Ferris Bueller 2.0 Posted October 28, 2009 Share Posted October 28, 2009 Okay here's the situation... I recently backed up all my important data on an external 1TB USB drive, and installed Snow Leopard (not retail so I couldn't software update! ) Lots of things were broken like taking screenshots for example. Things that worked in 10.5.7... I attempted to install a retail snow leopard using boot think but failed... maybe I don't understand the how to install a retail updateable version of OSX (wish there was a really good general guide that's not specific to certain hardware) What kexts would I need to put in the Extra folder? aren't they already on the install DVD/USB drive? I have kexts that I need for my battery icon to appear for my wifi usb device to work, for my ethernet card to work, etc... Would those be the kexts to put in the Extra folder? Oh plus I need the USB fix (IOUSBFamily.kext) or I get that "AppleEHCI" error about not being able to obtain control from bios... Anyway on snow leopard Logic 9.0 did not work (crashed when run, 10.5.7 had no problems), so I'm willing to just hold off on SL for a while and be happy with 10.5.7 regular leopard... Erased everything again, started fresh... Right now I have only Windows 7 installed, but have an extra NTFS formatted partition ready for OSX to be installed onto... (after formatting to macos journaled of course (hfs+)) The partition just needs to be there so it can be erased and reformatted... Here's how my partitions look: 1 partition toshiba reserved like 1mb i think it was... not sure what this is for but left it alone to not screw anything up... 2nd partition 100MB partiton which was automatically created by windows 7 when I created the partition for it... 3rd partiton 69 GB Windows 7 NTFS formatted partiton 4th partition 78 GB NTFS partiton (soon to be turned into HFS with disk util) I have made a bootable usb 10.5.7 installer (its the iAtkos 10.5.7 in-case your wondering) because it saves so much time in the install process! (Windows 7 didn't install much quicker from usb than DVD I might add... OSX however it makes a big difference!! 30 min install reduced to < 5 mins! ) When I install it though, I'm afraid if I select the Chameleon 2.0 bootloader instead of 1.0 that it will break my Windows 7 bootability! I know this because I screwed up my Vista booting ability when I decided to install the new bootloader (Chameleon 2.0 RC3) over the old one 1.0 because I liked the cool look of it. It's a nice GUI boot menu instead of a black screen. I installed it using the terminal with the proper fdisk commands with the correct disk and partition as described in the help file... It seems the Chameleon developers either overlooked, or do not give a hoot about Windows users! Anyway I've looked into this and it seems since Vista and above they changed something with how the windows boot loader works! There is now something called the disk signature! If it is modified or overwritten your windows will refuse to boot! After installing the latest chameleon bootloader, when I tried to boot vista I got this message: winload.exe......is missing or corrupt. reference: http://www.multibooters.co.uk/mbr.html I think because Chameleon 2.0 RC3 really pushed the limit on the file size a bootloader can be, they made it so big that it overwrites the disk signature, causing windows to not allow you to boot and give you some bogus error! Pre-vista its okay but we need a Chameleon 2.0 RC3 for Post-vista Windows OS's I was able to fix up the booting of vista by using the repair disk setting it as the active partition and doing repair, then installing EasyBCD to be able to boot mac os again... (but I didn't like the double boot menu {censored} that it does) One solution I thought of is to install Chameleon 2.0 RC3 onto the MBR of a USB drive (Which since it's not overwriting Windows 7's disk signature on my hard drive, it would work and be okay) Only thing that sucks about that is having to insert that usb stick everytime I want to boot up mac! So I was thinking of trying Boot Think, it says it supports booting all types of OS's, Windows Vista, Win 7, Linux, OSX, etc... The only thing stopping me is when I tried installing SL retail the boot think loader wouldn't even show up... just gave me something like: boot: testing boot: testing boot: testing boot: failed Now maybe I was doing something wrong because I've never installed retail successfully before (and its not very clear on how its done for me) But shouldn't I have at least been able to come to the boot screen? Maybe to be safe I'll try installing Boot Think onto a usb drive's MBR then boot from it... If I don't get the screen like shown in these pictures http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=168500 Then I guess boot think isn't for me... Is there anyway to install Chameleon 2.0 RC3 without screwing up the Windows Vista/ Windows 7 Disk Signature? EDIT: I just said hell with it and installed mac with the chameleon 1.0 bootloader, Now I noticed when selecting "Windows NTFS" from the list it says cannot find boot manager and requests that you press ctrl+alt+del! Selecting "Leopard" however boots into mac fine! This is not a problem though as I guess that's why Windows 7 created that 100MB partiton... If I select "System Reserved" on the chameleon 1.0 bootloader it boots win 7 fine! So I now have a working Win 7 ultimate 32bit + mac os 10.5.7 32bit dual boot system! So I'm happy about that, I'll stick with the boring black boot screen if I have to but the question still remains! Is there anyway to install Chameleon 2.0 RC3 without screwing up the Windows Vista/Windows 7 Disk Signature? It's disappointing for such a great boot loader's new versions to not support coexisting happily with windows vista+ OS's!!! Thank you for your help! