The Official Dual Booting Thread

[xandiztxu]

I get it working buy this way

Installed OSX, Than After Installed Windows, and than installed OSX again.

 

It worked, and have to add something on a file boot.plist something like that u find in that topic!

[RAF2]

I'm using triple boot here.

 

1 -I first had Windows 2000 installed (single boot).

2- Made a 6 GB partition with Partition Magic for Linux install.

3- I installed Ubuntu 6.06 and let it boot manage with GRUB. (dual boot)

4- Back to Partition Magic, another 6 GB FAT32 partition, this time for Mac OS X.

5- Got the chain0 file, put it on C:\ and edited the boot.ini accordingly.

6- Then I installed Mac OS X to the new 6 GB partition. (now triple boot)

6a- Currently I'm loading Mac OS X through the chain0 method (Select "Windows 2000" in GRUB, then "MacOS X")

6b- Made a new entry in GRUB menu for MacOS X, now I'm trying to make GRUB load Mac OS X so I wouldn't need to choose Windows 2000 for loading MacOS X. So far no luck. :/

[fyi]

Most of you might have already read Some Desi's "HowTo: Dual boot Mac OS X86 and Win XP" which introduces dual boot Mac OSX86 and Windows by including Chain0 in Boot.ini.

 

But if you try to boot Mac OSX86 10.4.6 from the NTLDR menu of Windows x32/x64, you might get "HFS+ partition error." That's because the boot sector, created by installing from the Mac OSX86 10.4.6 DVD, expects to receive some parameters sent by the Window's MBR. To be more specific, the OSX86's boot sector should be run right after executing the following instruction code within the Win2K/XP's MBR (Master Boot Record):

0694: 8BFC	   mov	 di,sp
0696: 1E		 push	ds
0697: 57		 push	di
0698: 8BF5	   mov	 si,bp
069A: CB		 retf	; jump to 0:7c00

ds:[si] should point to the active partition entry (OSX86 or Windows) in memory, usually located at 0:[0x7be] which is the first entry. Besides, CPU register "dl" should contain "Drive no." which is "0x80" if booting from the first harddrive.

 

The Mac OSX86 10.4.6 boot sector entry point:

7C00: FA		 cli
7C01: 31C0	   xor	 ax,ax
7C03: 8ED0	   mov	 ss,ax
7C05: BCF0FF	 mov	 sp,0FFF0
7C08: FB		 sti
7C09: 8EC0	   mov	 es,ax
7C0B: 8ED8	   mov	 ds,ax
7C0D: 6631C0	 xor	 eax,eax
7C10: 66A300E4   mov	 [0E400],eax
7C14: 807C04AF   cmp	 b,[si][00004],0AF	; 10.4.6 only boots up HFS+ (0xAF)
7C18: 7503	   jne	 000007C1D
7C1A: E90900	 jmp	 000007C26

Normally, if the OSX86 is the active partition, it should run fine. The MBR passes control directly to OSX86's boot sector which loads the bootloader. The bootloader then loads the OSX86 kernel.

 

What if the Windows x32/x64 becomes the active partition? The MBR passes control to NTLDR (NT loader) which shows the boot menu. When Mac OSX86 is selected, control is passed to Chain0 and Chain0 loads the OSX86's boot sector. Because Chain0 doesn't follow the rule defined by Win2K/XP's MBR to properly set up the "si" and "dl" CPU registers, that's why you'll get "HFS+ partition error."

 

The simpliest way to overcome this, is to let NTLDR load a copy of the MBR image in which the active partition is set to Mac OSX86. This MBR image replaces Chain0 or the OSX86 Boot Sector image submitted in the Boot.ini. You can run Windows Support Tools "DskProbe" included in Windows Installation CD to do this. When you think everything is set, here comes the second issue. When you select Mac OSX86 from the NTLDR menu, you'll keep bumping into the same menu again and again. Why? It's because the Mac OSX86 bootloader loads the MBR again to verify the real active partition entry and dump the one which was fed to it. That's why you'll need some other kind of partition manager which can dynamically set up any one of the four pasrtition entries as active and modifies the MBR physically. Note: the free partition manager "SPFDisk 2K3R" doesn't fully comply with the Windows MBR.

