Newbie-ish... but I've got details.

[HardRom]

*** See the last few posts for resolution ***

 

 

Hello All;

 

 

First off, I do not support software piracy. I do however, support software "testing", especially cross-platform. Thanks go to all the teams working so hard to bring OSX to us PC users. I have intentions (need money first) of buying a G5.

 

Now, asking for your help. Here's my issues and what I've done:

Starting with a blank HD, I installed Vista. After all the updates and such, I partitioned my OS disk (Sata, Position 1, 4th drive to appear in bios -- 3 ide drives are always detected first)

creating 100g partition and labelling it OSX.

 

Went through the Leo install with Leo4all v3. Customized and chose drivers as best I could. NVInject 2.1 with 512 works, so does ac97 audio.

 

Booted, played with OSX a lot. No stability issues. Here, however are my problems.

 

I have no network (no real shock, based on the questions in the forums here)

- Shows an ethernet adapter, but says cable is unplugged.

 

I cant dual boot. Honestly, I would ratehr have OSX, but not until I have ethernet.

As soon as OSX is installed, I cant boot back in to vista. Ive tried the active partion options, Ive tried (after wiping OSX and reinstalling Vista) bcdedit, and a bunch of other solutions.

The issue, it seems is that I get caught in a loop. I activate the vista partition through -s on cd, do the bootpart stuff, and reboot. Getting the same issue over and over. Popping in my Ultimate Dvd, it either cant see the vista installation or it can (either way, it cant repair the issue). The only way I have been able to get back into vista is to reinstall it. The only way I can get back into OSX after repairing vista is to reinstall it... loop.

 

Please assist.

 

I can attempt to help you help me with any additional information you need (keep in mind that I know very little about OSX, but a good amount about winx systems).

 

Thanks in advance.

[m16]

what happens when you push F8 on the osx boot menu? do you not see vista?

[HardRom]

I see vista (recovered) but selecting it to boot gives me the invalid system disk / boot errors.

Trying "Repair Vista" finds no errors to repair

 

is it possible that my either drives are causing this conflict? (I have to install vista with the fixboot /mbr, as Im installing on sata)

[m16]

Try following this guide exactly:

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...t=0&start=0

 

it took me a few tries but eventually i got a dual boot with OSX and XP (almost) exactly how I wanted it...

[HardRom]

I will give it a shot... printing now.

 

Thanks for your help so far,

Any ideas on the networking issue?

[skyhighmac]

Is your osx partition sharing the same HD as vista? And what networking card do you have?

[HardRom]

Is your osx partition sharing the same HD as vista? And what networking card do you have?

 

Yes, it is on the second partition. Network cards are listed in my sig:

Network Adapter NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller

IntelPRO/1000 MT Desktop Adapter

 

Im running a m2n-plus sli (vista) mb

Nvidia nforce500 SLI MCP Chipset

[skyhighmac]

Try looking here

[HardRom]

Try looking here

thanks, will try that once it Is done installing (installing now, typing this from my iPod touch)

Thanks for your help so far guys!

 

Will post results when done

 

Edit: does anyone forsee any issues because of two Ethernet. Cards ?

Also, is it possible that since I had the (installed vista on a sata device, while other ((IDE))drives are present must repair MBR) installation error that I may have this issue again or worse with either o/s?

[jaykrawk]

try this:

 

use the vista install disk to get into the command prompt

 

then:

 

diskpart

select disk 0

select partition 1 (vista)

active

 

exit

 

bootrec /rebuildbcd

y

 

diskpart

select disk 0

select partition 2 (leopard)

active

exit

 

and restart

[HardRom]

jaykrawk:

Will attempt (again).

 

Unfortunately, I'm having a new issue: I used paragon to setup a boot menu after installing vista, installed OSx then rebooted as normal.

No Darwin bootloader appeared, and still has not appeared after numerous reinstalls / attempts

Oddly enough, even using fdisk off the dvd to switch active partitions seems to ... Do Nothing. (?????)

 

Ideas?

[jaykrawk]

i would recommend starting over from scratch.

 

1. install vista

2. use disk manager to shrink the partition. quick format new partition ntfs. name it whatever you want.

3. boot from mac dvd

4. use disk utility to erase ur new partition from step 2. format mac osx journaled (extended)

5. install

6. repair vista using the method in my last post.

 

that should be about it. you'll be able to boot osx and vista from the darwin bootloader.

[HardRom]

i would recommend starting over from scratch.

 

1. install vista

2. use disk manager to shrink the partition. quick format new partition ntfs. name it whatever you want.

3. boot from mac dvd

4. use disk utility to erase ur new partition from step 2. format mac osx journaled (extended)

5. install

6. repair vista using the method in my last post.

 

that should be about it. you'll be able to boot osx and vista from the darwin bootloader.

