OS X, Vista, GRUB and X200 chipset...

[squimmy]

Hello,

 

For the last god knows how long I've been failing to get OS X to work. I want to kill myself i've been trying so hard.

 

My current situation: Thanks to a vmware install under an old XP installation, i'm pretty sure i've got OS X installed, but I can't boot it. GRUB is being a real pain in the ass and simply refuses to boot it(error 13 anybody?). Macdrive doesn't work on my Vista at all, so I can't copy the Chain0 from there and boot it with the Windows bootloader. I have no idea how to boot it.

 

My specs: Here... but with: An ATi X800 GTO2 video card and an extra hard drive.

 

Any help would be appreciated beyond belief. I have put so much effort into this... and completely broken my comps bootup about 5 times now.

Edited February 11, 2007 by squimmy

[sadiekiller]

you can get chain0 from the inernet. there are really long guides on how to boot via Vista boot loader. i got mine to work just fine that way.

[squimmy]

Thanks, a quick search led me to a chain0 file. Unfortunately though I can't find any guides for how to do it - on this forum they are mainly using OS Selector.

 

Can you link me to any guides?

 

Thanks.

[hoyanf]

Thanks, a quick search led me to a chain0 file. Unfortunately though I can't find any guides for how to do it - on this forum they are mainly using OS Selector.

 

Can you link me to any guides?

 

Thanks.

 

squimmy wuts ur partition/installation setup like ??

 

for grub config as below :-

 

title Mac OSX86

root (hdx,x)

makeactive

chainloader +1

boot

 

title Windows

rootnoverify (hdx,x)

chainloader +1

boot

 

title Linux

root (hdx,x)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz

initrd /boot/initrd

boot

 

hope helps

[cbmkgd]

Thanks, a quick search led me to a chain0 file.

The chain0 is simply on the root of your install DVD.

 

Previous post has good grub structure (except it doesn't need the boot lines after each options).

 

Here are examples in the osx86 wiki.

[squimmy]

Agh, you see at every single point I face another problem. Not ONE easy situation, now I'm faced with:

 

Error 18

 

It occurs just after it says GRUB loading stage 2.

 

Please help! PLEASE!

[JaTiN]

Try acronis,

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=11339

[squimmy]

I will not use OS Selector - I am deathly afraid of it. Why?

 

For a start it's very unstable, it really very rarely doesn't error out on me.

Secondly, it almost completely recked my pc. It decided to take everything from the Windows, Program Files and Documents and Settings directorys and move them to a VERY VERY hidden directory called BOOTWIZ. This of course stopped windows from starting and sent me into a panic that all my work had been lost. It was only complete luck that I found this directory after I installed Vista.

 

So, i'm not exactly on "speaking terms" with OS Selector. Or any acronis products.

[squimmy]

I think I know my problem.... my OS X partition is after an extended Linux partition. From what I can read, that ain't gonna work. The thing is I don't know how I can fix this as I can't afford to delete my Linux partition.

 

So, I need a way to move OS X to the front of my drive without deleting anything ... ... ... ... possible?

[cbmkgd]

I will not use OS Selector (...) For a start it's very unstable, it really very rarely doesn't error out on me.

Secondly, it almost completely recked my pc. It decided to take everything from the Windows, Program Files and Documents and Settings directorys and move them to a VERY VERY hidden directory called BOOTWIZ. (...)

bootwiz is simply hidden, not very very... Anyways, it's true that some have problems with it. I had some problems with it at first, but never after I installed it in a non-system fat32 partition.

But in any case, with vista's, windows' and osx's bootloaders, and especially GRUB for those who have linux, aoss isn't necessary at all.

 

my OS X partition is after an extended Linux partition (...) that ain't gonna work

True. There are some partitioning tools that you can use to move partitions around, if you want to go that route: disk director (acronis ), partition magic, etc. But you might have also to make sure that in the partition table itself osx's partition is before the extended.

(I once managed, as a test, to install osx after the extended partition and make it work by playing with the order of the partition in the partition table...)

Anyway, try it just by moving the partitions around, not minding my above commentary, or reinstalling osx at a proper place. I've moved osx partitions before with DiskDirector (and created and restored also with TrueImage) without any problems.

 

Of course, BACKUP anything important beforehand, in case of problems (murphy's law)...

Edited February 12, 2007 by cbmkgd

[squimmy]

Thanks for the reply. The thing with BOOTWIZ, was that even with "show hidden files", it didn't show itself. It was the only hidden folder not to show itself.

 

Anyway, right now I'm using vista, so disk director, partition magic don't work. This doesn't matter too much, as I've downloaded the Gparted live CD and that should do the job fine, right? But anyway,using Vista disk management, I've mistakenly deleted 60gb of data (luckily, it wasn't important data) and have moved the OS X partition to the other hard drive, after the Windows partition. Will this work better?

