My board is a GA-EP45-UD3R Rev 1.1 and from what the Wikipedia page says about uEFI I'm assuming I have it as my board is probably late 2009 or thereabouts. I've actually changed my motherboard lately from an nForce jobby so I thought that might be why my chainloading wasn't working now but I did use GUID this time rather than MBR just because it was the way things seemed to be going. Might I have better luck with MBR then?

[verdant]

Your GA-EP45-UD3R Rev 1.1 has a standard BIOS (latest version is F12 from 2010) because it is a Intel 775 Socket P45 chipset DDR2 RAM MOBO, i.e. not the latest Intel chipset......so I suggest have a go with MBR for fewer headaches with multi-booting......

[Twinnie]

Cheers guys, reinstalling as using MBR made it work straight away. For some reason my EFI partition seems to have disappeared when looking at it using "diskutil list" but to be honest I'm not too fussed about that, I'll just make sure to back up my Extras folder and I should be fine. If I can get the sound working and updates installed then I'll have my most successful Hackintosh so far.

[verdant]

@ Twinnie

 

Good news.......