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Just built a desktop system using weaksauce's guide. I will post my system specs if that's required for an answer but since both my installs work, I just can't get the bootloader working correctly, I will not post them here unless someone requests to see them. I will say that I have a two harddrive set-up and want my OS's on separate drives.

 

What I want is a dual booting system... on TWO separate harddrives. Bootloader should come up at start-up (like Darwin/Chameleon does) and show me bootable partitions for both drives... can't figure out how to do that.

 

I have an OSX retail version 10.5.6 (legit), and windows 7 latest eval copy from MS.

 

OSX retail will not install itself on anything but a GUID partitioned harddrive... I mention that because when I used iatkos to make a laptop a year and a half ago, it allowed me to create an MBR drive and install OSX and XP on to two separate partitions on one MBR drive. Darwin Bootloader would then come up at startup and show me both bootable partitions... OSX and XP, I use the menu to select which one I wanted, hit enter and they loaded.

 

This time, OSX won't touch any drive that isn't GUID... tried it a million different ways, only way it will install to a drive is if I repartition the drive in Mac Disk Utility and use GUID to partition.

 

Win7, likewise, will not touch a GUID drive. Needs MBR. And for some reason, no matter what I do, if I install OSX first, it messes with my ability to install Win7 at all... I just get 'can't install' error messages, it won't let me touch either drive or any partition.

 

What's happening when I have both drives installed in the system is that when I install either of those OS's, the installations are taking control of both drives. OSX puts some 200 MB partition on the second drive even though I'm not using it in installation, and Win7 likewise puts the 100MB boot partition on the largest drive, the one I want only for OSX.

 

So my solution was the following... I unplugged my larger drive that I want for OSX only and left only the smaller drive for Win7 plugged in and recognized on my system. I then installed Win7 on that harddrive and all went smoothly, install works flawlessly.

 

I then plugged the larger harddrive for OSX back in, booted with Magic Disk, completed the OSX install on the larger hard drive, rebooted, installed patches, got everything working, then installed Chameleon off the Uinstaller program on magic disk and rebooted again... I get the Chameleon bootloader menu at start up and can boot into a 100% working version of OSX (minus Boot Camp, which gives me an incompatible bios error).

 

The problem... the boot menu on Chameleon only shows bootable partitions from ONE drive (the OSX drive). I want it to show options from BOTH.

 

In order to boot into Windows 7, I need to use Magic Disk, select the second harddrive (81) and then I get the boot menu for that drive that then shows the bootable partition for Win7... and yes, once I am there I can select it and boot into a flawlessly working Windows 7 install.

 

So both installs are there and 100% functional... and I can get to OSX with NO issues at all, just by booting the system into Chameleon and hitting enter or letting the 5 seconds time out. But in order to get to the Windows 7 install on the other hard drive, I need to use Magic Disk like I mentioned above.

 

Am I doomed to use Magic Disk to every time I want to get to Windows 7? How can I get Chameleon to show me boot options from BOTH harddrives and not just the one that OSX is on?

 

Or is there another program I can use ? I've seen EASYBCD suggested, but I downloaded and installed it in Windows 7 and I get an error any time I try to open and use the program... something about it being compatible with Vista and not the current OS.

 

Can someone help? Is there a way to tweak the code for Chameleon to show bootable options from both drives ? Or is there a way to get Chameleon to act like Magic Disk does... i.e. I have to select the drive first (80, 81, or fe for the dvd), then the partition from it to boot from? Ideally I'd just like a menu of all bootable partitions to show up so I can just choose one and hit enter, but I wouldn't be against a couple of extra keystrokes (80 or 81) in order to boot... what I don't want is to have to pop in a cd every time I want to get to Windows 7.

 

Hope that all makes sense... and can anyone help me out ?

Uh oh. I'm going to be in a similar situation (computer coming in a few days) so yes, it would be helpful for this to get resolved! Is there a way to install Chameleon 2.0 RC2 after following weaksauce's guide? I think that has an interface for booting off two HDDs but I'm not sure how you would go about doing it.

I just installed everything last night. Steps needed:

 

1. Plug in HDD for Mac, unplug HDD for Windows 7

2. Install and Update Mac OSX to 10.5.x (I did 10.5.8) using weaksauce's guide

3. Download and Run Chameleon 2.0 RC2

4. Unplug HDD for Mac, plug in HDD for Windows 7

5. Install Windows 7

6. Plug in both HDDs, change boot order in BIOS so that the Mac HDD is the one that loads

 

You will then boot using Chameleon RC2 which has a GUI to pick which OS you want to run. There will be two Windows 7 icons, pick the one that says System Profile or something if you want to boot into Windows.

 

Also, thanks for the tip on keeping only one HDD plugged in at a time. It would have probably taken me ages if I'd had to figure that out on my own!

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