Jump to content
5 posts in this topic

Recommended Posts

Recently transition from ###### to Clover.
All work great on my raging Dell530 (with Quad-core Xeon E5450).
I can triple boot Snow-Leopard, Mavericks or Yosemite.
Really love the way clover does dynamic patching.
 
Decided to add a second drive that had the original Dell-installed Windows Vista.
 
Question for the community: Is it even possible to boot legacy Vista on the second drive using Clover ?
 
I ask because I cannot. I have searched and all topics discuss UEFI boot which is OK for Win7 and up.
Vista does not support UEFI boot.
And this good old Dell only has BIOS.
 
Clover GUI lists two new partitions after the Recovery HD partition.
The last one is called "Boot Windows from OS" (screenshot0):
 
When I hit enter, the screen clears to black and Clover windows badge is displayed but does not boot.
If I hit enter again, I see the Clover GUI again.
 
It just will not boot Vista.
 
Disk details are as shown:

OSX-YS-Pro:~ MacNB$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS OSX-SL                  803.3 GB   disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS OSX-MV                  153.3 GB   disk0s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS OSX-YS                  42.4 GB    disk0s4
   5:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s5

/dev/disk1

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *750.2 GB   disk1
   1:                 DOS_FAT_16 DellUtility             74.0 MB    disk1s1
   2:               Windows_NTFS RECOVERY                10.7 GB    disk1s2
   3:               Windows_NTFS OS                      739.3 GB   disk1s3

OSX-YS-Pro:~ MacNB$


OSX-YS-Pro:~ MacNB$ sudo fdisk440 /dev/disk1
Password:
Disk: /dev/disk1 geometry: 91201/255/63 [1465149168 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55

         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: 06    0   1   1 -    8 254  63 [        63 -     144522] DOS > 32MB  
 2: 07    9  13   5 - 1023 254  63 [    145408 -   20971520] NTFS        
*3: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [  21116928 - 1444028416] NTFS        
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused      
OSX-YS-Pro:~ MacNB$ 
 

FDISK shows that the 3rd partition is ACTIVE on the Vista drive (disk1).
 
Clover is installed on EFI partition on the OS X drive (disk0).
 
Config.plist attached.
debug.log attached.
 
If I boot from a Chameleon USB-stick, I can select the OS partition and it boots, but Clover does not.

 

Edit: I can boot Vista via the BIOS by hitting F12 and selecting the vista hdd.

screenshot0.bmp

MacNB-debug.log.zip

MacNB-config.plist.zip

MacNB-530-Generic.zip

Edited by MacNB
Updated Config.plist & DSDT.aml

UPDATE:

 

I solved the problem.

The answer to my own question is: YES you can boot legacy windows (non-UEFI) via Clover.

 

The problem was this :

<key>Legacy</key>
<string>LegacyBiosDefault</string>
<key>LegacyBiosDefaultEntry</key>
<integer>2</integer>

That config is for UEFI bios booting in legacy.

 

For BIOS-only boot (like my old system), I changed it to :

<key>Legacy</key>
<string>PBR</string>

That makes Vista boot.  :thumbsup_anim:

 

The only, small problem is that I cannot boot the small Windows Recovery partition.

When selected, there's an error "Missing BOOTMGR". Press Alt-Ctl-Del to restart.

Normally this recovery partition is entered via F8 during POST but that does not work (presumably because the windows drive is not drive 0).

I'm curious. Why would you use Vista for?

Good question.

 

Vista really is {censored}...takes couple of minutes to boot and 15 minutes after booting to get to a state of being able to do anything.

During this time, the  gui is totally unresponsive.

The HDD is ALWAYS thrashing away....then there are constant updates...blah...blah.

On the same kit, Yosemite boots within a minute and is literally ready for work. e.g. I can start Numbers App with a large spreadsheet and it loads almost instantaneously.

 

BUT it's the original windows OS that came with the system installed. 

 

It's the only one windows OS I "own"...everything else is OS X.

It's there in case I need to run certain Windows apps.

 

I bought FOUR copies of Snow Leopard for £80 and upgraded some to Mavericks and Yosemite for free.

I am loathed to buy ONE copy of windows upgrade for £80 to upgrade to Win 8.

Especially when I do not expect Win 8 to be any better as the architecture is fundamentally the same...awful.

 

I might upgrade to Win 10 if it's free.

×
×
  • Create New...