Installation went perfectly, now acronis OS selector doesn't show OSX

[King George]

Hi everyone...

I did the installation of JaS 10.4.7.

After a few trouble with the partition to install on, I managed to get the installation going.

BUT...

When I set the OSX partition active, I get "MBR error" when I try to boot.

With a bootable disk I set my windows partition active, booted into windows and installed Acronis OS Selector.

Then rebooted, acronis selector loaded, but only shows my Windows XP...

 

Does anybody know the solution to this (probably slight) problem?

 

Thanks very much in advance...

[cbmkgd]

What kind of partition did you install osx on? Primary, Logical?

Any specific guide you followed?

[King George]

First of all: thank you for the reply.

I installed on a primary partition, set to active.

I didn't follow any specific guide, just typed -v at darwin for verbose mode.

I made the partition using diskpart, then formatted it using the OSX disk utilities.

When I keep the partition active, i only get the MBR error.

[King George]

Tried a few more things I found on the forum...

tried Fixing the MBR with Hiren's Bootable CD,

tried setting the disk to active using the OSX Terminal,

tried the chain0 method descibed many times on the forum,

 

All without any result... Still having the MBR error and still no choice for OSX in NT boot menu or Acronis OS selector

[cbmkgd]

Lets hear a bit about your hardware. Motherboard, chipset, type of hard-drive (pata, sata?).

 

Also, just curious, what were those partition troubles you had?

[King George]

Cbmkgd,

 

thanks again for you concern.

My specs: Sony Vaio

 

CPU: Intel T2300 dual core

GPU: Geforce 7600, 128 MB dedicated

chipset: Intel® 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7-M Family)

motherboard: Sony Vaio Motherboard (unable to detect more info, used various apps)

HDD: SATA 4200 rpm 160 GB

 

During the installation I checked all the windows about the hardware.

Seemed like everything was nicely detected, except wireless and sound.

SATA wasn't a problem, too. On my second attemp to install, my partition was detected right away.

 

About the partitioning trouble, that's nothing much really;

I just made a FAT32 partition with Disk Director, set it active, booted from OSX DVD and I couldn't erase it with the disk utility. (Unable to mount, again and again). Then had trouble booting winXP because its partition was not active, used UBCD to set it back to active.

Then I deleted the partition and made a new one (ID=AF) using diskpart.

 

I hope I provided enough background info now...

Thanks in advance,

George

[King George]

UPDATE:

Seems I can boot to a very fine working OSX when I leave the DVD in...

But still no way to go without...

[cbmkgd]

Sony VAIO with t2300 seems to be compatible from the wiki.

You seem to have done the right steps.

 

If you use diskpart in windows to list the partitions, do you get something like:

 

-hda1, primary, boot (with ntfs, fat, etc)

-hda2, primary, af

...

(and later extended/logicals)

 

(just trying to eliminate possibilities, checking if osx is before the extended partition, if there is one; and also trying to see if diskpart still sees the osx partition!)

[King George]

Hi again

Diskpart does still show the partition.

But it is the last one in the list, and form Disk Director I learned it is AFTER my logical storage partition.

In fact, earlier, when the install failed, I thought this was the problem and I tried to move it but wouldn't know how.

Greetz

George

[cbmkgd]

Ok, there have been reports that this can cause problems.

The primary partition for osx should preferably be before the extended partition (otherwise osx doesn't like that, for whatever reason).

You can move partitions around with disk director, with the usual strain on the hard drive this can cause! Is there some place before the extended partition on which you could move your osx partition? Otherwise you'll have to make some place.

 

If eventually you want to reinstall osx (start fresh), know that with disk director you can make the type as AF by right-clicking on the partition and going to its properties (advanced properties if i remember) and selecting the AF type (which diskdirector names "Shag OS swap"... go figure).

 

I hope this can solve your problem.

 

/edit: of course, after all this, it's good to test without the acronis os selector, ie with just osx partition active and booting with the darwin bootloader as you tried at first.