 

 

Thanks for the help!

[squimmy]

Ah {censored}... Gparted doesn't work with my mouse and Vista's disk management software refuses to create a partition out of the 61gb of unallocated space my one of my HDD's. So now I'm apparently 61gb's out...

 

I really need partitioning software for vista.

 

EDIT:: Ah {censored}...looks like I need to get Disk Director somehow working under vista to be able to edit any partitions on one of my HDDs...

Edited February 13, 2007 by squimmy

[cbmkgd]

Can you use diskpart from command line in vista?

 

As for bootwiz... all my bootwiz were visible after "show hidden files" was enabled. don't know what happened in your case.

Edited February 13, 2007 by cbmkgd

[squimmy]

This is what diskpart sees as "hard drive 1":

 

DISKPART> list partition

 Partition ###  Type			  Size	 Offset
 -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
 Partition 1	Primary			 25 GB  1024 KB
 Partition 0	Extended			87 GB	25 GB
 Partition 3	Logical		   1333 MB	25 GB
 Partition 2	Logical			 20 GB	27 GB

 

I want to get rid of that "Extended" partition. But how? I can't delete...

 

DISKPART> delete partition

Cannot delete a non-empty extended partition.

 

and I can't format either. So what can I do?

 

*regrets installing Vista*

 

Thanks.

[cbmkgd]

Can't delete extended partition as long as you have logicals into it.

 

What's the situation? What do you have in those logicals? Linux and its swap?

 

Anyways, the idea would be to use a partitioning tool from a bootable CD (eg DiskDirector or PartitionMagic from Hiren's BootCD) and moving the logical partitions toward the end of the extended (which I assume take all the rest of the space on the disk), then shrinking the extended partition to create usable space before it (and after your existing primary partition). All this will take some time, and will put your hd through some strain, so don't forget to backup.

 

Just a warning: if you create one or two other primary partitions in the space thus created, you'll have to rewrite the GRUB settings, since the partition numbers will have changed... Using a Live Linux CD/DVD will permit you to edit the menu.lst.

 

In any case, research this some more on your own, think about what you really want, then decide accordingly.

Edited February 14, 2007 by cbmkgd

[squimmy]

Well, thanks to Hiren's BootCd, I've seemingly created a FAT32 partition in the free space, which will do. So, after that mini-novel, I can not get back to the real issue. Installing OSX!

 

I've moved the FAT32 (af) partition to the other HDD, so now it's not after an extended partition. All I have to do is install it, which I can't do.

 

 

Under vista, Vmware 6 beta works....but very very very very slowly. Around 6 hours for an install. This is far too much time, and I can't devote that kind of time to it. So I need a image that will work natively but none of them do. I have no idea if it's my DVD drive or the x200 chipset, but something always stops them booting correctly. I really have no idea how i'm gonna get this installed.

[squimmy]

Shoot - in typical fashion I was able to boot a DVD natively.. Hurrah for that! Only to be shot down by the fact that it only detected one out of the two hard drives - the one i'm not installing on. Typically typical.

 

I'm going to download a different image - not as though it will make a difference. The god's of OS X really have it in for me.

[squimmy]

OS X can only detect one hard drive - the one with the extended partition. So I need to move it back to that partition but I'm going to be faced with the same problem.

 

Why does diskpart think that the 25gb partition (the one I want to install onto) is before the beginning of the extended partition? Could the GRUB errors i was facing before not be related to the extended partition?

[cbmkgd]

I'll quote myself from a previous post:

But you might have also to make sure that in the partition table itself osx's partition is before the extended.

Well, in post #14, where you have listed the partitions with diskpart, we can see that even though the 25G primary partition is physically before the extended (and its logical) partition; but nevertheless, in the partition table this primary comes after: the 25G primary is Partition 1, and extended is Partition 0.

That probably happened because you created that primary after the extended, and the editor you used didn't rearrange the partition order in the partition table.

 

A solution would be of course to edit directly the partition table just to change the partition number/order... but I wouldn't recommend it in general since you could screw up easily the reference to your partitions. If you nevertheless want to proceed that way, I'd suggest you google about it (i usually use the bootable cd of diskdirector and its disk edit function; there are other tools too if you don't like acronis). In any case, you'd have to backup that table (&mbr) just in case of a screw up.

 

Another way would be to backup the partitions, wipe the disk, created the primary partition, and then restore the extended/logical linux partitions (i suppose that's what they are).

 

As for the other drive not being detected, check the wiki hcl and/or the forum if there's any problem for OSX with the controller that drive is on (sata? ide?).