EasyBCD 2.0 Beta: Automated PC_EFI, CHAIN0 Installation

[Gipo]

Just for keep this important thread alive...

Keep on... computer guru

[lateralusman]

Any news on a new build?

[Gipo]

Are you still working on it or stopped?

[tehsusenoh]

Are you still working on it or stopped?

 

You know, he does have a full time job at NeoSmart, and therefore, cannot get here so often.

Please, stop bugging him and let him work.

 

I'm sorry that I haven't been helping with this whole situation, which I seem to have started...

I'm no programmer, and I don't even have an OSx86 install (yet - need to buy that second hard drive).

[Gipo]

You know, he does have a full time job at NeoSmart, and therefore, cannot get here so often.

Please, stop bugging him and let him work.

 

I'm sorry that I haven't been helping with this whole situation, which I seem to have started...

I'm no programmer, and I don't even have an OSx86 install (yet - need to buy that second hard drive).

 

i wasn't bugging him... i was upping the thread (not only me in truth) to keep it alive.

Then i think neosmart produce easybcd, and this thread is about made it working with all systems.. this is a goal of easybcd itself no?

Buy a second drive and help you too...

[Vampirexx]

Hope it will work in the future build release

[keinerdoof]

Hello,

 

great work....

 

But i have questions...

 

1. When i start MacOS X the menu says Press any key within 2 seconds,

can i set the time longer (example 10 seconds) ?

 

2. I have 2 drives, one for Vista, one for Mac, when starts the men says Typical boot devices are 80 (first Hd), 81 (Second hd), enter two digit bla bla bla, can i set the menu in an file, that mac start automatic when i press the mac in the start menu??

 

 

thanks for answer

 

keinerdoof

[Hugo_bee]

excuse me.. the newer easybcd will replace the mbr code on the first hdd?

 

the newer easybcd has high level code wich can access to new e-sata drive (so the bios don't see them yet) ?

 

is it able to see partitions on disks <> from the one in which is installed?

 

thanks!!!

ugo

[tehsusenoh]

Hello,

 

great work....

 

But i have questions...

 

1. When i start MacOS X the menu says Press any key within 2 seconds,

can i set the time longer (example 10 seconds) ?

 

2. I have 2 drives, one for Vista, one for Mac, when starts the men says Typical boot devices are 80 (first Hd), 81 (Second hd), enter two digit bla bla bla, can i set the menu in an file, that mac start automatic when i press the mac in the start menu??

thanks for answer

 

keinerdoof

 

1. Go into your com.apple.boot.plist file and change the timeout.

2. That's what we're trying to fix.

[_Wolverine_]

bump

any updates?

[Gipo]

1. Go into your com.apple.boot.plist file and change the timeout.

2. That's what we're trying to fix.

 

in com.apple.boot.plist file you can change the darwin bootloader... nothing has to do with the 2 secs bootloader inside the easybcd's linux grub bootloader.

Computer_Guru explain this in some posts on his forum

[_Wolverine_]

is this the same thing???

http://neosmart.net/forums/showthread.php?t=642

its already build 60

[tehsusenoh]

is this the same thing???

http://neosmart.net/forums/showthread.php?t=642

its already build 60

 

Yes.

[Labyrnth]

I tried using EasyBCD 1.72, but it didn't like something. I gave the beta a shot and it worked like a charm.

 

Running 10.5.6 (Kalyway) on a GA EP35 DS3R -

 

OS X hdd is MBR and dual booting with windows 7 (which was installed after OS X on a separate hdd).

 

 

 

Thank you!

[xmonkey]

Little background... using iPC 10.5.6 distro with OSX on a seperate eSATA drive and Vista on it's own install. OSX is using GUID, not MBR. I could never get EasyBCD 1.72 to work right with 10.5.6, but I tried the 2.0 Beta (latest build) and that worked by using EFI w/ NeoGrub.

 

But, I was messing around with taking off the modifications that EasyBCD does to Vista's bootloader because I would prefer to use my BIOS' loader to just choose my OSX drive (since it's separate) until 2.0 Beta can get the drive choice working right. I went to delete the OSX entry from the choices in EasyBCD but Delete didn't seem to work like it did with 1.72. So, I thought something was wrong and went to the tab with Fix MBR for Vista, not noticing that I was supposed to delete the 2.0 OSX entry through the NeoGrub tab instead of the normal way.

 

Well, I think this {censored}ed my Darwin bootloader up so now I can no longer use my motherboards boot selection to choose my OSX drive and boot that way, all I get is a blinking cursor. The partition is active and all that good stuff, but it still won't boot so I'm thinking something has gone wrong when I clicked Fix MBR for Vista. If I use EasyBCD 2.0 or boot off the Leopard DVD I can still get into OSX fine, but I want to be able to boot using the mobo.

 

My question is... would I be able to just re-install Chameleon (not 2.0, waiting for that to mature some) using the installer from within OSX and be able to get a working bootloader back without having to use EasyBCD/NeoGrub or the Leopard DVD?

