devnull73 Posted September 20, 2009 Share Posted September 20, 2009 after nearly blowing the whole thing away and starting again (fdisk complains that the partitions dont align with cylinder boundaries or something) i finally got windows and ubuntu correctly booting...... snow leopard attempts to boot before giving me the "you must power off your computer" screen...... so Im *nearly* there.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TamauJabuk Posted October 8, 2009 Share Posted October 8, 2009 Hi guys... I've tried a lot of posibilities and none of them work for me. Situation: One disk (/dev/rdisk0) 3 partitions (EFI, Windows7, Snow) - GPT partition scheme! ----------------- First situation: Chameleon is installed on Snow partition!!!!! - But when I choose boot Windows from Chameleon - then I got 0xc0000001 error. - Made an repair from Windows 7 DVD - then I've got Windows boot loader and booted into windows. - I installed EasyBDC - added a "Snow" Boot option - pointing to Snow partition. - when i reboot I have two options Windows 7 and Snow. If i choose Windows - all ok. But If i choose Snow - nothing hapens. I belive that Windows 7 recovery procedure did something to partitions. ------------------ I've booted than into Leopard (from my External Hard drive) reinstalled Chameleon on Snow. Rebooted And I've got an Windows BOOT loader - If i choose snow - same {censored} - nothing. --------------- After thinking - reading a lot of forums... I've decided to install Chameleon on my 200MB EFI partition After that - I was able to boot into Snow - but not into Windows (argh!/()!"#$!"#!"#$"#).. So I've booted from windows 7 DVD - and REPARI was not possible, because repair did not find nothing -------------- I've already had dual boot Leopard and Windows 7 - but on MBR partition scheme. But, since this was my first MacOSX installation - and I was very lucky, when I succeded to create dual boot on my first try. Now I'm a litle bit STUCK. What is the correct/possible procedure for having dual boot: Windows 7 and Snow Leopard on GPT partitioned disk. I realy don't care if my machine shows bootloader from Windows bootloader or from Chameleon. Thanx in advance, Jabolcnik Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
srs5694 Posted October 8, 2009 Share Posted October 8, 2009 TamauJabuk, Windows cannot boot from a GPT disk when the computer is BIOS-based -- at least, not unless you've got an add-on EFI implementation such as DUET. These tend to be very flaky, in my limited experience. In a configuration such as yours, you'll need to configure your partition with a hybrid MBR, so that Windows sees MBR and OS X sees GPT. This has its own problems, as detailed on the page to which I've linked. Overall, it might be best to revert to an MBR-only configuration. Since you've only got three partitions, you might try converting this in-place with GPT fdisk, which should preserve your OS X installation; however, you'll almost certainly need to re-install your boot loader when you do this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TamauJabuk Posted October 8, 2009 Share Posted October 8, 2009 TamauJabuk, Windows cannot boot from a GPT disk when the computer is BIOS-based -- at least, not unless you've got an add-on EFI implementation such as DUET. These tend to be very flaky, in my limited experience. In a configuration such as yours, you'll need to configure your partition with a hybrid MBR, so that Windows sees MBR and OS X sees GPT. This has its own problems, as detailed on the page to which I've linked. Overall, it might be best to revert to an MBR-only configuration. Since you've only got three partitions, you might try converting this in-place with GPT fdisk, which should preserve your OS X installation; however, you'll almost certainly need to re-install your boot loader when you do this. I dont think I'm going to create another two week experiment with my laptop - at least not very soon. From SL im prety sure - that i can access my Windows partition. And with help of MacDrive i can acces my SL partition from Windows. Currently I've managed to Install SL and Windows 7 on my single disk. Which is GPT partitioned. Windows 7 is my active partition. So when i start my machine - it boots on Windows. Without any problems. I can boot into SL - but from my USB key - it is GPT partitioned and installed . ------------------------------------------------------ If I understand correctly - the system boots into that partition which is active. Am I correct? IF so - All i have to do is mark my EFI parttion as active? I've installed on EFI partition Boot Think 2.3.18 before any installation. Boot loader - as i understand is a simple disk and partition scanner... By Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
srs5694 Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 Currently I've managed to Install SL and Windows 7 on my single disk. Which is GPT partitioned. I strongly suspect you've got a hybrid MBR/GPT configuration, then -- either that or your system is one of the rare ones that has EFI rather than (or in addition to) BIOS. See below for more reasons to think you've got a hybrid configuration. Windows 7 is my active partition. So when i start my machine - it boots on Windows. Without any problems. There is no such thing in GPT as an "active" partition; that's an MBR feature that's not present in GPT. That said, some GPT utilities (such as GNU Parted) try to make GPT look a lot like MBR, to the point of enabling the setting of "boot" flags on partitions. (That's what GNU Parted calls the "active" flag on MBR disks.) The trouble in this specific case is that the "boot" flag that GNU Parted sets translates into a (usually incorrect) change to the partition type code. Given that I suspect you've got a hybrid configuration, though, how GNU Parted sets the "boot flag" is probably