 

Windows XP SP2 Support Tools for Advanced Users

 

Besideds installing another partition manager, I decided to modify MBR instead. Let MBR load Window's boot sector no matter what active partition is and physically set Mac OSX86 partition as active. It's OK with Windows because NTLDR doesn't reload the MBR once it has been loaded into memory.

 

To proceed, you have to make sure that the MBR was created by Windows 2K/XP. Run DskProbe to save a copy of the current MBR and compare it with Win2k Master Boot Record (MBR) Revealed! Or you can simply open the Windows Recovery Console by booting from the Installation CD and run "fixmbr" to restore Window's MBR. Don't worry. It only changes the binary codes in the MBR without affecting the partition table.

 

Suppose you have saved two copies of the MBR image and name them "Sector00.dsk" and "Chain0.dsk"

 

Open Notepad and created a script file "MBR-XP.txt" like this:

a 118

jmp 280

 

a 280

rep movsb

mov byte ptr [7be],80

mov byte ptr [7ce],0

mov byte ptr [7de],0

mov byte ptr [7ee],0

retf

 

e 2be 0

e 2ce 80

e 2de 0

e 2ee 0

 

w

q

(append at lease one blank line)

Open Notepad and created a script file "MBR-OSX.txt" like this:

a 118

rep movsb

retf

 

f 280 l20 0

 

e 2be 0

e 2ce 80

e 2de 0

e 2ee 0

 

w

q

(append at lease one blank line)

In the above example, Windows is the first partition and Mac OSX86 is second.

 

Put "Sector00.dsk", "Chain0.dsk", "MBR-XP.txt" and "MBR-OSX.txt" together under C:\

 

Now open a DOS command prompt window by runing "cmd"

 

Copy and paste the following command into the command windows.

cd \

 

debug Sector00.dsk <MBR-XP.txt

 

debug Chain0.dsk <MBR-OSX.txt

Run DskProbe to write Sector00.dsk to PhysicalDrive0 Sector 0 where MBR resides.

 

Modify Boot.ini. Append with

c:\Chain0.dsk="Mac OS X86"

Now you can reboot and enjoy dual booting Mac OSX86 with Windows. From the above example, you can also do a triple boot. The OS limit is four as retricted by the partition table entries. But there's no limit to open floppy images.

[xandiztxu]

Good tutorial, but if MAC OS X is in the first partion and windows on second?

[fyi]

Open Notepad and created a script file "MBR-XP.txt" like this:

a 118

jmp 280

 

a 280

rep movsb

mov byte ptr [7be],0

mov byte ptr [7ce],80

mov byte ptr [7de],0

mov byte ptr [7ee],0

retf

 

e 2be 80

e 2ce 0

e 2de 0

e 2ee 0

 

w

q

(append at lease one blank line)

Open Notepad and created a script file "MBR-OSX.txt" like this:

a 118

rep movsb

retf

 

f 280 l20 0

 

e 2be 80

e 2ce 0

e 2de 0

e 2ee 0

 

w

q

(append at lease one blank line)

In the above example, Mac OSX86 is the first partition and Windows is second.

 

The hard part is to handle DskProbe. Run it with care.

 

BTW, this method only works with dual booting on generic PC, not Mac.

[Boopop]

Is there actually a way to install OSX on a preprepared partition? Last time I did it, it wiped the whole hard disk. I think the closest thing to "leave partition" i could get on the OSX partition manager was "Free space", although I can't remember....

 

EDIT: Also, I tend to use Acronis Disk Suite for my Dual boot. It's installed and configured via windows XP which I use a lot more than OSX. Added to this I know how to get back to windows with the WindowsXP disc if anything goes wrong, with the mbr or boot order.

 

Scripts and such scare me >.< Normally I just copy and paste and edit things a little, so this is much easier for me.

[RAF2]

Hi,

 

Nice tutorial.

 

Is it possible to have such one using GRUB? Maybe by editing Grub's menu.lst? I tried with several commands, but it doesn't work, GRUB doesn't load the MacOS X boot system. :/

 

So, I'm using Windows + chain0 method.

