Darwin Bootloader Question

[iNinja]

Hi all--

I've had OS X installed for a couple weeks now, I love it, it's not fully usable, but it's great for doing work on. I also love the darwin bootloader. I have timeout and quiet boot disabled in the boot .plist so I go straight to picking my drive, but I was wondering if there is any way to set it so after the timeout it would go straight to booting my partition with windows XP instead of OS X? Any suggestions?

[nub]

which partition comes first?

[ipbrian]

I am also having this same trouble. Anyone know the answer?

[SnowHow]

There is a freeware bootloader called WinGrub. It is a GUI for Windows for the GRUB bootloader and can be used to dual boot Windows and OS X. You can download it here:

 

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=104188

 

and a good example guide is here:

 

http://grub4dos.sourceforge.net/wingrub.html

 

All you have to do is install it in XP, tell it where OS X is, and it does the rest for you. What it does is once you tell it where "X" is, it will put a small file on your C:\ drive ("grbldr"?) with a few bites of code so that Grub can pick it up and boot it. Then it will update the NT bootloader (boot.ini) with the correct entry.

 

It's really that simple. I prefer this method over the Darwin bootloader because it only takes a few minutes to set up and you're done.

 

Some harddrive location examples are:

 

hd0,0 = Primary drive, first partition (Usually Windows)

 

hd0,1 = Primary drive, second partition

 

hd1,0 = Second drive, first partition

 

hd1,1 = Second drive second partition

 

and so on.

 

As long as you don't mess with the entry in boot.ini that points to XP, you should be able to play with it untill you get it right. Just read the guide at the link above before you do anything and you will be dual booting before you know it.

 

Good Luck!

[bossjjd]

Will WinGrub work with Vista?

[Khid]

Does OS X see slower speeds using winGRUB than booting straight from the HDD instead of through XP?

[hecker]

It's simple: just change the timeout parameter of the bootloader by editing your /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist file.

 

This is what the file looks like:

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<key>Kernel</key>

<string>mach_kernel</string>

<key>Kernel Flags</key>

<string></string>

<key>Boot Graphics</key>

<string>Yes</string>

<key>Timeout</key>

<string>10</string>

<key>Quiet Boot</key>

<string>No</string>

</dict>

</plist>

 

See this great site for details: http://neonkoala.co.uk/content/view/33/34/

 

Cheers,

 

hecker

[cbmkgd]

Will WinGrub work with Vista?

wingrub is essentially grub4dos, and grub4dos is used in the (in)famous bios emulator... so, use grub4dos if in doubt (the 'win' portion is just the gui portion, haven't tried it in vista).

 

Does OS X see slower speeds using winGRUB than booting straight from the HDD instead of through XP?

No. It's just a boot loader. Just use the usual makeactive line in the grub menu list, and put no timer in the com.apple.boot.list, and osx should load without seeing the darwin menu.

 

But to answer iNinja's original post (from Feb 1!): no, darwin boot loader selects by default the os on the active partition, which is osx if using the 'pure' darwin loader method to boot all os'es. If one wants to use the chain0 method with ntldr bootloader, the darwin loader will show windows' active partition as default choice.

So if you want:

• Windows to be the default choice of boot,
  
• BUT also boot directly on OSX upon chosing it, without seeing another menu choice
  

you then need an alternative bootloader to be able to make the OSX partition temporarily active on the go: eg grub, acronis os selector, or others.