[Johnny V]

xmonkey,

 

I had a similar problem with Vista and/or EasyBDC killed booting into OS X on a separate drive.

 

To fix it I did exactly as you suggested. Boot into OS X on your hard drive via the Leopard DVD. Download Chameleon-1.0.11- and install on same drive. Works like a treat. I was sweating bullets wondering if I was going to have to start over...but it worked fine.

 

Also I didn't realize that Chameleon has it's own installer which makes the whole process too easy.

 

John

[xmonkey]

Awesome, I'll give that a try then

 

edit - That did the trick. I used the Universal Installer from pcwiz to install PC_EFI 9/Chameleon 1.0.12 from within OSX and then booted off the DVD into single user mode and made the partition active and it's working like it should now.

[lateralusman]

is this the same thing???

http://neosmart.net/forums/showthread.php?t=642

its already build 60

 

Thanks for the heads up!

[paulerxx]

Works great! Nice job.

[Jingu]

***GREAT DISCOVERY==>USE EASYBCD 2.0 BETA WITH CHAMELEON 2.0 RC2**

 

I have Windows 7 on the first hard drive (MBR) and Leopard 10.5.8 on the second hard drive (GUID), so 2 separate hard drives.

 

I use EasyBCD 2.0 beta and for the C:/NST/nst_mac.efi, I use the boot file from Chameleon 2.0 RC2 that I renamed to nst_mac.efi.

 

Result===> When I boot, instead of having to type 81, or 82, etc, I have the Chameleon boot screen with both my hard drives and I just select Leopard. That in turn loads Leopard including the Extra folder in my root. Everything works great.

 

Now, I'm trying to get this booting method to work with the EFI hidden partition form the Munky method.

[RobRu]

I am running a multi-boot system on the same drive. I have Win7, Vista, and WinXP, and OSX 10.5.7 installed on the same 500GB drive. The Win7, Vista, and WinXP are primary partitions, the OSX is a extended partition. I have been using Windows BCD to boot the different OS’s. I used EasyBCD 2.0 to setup the MAC BCD sections.

 

I have a strange problem.. I installed Chameleon 2.0-RC2 as per included readme. When I use EasyBCD to setup my OSX boot (MBR) : \NST\nst_mac.mbr I get a Boot1: error. When I do a (EFI) : \NST\nst_mac.efi then OSX boots but it comes up as Chameleon 1 ?

 

I don’t understand how that is happening since I did not install Chameleon 1 but Chameleon 2.0-RC2.

 

Thank you in advance, Rob.

[Evantium]

I have a strange problem.. I installed Chameleon 2.0-RC2 as per included readme. When I use EasyBCD to setup my OSX boot (MBR) : \NST\nst_mac.mbr I get a Boot1: error. When I do a (EFI) : \NST\nst_mac.efi then OSX boots but it comes up as Chameleon 1 ?

I had the same problem.  I think it's finding Chameleon 1 on the "hidden EFI partition".  I've noticed a 212mb "vfat" partition on my drive when using a partition editor, and I think that's the EFI partition.  Macs use that partition to boot, but on a PC you have to use the MBR (Master Boot Record) on the boot hard drive instead.  Vista or Win7 write code to your MBR which loads that menu of operating systems.  EasyBCD lets you edit that menu of operating systems.  In the case of OSX, EasyBCD seems to add "NeoGrub" to the menu of operating systems, and NeoGrub acts as a bridge that launches C:\NST\nst_mac.efi which emulates EFI and loads what's on that hidden EFI partition, which is Chameleon 1.

 

 

That's my theoretical understanding, anyway.  So, you can either figure out how to install Chameleon 2 on that EFI partition (which I assume is possible but I didn't bother to figure it out), or you can take Jingu's advice and replace C:/NST/nst_mac.efi with the "boot" file from Chameleon 2.  Just rename "boot" to C:/NST/nst_mac.efi.  I did this and it works great.

 

I have Vista and XP on a 500gb SATA drive and OSX on an 80GB IDE drive, so to make this work I had to edit C:\NST\menu.lst (which I think is a NeoGrub configuration file) and change the kernel line to reference biosdev=81 (the second IDE drive) like this:

 

kernel /NST/nst_mac.efi biosdev=81

 

Note that I also tried EasyBCD's OSX "MBR" installation instead of the "EFI" installation and I got a "Chain booting error".  I also tried replacing C:/NST/nst_mac.mbr with Chameleon's "boot" and it just said the file was corrupt.

[BuXb]

When I install NeoGrub it installs Grub4DOS. That's great because I am a big G4D fan, been using it for years as a bootloader, exactly what I want. On a MBR drive that is not problem. BUT: I cannot get Grub4DOS working on a GPT formatted drive, not even with EasyBCD latest 2.0.2 ...

 

I googled intensively but could not find ANYTHING helpful.

 

Does ANYBODY use Grub4DOS successfully as a bootloader on a GPT drive? I would not even mind chainloading into Grub4DOS, i.e. via the Windows NT/2k/XP NTLDR or the Windows Vista/7 bootloader, as long as I get there.

 

Thank you in advance,

Bugs