[RAF2]

Is there actually a way to install OSX on a preprepared partition? Last time I did it, it wiped the whole hard disk. I think the closest thing to "leave partition" i could get on the OSX partition manager was "Free space", although I can't remember....

 

EDIT: Also, I tend to use Acronis Disk Suite for my Dual boot. It's installed and configured via windows XP which I use a lot more than OSX. Added to this I know how to get back to windows with the WindowsXP disc if anything goes wrong, with the mbr or boot order.

 

Scripts and such scare me >.< Normally I just copy and paste and edit things a little, so this is much easier for me.

 

 

You could use a dedicated partitioning tool (Partition Magic 8, for example) to make a Mac OS X partition and format it as FAT32 (which Mac OS X can read), then during the installation you select this partition to have the system installed.

[fyi]

To explain the Debug patch scripts I made, "MBR-XP.txt", for example:

a 118 ; tell Debug to start assembly codes at 0x118

jmp 280

To make more room for the necessary codes, I move two instructions starting at 0x118 (3 bytes) to 0x280.

a 280 ; tell Debug to start assembly codes at 0x280

rep movsb ; code moved from 0x118

mov byte ptr [7be],80 ; modify the partition table in memory

mov byte ptr [7ce],0

mov byte ptr [7de],0

mov byte ptr [7ee],0

retf ; code moved from 0x11a

I then insert four "mov" instructions to force the first partition entry as "active (80)" and clear the rest. The partition table is modified in memory, not physically, so this is why the first partition (WinXP) is always loaded.

e 2be 0

e 2ce 80 ; physically set second partition active to fool OSX86

e 2de 0

e 2ee 0

Because "Sector00.dsk" is going to physically replace the MBR in the harddrive, to let Mac OSX86 resided in second partition think that it's the "active" partition, I mark the second partition entry (0x2ce) as "active (80)." The OSX86's bootloader shall see this when it reloads the MBR.

 

To apply the trick, for example, to boot Mac OSX86 in the second partition, I modify "MBR-OSX.dsk"; restore the original codes at 0x118 and mark the second entry (0x2ce) as "active (80)." When NTLDR loads "MBR-OSX.dsk", the process is very similar to BIOS boots.

 

To boot the third partition, simply make a copy of "MBR-OSX.txt"; put an "80" at "0x2de" and reset the others. I'm not sure if this worked with Linux because OSX86 already became the active partition in the MBR.

[dmfunk]

Hello people who know much more than me in regards to dual booting.

 

I have a question that has been bugging the {censored} out of me. If I were to buy a Macbook/Macbook pro, would I be able to install windows on an external hard drive (usb/firewire) and boot from it (using bootcamp I assume) whenever I wanted to use my xp apps? If so, how? If not, why? If I'm posting this in the wrong place, tell me?

[willgonz]

Here's what I am looking for:

I have OS X and other OSes on other drives. I would like to use a boot manager that will just boot the drive. Sort of like the one that some bioses use. I would like to boot from a USB thumb drive by default as set in my BIOS. The boot menu will reside on the thumb drive and not install stuff on the drive partitions.

 

Any ideas/recommendations?

[fyi]

The best multi-boot solution, Free Partition Manager - SPFDisk.

[writedoc]

I'm having problems getting my OS X 10.4.6 booting properly. Here's what I've done:

 

1. Using the GParted program, I created 12.5gigs of unallocated space and parititoned it with the primary tag.

2. Loaded up the 10.4.6 DVD, formatted the partitioned space with the Erase option off of the DVD installer, and installed, choosing the patches in the customize option.

3. At this point, I would try to restart my computer, and get an "Error loading operating system." However, I got past this by reinstalling windows XP again.

4. I then got the chain0 thing, and editted my boot.ini properly.

5. Restart, up comes the two options. Choosing XP boots it up perfectly. When I choose Mac OS X, it starts loading a bunch of stuff, goes black for a split second, and an "unresolved kernel trap" and a panic thing happens, and everything just pauses (i have to push the power button on the comp in in order to turn it off and restart)

 

The error message I get at this point contains a cpu0 caller 0x0019C352, CPU 0, Type 0=divide error.

 

So far, I haven't been able to find a fix for it (or any Google results that pop up are in some foreign language I don't understand).

