Boot problem after a second HD installation

[Luc Galarneau]

Here is my problem:

First, MacOSX 10.5.8 and Windows 7 were booting and working well before I put a second HD in my laptop.

 

The partition details:

Disk 0

Partition 1 Primary NTFS DATA D:

Partition 2 Primary NTFS Windows 7 Pro 64 C:

Partition 3 Primary HFS OS X E:

 

Then, I installed a second HD with the details:

Disk 1

Partition 1 Primary NTFS DATA F:

Partition 2 Primary NTFS SHARE G:

 

 

Now, Windows 7 is booting correctly, but not the OS X. To manage the Windows bootloader, I'm using EasyBCD with the following details:

 

There are a total of 2 entries listed in the bootloader.

 

Default: Windows 7 Professional

Timeout: 5 seconds

EasyBCD Boot Device: C:\

 

Entry #1

Name: Windows 7 Professional

BCD ID: {current}

Drive: C:\

Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe

 

Entry #2

Name: NST Mac OS X

BCD ID: {efc4f0a3-aba2-11e1-ba8b-857b61f85cf6}

Drive: C:\

Bootloader Path: \NST\AutoNeoGrub0.mbr

 

 

When I boot and select "NST Mac OS X", Chameleon selects the disk SHARE (G: ) by default (before, when it was working the default was correctly selected as OS X (E: )). I can still see the OS X partition when I press F8, but even if I select the OS X disk, it won't boot. What is strange is that if I remove the second HD, everything is booting well again. I have absolutely no clue why, with the second HD plugged in, the chameleon bootloader choose a partition on the second HD by default at startup?

 

Anybody have an answer to that matter? And anyone has a solution on how can I boot in OS X with my second HD plugged in?

 

Thanks in advance to anybody who can help me

[rbmarliere]

Same here... Anyone?

[eep357]

Hmm, Windowsy stuff huh? Ouch..I'll try my best here. First thing to try would be at chameleon drive selection add boot flag rd=disk0s3 (based on above partition description, but probably disk0s4). If no joy, try booting with a USB thumb drive while both drives are plugged in. Once in OSX, again with both drives plugged in as this may be the important part, use Chameleon Wizard or similar to then edit the default boot partition and add your data partitions as "hidden". May also want to add the UUID of your OSX partition into your org.chameleon.boot.plist, or com.apple.boot.plist if your still using older chamleon with 10.5.8. It would go under kernel flags and look like this

&--#60;key&--#62;Kernel Flags&--#60;/key&--#62;
&--#60;string&--#62;rd=uuid boot-uuid=efc4f0a3-aba2-11e1-ba8b-857b61f85cf6&--#60;/string&--#62;

and your volume's UUID can also be obtained by selecting your boot volume in disk utility and clicking "get info". This is all based on my thinking adding the second drive is changing what Chameleon sees as the available drive numbers. If this is not the case, and you have EasyBCD as the primary boot loader and then pass off to Chameleon when you want to boot OSX, it could be EasyBCD causing the problem, chameleon uses BSD drive labeling and Windows doesn't, so since it's not going from bios straight to chameleon something is getting screwy, in which case, I personally would have it work the other way around letting chameleon and OSX be the active partition and have it pass off to EasyBCD. I've never used easyBCD so could be way off on some of that.

 

Secondly since you have 2 hard drives, why not just put one OS on each drive and call it a day? You can still have whatever storage partitions you want on them as well.

 

-edit-from what I can tell, using easyBCD in your current configuration may not work properly, with a second gpt drive and using easyBCD your bootloader path would be C:\NST\nst_mac.efi. and it would need to include Chameleon's "boot" file vs. current Bootloader Path: \NST\AutoNeoGrub0.mbr as is now with MBR. What you'll want for OSX on MBR is instead Bootloader Path:\NST\nst_mac.mbr with Chameleon boot file copied to it. Downloaded latest version of easyBCD and recreate a new OSX boot file as above and check to verify it is correct. Older versions of easyBCD failed to do this part properly.