irrelevant to your current setup. Chances are you're setting the actual "active" flag on the MBR side of things, but this has no effect on the GPT side. If I understand correctly - the system boots into that partition which is active. Am I correct? That's how the standard DOS/Windows boot loader works. How other boot loaders work is highly variable. I don't know if Chameleon looks at the "active" flag or not, or whether it gives precedence to the MBR or the GPT side in the case of a hybrid configuration. IF so - All i have to do is mark my EFI parttion as active? I've installed on EFI partition Boot Think 2.3.18 before any installation. Be very very careful with this. If I'm right, you're confusing two entirely different things: The EFI System partition -- This is a GPT partition that's intended to hold drivers and other information to be used by the firmware on an EFI system. Some OSx86 boot loaders also store data in such a partition, if it's present. The EFI GPT (0xEE) protective partition -- This is a partition definition in the MBR of GPT disks. (GPT incorporates a "protective MBR," which is intended to keep GPT-unaware utilities from trashing the disk.) In standards-conforming GPT disks, it spans the entire disk, except for the MBR (sector 0), or up to the 2TiB mark, whichever is smaller. On hybrid disks, it covers less area, to enable the hybridized partition entries to point to the appropriate disk areas. If a hybrid MBR/GPT disk contains an EFI System partition on the GPT side, that partition will almost certainly not have the same start point, and perhaps not the same end point, as the MBR's EFI GPT (0xEE) protective partition. If you use an MBR-aware OS or utility to write to the EFI GPT (0xEE) protective partition, you'll almost certainly damage your GPT data structures! Therefore, it's critical that you understand what you're dealing with before you muck about with this partition. Setting it "active," as you suggest, is unlikely to corrupt data in the partition, but I don't know if it'll help -- I don't know how Chameleon will react to such a configuration. Note that changing the EFI System partition from a GPT-aware OS isn't nearly as dangerous as modifying the EFI GPT (0xEE) protective partition from an MBR-using OS. This is because the EFI System partition is the "real" partition, as opposed to the EFI GPT (0xEE) protective partition, which isn't likely to point to a single corresponding GPT partition. If you're having a hard time following the preceding because you don't fully understand the differences between MBR, GPT, hybrid MBRs, etc., I suggest you read the "What's a GPT" and "Hybrid MBRs" sections of my GPT fdisk documentation, and perhaps the Wikipedia entries on GPT and MBR. Boot loader - as i understand is a simple disk and partition scanner... Not quite. A boot loader is part of the boot process. When the CPU turns on, it reads code from a fixed location in memory, which is the computer's firmware (BIOS or, on Macs and a small number of other PCs, EFI). The firmware continues the startup process and, in the case of the BIOS, directs the computer to read data from a disk and to run part of that data as a computer program. This is the first-stage boot loader. What happens then depends on the boot loader, but typically more code is loaded from disk in various stages, culminating in the loading of an OS kernel, which then starts launching regular OS programs. Most boot loaders also present a menu to enable users to determine what OS to launch, either directly (the boot loader loads a kernel itself) or indirectly (the boot loader "chain loads" another boot loader). Boot loaders vary greatly in design details, support for different partitioning systems, ability to directly boot particular OS kernels, etc. One of the unusual features of OSx86 boot loaders is that they emulate enough of Intel's EFI to get OS X running. Boot loaders must have enough "smarts" to recognize partitions, which means they must understand MBR and/or GPT (or some other partition scheme on non-x86 platforms). One of the problems we face today is that the x86 computer world is transitioning from MBR to GPT, and not all boot loaders are fully GPT-aware. To make matters worse, hybrid MBR/GPT configurations can present contradictory or confusing configurations to boot loaders, and there's no guarantee that a boot loader will interpret such setups in the same way as the OSes they boot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nach0 Stallion Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 Hi everyone, There seems to be alot of debate in whats the best way to get multi OS's working and have them boot via chameleon, now im not new to hackintoshes, but i have only ever done single purpose systems, so my question is this: If i run 2 hard drives, a 500GB sata for OSX, install SL, get it fully booting on its own then install a second 500GB sata HD for Windows 7. will i be able to use chameleon to setup a multi boot system so the PC boots into Cham, then lets me select SL or windows 7. is THIS possible? thank you kindly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grassyknollman Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 I just installed iPC osx86 on my laptop that had a version of Win7 installed first. Heres how I did it on a single sata harddrive Partition off a section of the hd, i did 65 gigs. use Paragon to format in Fat32 Boot into OSX Installer, and run Disk utilities under Security, do a Single Zero Pass. Follow standard install instructions, and you will have a dual boot machine. hey no matter how much i try, i can't get it to format the drive to the mbr/hybrid disk, Windows refuses to install whether I format it using mac or windows :/ Can anyone help? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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