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/194511-urgent-windows-7-retail-osx-1057-dual-boot-w-chameleon-20-rc3/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillB50 Posted November 1, 2009 Share Posted November 1, 2009 Okay here's the situation... I recently backed up all my important data on an external 1TB USB drive, and installed Snow Leopard (not retail so I couldn't software update! ) Lots of things were broken like taking screenshots for example. Things that worked in 10.5.7... I attempted to install a retail snow leopard using boot think but failed... maybe I don't understand the how to install a retail updateable version of OSX (wish there was a really good general guide that's not specific to certain hardware) What kexts would I need to put in the Extra folder? aren't they already on the install DVD/USB drive? I have kexts that I need for my battery icon to appear for my wifi usb device to work, for my ethernet card to work, etc... Would those be the kexts to put in the Extra folder? Oh plus I need the USB fix (IOUSBFamily.kext) or I get that "AppleEHCI" error about not being able to obtain control from bios... Anyway on snow leopard Logic 9.0 did not work (crashed when run, 10.5.7 had no problems), so I'm willing to just hold off on SL for a while and be happy with 10.5.7 regular leopard... Erased everything again, started fresh... Right now I have only Windows 7 installed, but have an extra NTFS formatted partition ready for OSX to be installed onto... (after formatting to macos journaled of course (hfs+)) The partition just needs to be there so it can be erased and reformatted... Here's how my partitions look: 1 partition toshiba reserved like 1mb i think it was... not sure what this is for but left it alone to not screw anything up... 2nd partition 100MB partiton which was automatically created by windows 7 when I created the partition for it... 3rd partiton 69 GB Windows 7 NTFS formatted partiton 4th partition 78 GB NTFS partiton (soon to be turned into HFS with disk util) I have made a bootable usb 10.5.7 installer (its the iAtkos 10.5.7 in-case your wondering) because it saves so much time in the install process! (Windows 7 didn't install much quicker from usb than DVD I might add... OSX however it makes a big difference!! 30 min install reduced to < 5 mins! ) When I install it though, I'm afraid if I select the Chameleon 2.0 bootloader instead of 1.0 that it will break my Windows 7 bootability! I know this because I screwed up my Vista booting ability when I decided to install the new bootloader (Chameleon 2.0 RC3) over the old one 1.0 because I liked the cool look of it. It's a nice GUI boot menu instead of a black screen. I installed it using the terminal with the proper fdisk commands with the correct disk and partition as described in the help file... It seems the Chameleon developers either overlooked, or do not give a hoot about Windows users! Anyway I've looked into this and it seems since Vista and above they changed something with how the windows boot loader works! There is now something called the disk signature! If it is modified or overwritten your windows will refuse to boot! After installing the latest chameleon bootloader, when I tried to boot vista I got this message: winload.exe......is missing or corrupt. reference: http://www.multibooters.co.uk/mbr.html I think because Chameleon 2.0 RC3 really pushed the limit on the file size a bootloader can be, they made it so big that it overwrites the disk signature, causing windows to not allow you to boot and give you some bogus error! Pre-vista its okay but we need a Chameleon 2.0 RC3 for Post-vista Windows OS's I was able to fix up the booting of vista by using the repair disk setting it as the active partition and doing repair, then installing EasyBCD to be able to boot mac os again... (but I didn't like the double boot menu {censored} that it does) One solution I thought of is to install Chameleon 2.0 RC3 onto the MBR of a USB drive (Which since it's not overwriting Windows 7's disk signature on my hard drive, it would work and be okay) Only thing that sucks about that is having to insert that usb stick everytime I want to boot up mac! So I was thinking of trying Boot Think, it says it supports booting all types of OS's, Windows Vista, Win 7, Linux, OSX, etc... The only thing stopping me is when I tried installing SL retail the boot think loader wouldn't even show up... just gave me something like: boot: testing boot: testing boot: testing boot: failed Now maybe I was doing something wrong because I've never installed retail successfully before (and its not very clear on how its done for me) But shouldn't I have at least been able to come to the boot screen? Maybe to be safe I'll try installing Boot Think onto a usb drive's MBR then boot from it... If I don't get the screen like shown in these pictures http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=168500 Then I guess boot think isn't for me... Is there anyway to install Chameleon 2.0 RC3 without screwing up the Windows Vista/ Windows 7 Disk Signature? EDIT: I just said hell with it and installed mac with the chameleon 1.0 bootloader, Now I noticed when selecting "Windows NTFS" from the list it says cannot find boot manager and requests that you press ctrl+alt+del! Selecting "Leopard" however boots into mac fine! This is not a problem though as I guess that's why Windows 7 created that 100MB partiton... If I select "System Reserved" on the chameleon 1.0 bootloader it boots win 7 fine! So I now have a working Win 7 ultimate 32bit + mac os 10.5.7 32bit dual boot system! So I'm happy about that, I'll stick with the boring black boot screen if I have to but the question still remains! Is there anyway to install Chameleon 2.0 RC3 without screwing up the Windows Vista/Windows 7 Disk Signature? It's disappointing for such a great boot loader's new versions to not support coexisting happily with windows vista+ OS's!!! Thank you for your help! Microsoft re-did it's boot architecture starting with Vista. It no longer uses NTLDR as XP. Microsoft now uses a specific database called BCD which can be manipulated thru the command line tool BCDEdit.exe. There are free tools out there that will allow you to graphically edit the bootloader as well. There are plenty of guides on this forum that can point out how to get that Win7 installation going with the latest Chameleon release. Please search this particular subforum and look for posts pertaining to a single disk with multiple partitions that include Win7. Good luck - learn about each boot loader - you might also consider going to the Chameleon forum and reading the FAQ section there as well to learn how Chameleon works.... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/194511-urgent-windows-7-retail-osx-1057-dual-boot-w-chameleon-20-rc3/#findComment-1316287 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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