 

Right now, I'm trying to reinstall again on a newly partitioned space with more space, but I don't have much hope, hehe.

 

Anyone know a fix for this?

 

I'm running a Dell Dimension XPS Gen 5, with 2 gigs of RAM. I have 150GB harddrive with about 20 gigs of free space (not including the 17 gigs i allocated for the OSX).

 

Any help is appreciated

[Nalgon]

Hi Lads, a noob here and after reading loads of ways to dual booting I decide to choose the chain0 way.

This is what I did:

 

copy chain0 to c:

edit the boot.ini adding the c:\CHAIN0="Apple Mac OS X x86"

reboot

 

Sorted, I got the dual boot and test it a few times yaiiii , that was last night. Today woke up turn on pc and wadaaa

surprise mate, no boot menu instead a blo :censored2: message saying:

 

Boot from CD:

Disk Boot Failure, Insert System Disk And Press Enter

 

WTF :censored2: happen here?????

 

So, After thinking a bit I decided to boot with the macos intall dvd and it loaded the macos.

Tried the same with the XP install cd and no luck there. :censored2:

 

So if ne got ne ideas on how to fix this issue they're more than welcome.

 

I'm using macos 10.4.1 Marklar installation dvd

 

Now I have some other issues here.

 

2. Trying to reboot mac os and it hangs up, no rebooting here, only way with reset button, I tried to fix the

mach_kernel with hex workshop changing the offset 0x8d2b8 with b0fee664, but then I "late" read that this

fix is for 10.4.4 so it didn't work.

 

3. Trying to update to 10.4.3 and because I can't reboot, after installing the update it requires to reboot so it just hangs up

and after the "reset button" it says macos 10.4.1, so I don't know if I'm doing something wrong.

 

4. Got the 10.4.5 update myzar or something like that and the jas 10.4.6 but don't know how to install it yet I just read that you cant install 10.4.6 direct from 10.4.1 to 10.4.6,

haven't found a tut yet, and with the reboot issue well I think I'll happen the same.

 

My system specs

MOBO: Abit AI7

Procesor: Pentium 4 3.2gh (ss2 i believe hehe havent found out yet, as soon as able to boot xp I'll find out, but macos says ss2)

VC: ASUS ATI 9800xt 256(agp)

Ram: Corsair 512

HD1: WD 160gb SATA (XP)

HD2: Maxtor 20gb ATA (MACOSx)10.4.1

HD3: WD 160gb SATA (files)

DVD-RW: Lite-On 16x 4x

Mouse: Logitech MX900 bluetooth

Keyboard: HP

 

If ne 1 can put me In the correct path to find patches and solutions for this issues & hardware you'll be a legend.

 

Cheers Lads

[fyi]

SPFDisk is compatible with 32-bit Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X. Why are you still struggling with chain0? First of all, make sure the OSX is working properly while HFS+ partition set active and then continue to install SPFDisk Boot Manager into MBR.

[Luke Beale]

Hey i've dual booted my mates HP dv1000 laptop (he wasn't ready to let go of windows lol)

 

I also tried dual booting on my own Hackintosh but gave up because i couldn't get the whole CHAIN0 thing working.

 

Knowing this I still tried it on my mates laptop and as before couldn't get dual boot working. No great problem i thought, i could still get into windows using the Start Up Disk Utility in mac and using the Install DVD to get back into Mac - so i left it.

 

I then turned my attention to the problem most people seem to be having with laptops, needing two scrrens to succesfully boot.

 

While trying to fix this i booted up the mac F8 menu to add some kernel flags. To my suprise it had two OSes listed, OSX and Windows! All i did then was edit my boot preferences to automatically hang at the F8 menu for 8 seconds.

 

Now if i want Windows I press a key, up then enter. If i want Mac press a key then enter (so double tap enter!) and attach my svideo screen ofcourse lol.

 

If anyone wants anymore info bout this feel free to PM. Also if anyone knows how to make my laptop screen the primary display or even remove the need for a second monitor feel FREEER to PM me lol.

[Georgiles]

let us know in this thread how you did it! ...Share your experience here.

 

 

 

I have to reinstall. For some reason the MAC os does not recognize partition bigger than 128 Gb, so I recommend to not make the partition bigger. I have 2 ata hdd maxton and western Digital, both 250 Gb, both where recognized as 128 Gb.