That way you eliminate things that can go wrong that have nothing to do with osx (acronis can have its own problems!)

[King George]

Thank you for quickly replying.

Well now, I have just a few more questions.

1 If I want to make free space to move the partition to, how can I decide where it will come?

2 What do you mean, strain on the HD?

3 In case moving the partition does not solve the boot problem, would it help to install OSX while Acronis OSselector is already active? (This time I installed it only afterwards?

4 Some topics on this forum talk about a command that looks like "cp /mach_kernel /Volumes/OSX10-4-6/", used to write the correct mach-kernel to the partition. Others say that you need a linux/freebsd live CD to make the partition active/bootable using fdisk.

Do one of these operations have anything to do with my problem?

 

Thanks a bunch -again-

George

[cbmkgd]

4) Right now, in your situation with the osx partition after the extended partition, this is the only problem I see and which has been reported often.

All the steps you did before without the acronis os selector, were ok, except that diskpart chose the first empty space to create the primary partition.

 

1) With Acronis Disk Director, you can resize partitions so you can make place for a newer partition. You can also move a partition to an empty place on the disk. I suggest you defragment your windows partition and the logical partitions so the resizing will be optimal (you need at least 3.5GB for a minimal osx install without all those printer drivers and languages; more is much better of course).

You can then make space after your windows partition, before the extended partition.

 

2) When I speak about strain on the drive, it's just that moving and resizing demands a lot of continuous reading/writing on the disk: just imagine transfering many GB of data from one partition to another within windows. Your disk will get hoter and work alot in a short period of time. But that always happen with that sort of activity.

 

3) I don't think it would help. But you could try.

[King George]

OK thanks a bunch man!!

I'll redo the whole thing properly.

Thanks for your time, it will be a good guide

If I manage to get a nice OS marriage, I'll post a detailed description of my queste if that can be of interest of any other users...

greets

[koolaidman23]

Hi there, I thought I would put in my two cents. I used Acronis to partition my drive, then uninstalled it. Then I installed OSx86. Then, having had made an Acronis Bootable Disk before uninstalling it (and noting the serial) I booted to the cd, installed Acronis again, and rebooted... Kabaam, it recognized xp AND OS X. I dont know if this will work for you, but it was the only way I was ever able to boot to my successful installation. chain0 never worked for me. After a while, I got rid of acronis and now I use the Darwin Bootloader.

 

Good luck, and I hope my experience can help you, or at least give you more info.

[cbmkgd]

This AOSS standalone is something I also described somewhere in the "Dual Boot... " guide in the GeniusBar forum, if one doesn't need the disk director on the drive. The bootable disk contains also disk director on it. And if you installed Acronis True Image, the bootable disk will contain it also (if you ask it to). The best is to find these already in "bootable administrator dvds" out there.

 

Another great advantage of this bootable disk is that sometimes the os selector fubars... and this disk is good at repairing it. (although i've had no more problems with aoss since i installed it in a fat32 non-system partition...)

 

But it's good to know if your osx can boot by itself, and 'taste' the darwin bootloader if possible, to see what you have as an option.

 

As of now , Acronis OS Selector doesn't officially support Vista, for those that are concerned. There is a hack about this in the GeniusBar though if you search for it.

[King George]

Hello,

sorry for the long time before posting back.

I finally found time to do the whole thing again...

 

Here are some hints for those who had similar problems...

 

OSX clearly has troubles with primary partitions AFTER logical ones.

So: ALWAYS PUT YOUR PRIMARY PARTITIONS IN THE BEGINNING OF THE DRIVE. It doesn't seem to matter in what order they are, but logical partitions between primary partitions will not (automatically) be mounted.

Since I moved my mac partition to before the logical one, everything boots perfectly AND all my windows drives can be accessed through mac.

 

If you want to use Acronis OS selector for dual booting: Install it before you start the mac installation. It will recognize Mac OSX (or "unknown os") perfectly upon startup.

 

Now i'm starting to install my sound and wireless...

Thanks guys for the hints

KG