DuBmastah Posted January 2, 2009 Share Posted January 2, 2009 this is mostly for people that already have a dual boot osx/win xp and want to had a vista (or windows seven) partition also. that might also help people having problems booting vista in multi boot. first of all : no matter what bootloader you will use, your pc will search for it in the ACTIVE partition of your HD, wich means you can switch from one bootloader to another by just setting the right partition active. if your OSX partition is active, then your (first) bootloader will be darwin, if it's the windows partition that is the active partition, this will be windows bootloader. this means you can forget about chain0 and such things as darwin IS able to launch OSX, XP, VISTA and even WIN7. this post is all about keeping darwin as bootloader and launch directly any of those OS whithout having to enter a choice in any other bootloader next to darwin. now suppose you already have a dual boot osx/xp (if you don't know how to do this, maybe you can find some help in my other post HERE ) and wan't to install vista, this post is for you. you can follow some explaination here also if you already have a trial boot whith vista but have an infinate loop beetween darwin and vista bootloader, or else if you have a trial boot but can't launch vista from darwin due to vista bootloader problems (tipically, vista boot hangs for some reasons). as this post is dedicated to noobs (like me), i will give you some solutions to do the job whithout having to enter command lines orso. but if you're a power user, you will find you could achieve the same goals using built in tools and command lines. please feel free to add alternative solutions then. the tools we will use there : Acronis disk director mainly to switch partitions to "active" when you're in windows, not neccesarely needed. Neosmart EasyBCD donationware, this will help in editing or repairing or rebuilding vista BCD FIRST of all, make a backup of your win xp bootfiles (boot.ini, etc...) as vista will modify that in your xp partition and you will be sent to vista bootloader anytime you try to boot xp. Now here we are : you found some place in the hardrive and finnaly managed to instal vista (or windows 7) in there. most of the time after this, you will boot on the vista partition, enter vista bootloader and wil have no choice to get back to OSX. as far as i remeber, vista lets you choose beetween vista itself and the old version of windows (XP). choose to boot into windows xp and have a look to your computer : check the letter for your VISTA partition (E for exemple). at this point, you can also choose to instal easyBCD on your windows XP as this could help if you encounter boot problems later. note : if for some reason, you're not able to boot into vista at this point, just leave the next step and stay under windows xp... reboot again and go straight to vista. install easyBCD and launch it... when you're in there, put VISTA as default OS, and give it the letter you found under XP (E in this exemple). if you're confident in the victory, make a timeout of 0, if not, leaving a few seconds is not a bad choice at all, you will then need to fix it later). apply, save, re-check everything is ok, etc... note : you could have an entry there for your OSX system in case you reboot whith vista partition active and wan't to get into OSX from there, just in case... DO NOT REBOOT ! 1) restore your original xp boot files (you just need to copy the original files back to your xp partition and remove the "boot" folder that vista installed there). if you experience problems at this point, i guess this is well documented everywhere, sometimes you will need to copy ntldr back there, sometimes not, some say you also have to copy ntldr in vista system32 or in windows xp system 32 folder, you'll see later if this file is missing at next win xp reboot. don't panic you even can copy it back from windows xp cd as well as far as i know. 2) just set your OSX partition active NOW (then you will be booting in darwin next time). reboot... now you're back in darwin bootloader. - check if OSX is loading properly (it will be always by default, there is NO working solution as far as i know to set another os as defaut in darwin as the active partition is always the defaut boot partition in darwin and you need OSX partition to be the active one). - check if XP is loading properly (if you have the missing ntldr issue at this point, don't worry copy it back to the root of your win xp partition, copy it to system32 also if needed but i'm not sure it is). - check if vista is loading : there, you will normaly be sent to vista bootloader. you won't see it if you choosed a timeout of 0 in esayBCD a few step backwards and if you don't see it, and vista boots properly, you're done. if vista is loading : thats a good point, goes in vista, SET VISTA PARTITION ACTIVE (else easyBCD will not recognise the bootloader as it will be darwin), launch easyBCD, set timeout to 0, save, exit, etc...SET BACK OSX PARTITION ACTIVE, reboot, you shoud be done. if vista is not loading : (that's where the people that have problem whith the vista BCD should rejoign us), don't give a damn, just follow those steps : 1) boot into windows XP. 2) set VISTA partition active (or easyBCD won't find the vista bootloader) 3) install easyBCD if not done already and launch it (maybe you will have a few error messages, just ignore them). 4) edit your vista bootloader and check if the letter for the vista partition is correct (should be E in this exemple). 5) if the letter is correct, you may want to rebuild the vista BCD, follow the easyBCD doc if you're not sure what you're doing 6) verify that vista is the defaut boot OS, set timeout to 0 if you feel you're a lucky guy, and so on... 7) save, exit easyBCD and DO NOT REBOOT at this point. 8) set OSX partition as active using disk director or windows disk manager or whatever method you want. reboot... you should be ok now. if you choose timeout 0 in easyBCD boot options, you won't see vista bootloader anymore. if you choosed another value, just do the last steps once again and change it to 0 then DARWIN will be your only visible bootlarder and will let you choose beetween OSX, windows XP and VISTA (or windows 7) ar startup. personnaly, i experimented all this whith windows 7 that as a similar boot system as vista. good luck, hope this helps and that i did not forgot something writing this. please feel free to correct me or add other informations to this tuto. peace to all. 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