 

Right now I'm preparing to reinstall.

[silverbullit]

Has anyone tried to dualboot vista and os x. Im going to use the disk utility to make os x primary. Let it boot of of that then later select vista. Hopes it works. Keep you posted.

[booter]

i am new to this so plz don't flame

 

i have everything ready to install this but i had a question, when i duel boot, will it erase all the information already on my XP hard drive? i made a new partition for OSx86 and everything but i want to make sure first. and what is the full procedure to duel boot XP and OSx86 because i cant seem to find a good guide so i was hoping that you could help...

 

thanks in advance

~booter

[skfjjwbwv]

I'm not sure if this is the best place to put this, but I thought I'd give my own experiences trying to get a dual boot system to work. I had problems with getting the OSX side to boot and I followed lots of guides and tried loads of things that were suggested. But in the end I discovered it was my partitioning program that had caused the problem. And not an obvious one, either. It had just used the next slot in the partition table to put the data for my new OSX partition. Now this slot was at the end of the table, after my extended/logical partitions, even though the new partition was a primary partition directly after the first primary partition (on the disk). Not many partitioning programs let you see the actual partition table in its listing order (they show you fancy graphical views or sort the list). With hindsight, I should have noticed that the installer was referring to my partition as "disk0s4", meaning it was slice 4 on the disk rather than slice 2 like I was expecting (with slice 1 being my XP partition).

 

In the end I fixed this manually using fdisk (by chance, the Mac OS X install disk actually helped me boot one of my attempts at a bootable OSX install so I used the OS X version of fdisk!). This is the rather raw Unix fdisk, and I'm not sure if there's a Windows equivalent out there (one that shows you the partition table properly, and also lets you edit it). Anyway, if you think you've got everything right but you still can't boot OSX, this might be something to investigate. One way to get a clean partition table in the correct order is to back up your partitions, completely wipe the disk, then restore your partitions back in the appropriate order.

 

The other thing that I found to be critical was setting the new OSX partition to be the Active one when booting from the Mac OS X install disk and doing the install. I also followed other advice given here and did an Erase on my new partition from the Disk Utility at the first main installer prompt, then rebooted and installed to this clean partition. Of course, you then need access to a utility to put your XP partition back as the Active one (then use the chain0 and boot.ini on XP to give a boot menu).

 

Anyway, just my experience with the frustrating chain0 and partitioning programs.

[stargatefan]

After about two days of trying i finally got a quad boot up and running. Mandrake Linux, OSX, WinXp, and Vista!!! Vista is the only one that can't find my network adapter stupid drivers are messed up. I am so relieved i gave up so may times but something told me i could do it. Grub is the best bootloader IMO

[Andrew Syn]

Has anyone tried to dualboot vista and os x. Im going to use the disk utility to make os x primary. Let it boot of of that then later select vista. Hopes it works. Keep you posted.

 

So... did you make it work?

 

I don't have Win XP installed on the laptop I'm trying this, as I only installed Mac OS and Vista... but, I'm reading there isn't even any boot.ini, so I really don't know where to go.

 

Any help is appreciated.

[fyi]

Anyway, just my experience with the frustrating chain0 and partitioning programs.

What's the world record of booting multiple OSes from multiple harddrives? Why keep letting limited CHAIN0 frustrating you? Running SPFDisk under pure DOS might not be easy for any beginner because you have to get a working good old DOS first. But, it's definitely easier than making chain0 to work. Go checking the free SPFdisk here. Oh, by the way, SPFDisk supports booting up to 15 partitions. Though it's definitely not the champion of multi-booting but that would be more than just enough.

[evgenisco]

Sure I have chain0 file in my WinXP disk (that it is a RAID/SATA setup) and the Mac OS X Disk in the PATA channel, and it loads perfectly.

 

 

 

Man, i have a similar setup for storage (software intel raid/sata drives for windows) and i want to add osx86 on separate ata drive. i need to know if the osx86 can read data from the raid/sata windows drives.

Thank you.

[private]

Oh Nooo!

I've installed Vista and now I lost OsX86.

At the startup the message 'HFS+ error'....