Man am I ever getting tired of typing on my iPod (slow and annoying with autotext ((I know I can turn it off)))

Tried restarting, installing OSS of my first IDE drive (40g).

It's in, but I got the dreaded hfs+ error on first boot. Oddly enough, it will boot into OSX if the dvd is in. Without it, I don't get a darwin boot prompt, I get the lovely vista "bootmgr is missing" error.

 

Sadly, even with all these setbacks, I believe I am still rapidly becoming an osx-fanboy

 

Oh yeah, help anyone? Please?

[aylamrin]

HardRom, regarding your network card, a few things...

 

1. What is the exact chipset model of your card? You can use a Linux Live CD to get the "lspci" dump, or can even use the lcpci utilities for Mac.

2. So long your network card is not supported you can use a cheap supported PCI network card. Realtek cards are the best. I did the same

[HardRom]

HardRom, regarding your network card, a few things...

 

1. What is the exact chipset model of your card? You can use a Linux Live CD to get the "lspci" dump, or can even use the lcpci utilities for Mac.

2. So long your network card is not supported you can use a cheap supported PCI network card. Realtek cards are the best. I did the same

 

Thanks for the attempted help, NIRMALYA

Ill have to get back to you for detailed instructions on how to get that information as I am still caught in the loop. At this point, bootmgr is missing if I haveno cd in the drive, and osx has no ethernet cable connected. Both are lies and Im getting fed up with typing on an iPod. Currently playing with diskpart and bootrec.

[aylamrin]

Thanks for the attempted help, NIRMALYA

Ill have to get back to you for detailed instructions on how to get that information as I am still caught in the loop. At this point, bootmgr is missing if I haveno cd in the drive, and osx has no ethernet cable connected. Both are lies and Im getting fed up with typing on an iPod. Currently playing with diskpart and bootrec.

 

Here,do something....if you want to keep only OS X , you might have to bear with the network card. So thats why try to get a cheap PCI network card for the time being.

[jaykrawk]

http://leo4all.uni.cc/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=10

 

hfs+ error fix.

 

i went through almost the exact same thing you are the first time i installed osx. it sounds to me like you're almost there though.

[HardRom]

A word to the wise; a big chunk of the problems I was having with the boot order and loaders was that I have multiple hard drives. Normally this isn't an issue. It quickly becomes one however, when you install vista on a sata2 drive when you have IDE drives that are detected first. As a work around, you have to physically disconnect these other drives to do a proper dual boot. This is recommended for single boot setups with vista as well... dont you love their new fancy P.O.S. bootloader?

 

The reason is that vista doesn't install properly unless it is located on disk0. If its not installed on disk0, it will try to post the boot files there, and since I used disk0 (40G ide) as my nfs+ drive, vista couldnt write to it. Active partition or not.

 

People may find this very similiar to the "I can't load vista without the DVD in the drive" problem. If you physically disable these IDE drives then install vista, then anytime *after* first boot plug them back in, you will have no issues like I had (I ended up losing a lot of files). Please note that you actually have to physically unplug (at least) the power cord from the IDE drives themselves, disabling through the bios is not enough.

 

I'm not sure if you need to repeat this process for osx86 or not, as I just got my machine back up and running and have to start all over again, but I'm not taking any chances anymore.

 

Thanks for all your help, guys and gals; I hope my next post will be from safari.

 

** Ok. Heres the solution for anyone like myself, installing both o/ses on a single hd that happens to be Sata AND there are ide drives present:

Unplug every drive except for your cd/dvd and the sata drive you want everything on.

Install Vista. Do the lovely diskpart stuff listed in so many helpful guides all over this site (there's one in this post).

Install OSX. Follow through with all the steps in the guides.

When you are finally set, when you think everything is running properly; turn off your pc, plug the drives back in, and watch as everything works beautifully.

 

I was caught in my home-made boot loop again, until I had a brain(fart)storm. I never disconnected the additional drives before I installed osx, so when it came time to repair my vista install (winload.exe), my boot partition wasnt where it said it was on install. On install it was listed as disk0 - there was nothing else there. After I had vista running again, I plugged in my drives and my bios was so kind as to assign a boot order. Unbeknownst to me, (at least until two minutes ago, after crushing my poor stress ball to death (Ill miss you squishy!!!)) my vista drive (and osx) was now disk 1. Thats why I got the winload / fix winload, bootmgr / fix bootmgr, winload.... loop.

 

THANK YOU to all the people in this forum who offered suggestions. I am about to set bootbcd and I hope all goes well from there. Any other newbies reading this, feel free to msg me and IF I CAN I will offer some help. It sucks to get so close, but once you get it, its worth the lack of sleep and crushed stress balls.

 

Rest In Peace, Squishy.