vanou Posted September 20, 2006 Share Posted September 20, 2006 Hello, First, I would like to thank everybody for the mine of info I could find here. OK, I'm a kind of newbie to the osX86 community, but I'm an experienced mac user, and a self-taught ignorant on Windows. I friend gave me his Acer 3613WLMI worn out with Win viruses and problems to instal osX. I just had to pin a paperclip to the VGA to start and everything seemed ok: 1. I started witht the Hotiso 10.4.6 (the only one starting up), used the Mac OS disk utility to partition the hd (remember I'm a mac user): 1. 25 Gb HFS+journalled, 2. 11 Gb FAT32. 2. Installed OsX with patches (thanks to whom it may concern) on partition 1. No trouble except for the active partition making afterwards (http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=22844&hl=Active Thanks Rammjet!!). I just had to change the video driver to AC97 for QE/CI. Fine. No Wireless (Airport), but hey, not bad. I installed a lot of stuff to play around (Office, Darwine, Sheepshaver, it's something to play these old OS9 games on a pc..., Parallels and so on --> I don't want to do it again...). Then the friend said: let's install XP sp2 on the _second_ partition to dual boot. 3. Started on that XP CD. At the start, the dos-like screen says "Windows has to make the first partition inactive, ... bla bla bla". I noted to go back to fdisk later. Instal goes fine, restart. And then... Patatras ! (as we say in French) No boot anymore : "Disk error, press any key to restart" (of course I tried! nothing). Did the Rammjet above fdisk trick. Worked only ONCE, and then only with the OSX DVD in the drive (couldn't start again, understand that?) Then I started to _really_ search this forum. Found a lot of stuff [that might be the trouble actually, this long long lists of posts... - I know I'm adding one, sorry], but nothing related. I've spend a couple of nights on this. Please help, or at least hint. Otherwise I'll give up this second partition, and rely on //s to run XP. But my friend is keen on keeping Windows as dual boot if possible. Thanks, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vanou Posted September 20, 2006 Author Share Posted September 20, 2006 Two new details : - the pc actually boots on osx when I type reboot in the terminal once booted on the osX86 DVD (the same in the terminal once booted from the HD does not work, even as root). - the Startup Disk Sys pref on Mac OS X does not show any disk (which probably explains the above). Thank you, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wondergod Posted September 20, 2006 Share Posted September 20, 2006 Two new details :- the pc actually boots on osx when I type reboot in the terminal once booted on the osX86 DVD (the same in the terminal once booted from the HD does not work, even as root). - the Startup Disk Sys pref on Mac OS X does not show any disk (which probably explains the above). Thank you, you can try a boot cd like ultimate boot cd and use the boot manager on that to boot into windows then use diskpart, start -> run -> cmd -> diskpart list disk select disk [the number of your disk] list partition select partition [the number of your osx partition] active (if this doesn’t work, try ’set active’ without quotes) then reboot if that doesn't work try booting into windows and install acronis disk director with OS selector... the Startup Disk Sys pref on Mac OS X does not show any disk (which probably explains the above) thats normal because osx86 doesn't use EFI, so it doesn't properly report startup disk....or something to that affect...just know no one see's that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vanou Posted September 20, 2006 Author Share Posted September 20, 2006 Dear Wondergod (with such a name, I must expect much...) I downloaded a "Basic" version of the Universal Boot CD from their site. A nice idea, actually, this stuff. So it boots, I tried to boot the first hard disk [F8], no results. I tried to make my second partition active (the one with Windows XP on) -> "disk error, Press any key to restart" (back to the situation I was before I activated partition 1 with fdisk to boot on osX). I tried a couple of other things on the fly, with no results so far. The problem for me is there's quite a lot of utilities, even 11 partition tools and 5 boot managers on this CD (not mentionning other utilities I only have a rough idea of). Do you have any suggestion ? Thanks, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wondergod Posted September 21, 2006 Share Posted September 21, 2006 try f3(Filesystem tools) then hit 3(Boot Manager) then select the HD0 option that has NTFS and it should hopefully let you in winxp... by hittin f8 you pretty much quit out the cd and told it to boot off the HD which doesn't work anyways... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyclonefr Posted September 21, 2006 Share Posted September 21, 2006 im having the same issue from the beginning : seems to be due to the fact XP boot is to far (80Gb of OSX)...so u can make like me a XP boot cd (copying windows XP root on a fresh CD=about 2mb) then boot manually on the CD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
subedai Posted September 21, 2006 Share Posted September 21, 2006 easiest way to get it all to dual boot is from unpartitioned drive: 1) use winxp setup to make the first partition but leave enough free space for your osx partition, install xp on that (xp likes to be first partition and setup will not make the second partition quite right so jus leave it free till step 2) 2) get xp all running, make a second primary partition in admin tools>disk management with the free space u left in step one(has to be a primary for osx, logical/extended wont work). Dont bother bout formatting it, doesnt matter. 3)Make sure you set this second partition as active before u install osx, the windows xp program will not let u set a non-fat32/ntfs drive as active so u must set it before u go to step 4. 4) boot osx dvd, go to disk utility, choose the unformatted partition and erase it to the osx filesystem (HFS+ with journaling) 5) proceed with osx install as normal, when u boot up you will get the darwin loader and osx will be default but if u hit f8 at the boot loader you can choose the windows partition and it should boot fine now. Modify the steps if u have a different partition plan but jus remember that they have to be installed on primary partitions, xp has to be the first partition on the drive to be happy and the osx partition needs to be the active partition. (must be DOS/windows active, osx "startup disk" will not work afaik) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macuser9214 Posted September 23, 2006 Share Posted September 23, 2006 Do this: IT WORKED!!!!!!!! Boot the OSX86 DVD Click Utilities at the top, and select startup disk. Click OS X 10.X.X and click restart! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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