ricren Posted June 21, 2007 Share Posted June 21, 2007 Hi, The internal hard drive of my Hackintosh notebook is partitioned in 3. Two of them have Mac OS systems installed. I can choose which system to boot from the Darwin boot page and as usual, there's one of them that is the default system. Could anybody tell me how can I change the default system? In my real Mac I can do it from "startup system " panel, but in this case for same reason I can not see any system appearing in that panel. And Acronis OS director only see the default one. Thanks Ric Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Macshiba Posted June 21, 2007 Share Posted June 21, 2007 If you have a Vista disk you can go into repair system and then cmd and list partition and choose the one you want to be active. Or you can probably fdisk it that way too, Im not sure though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roxen Posted June 21, 2007 Share Posted June 21, 2007 if you want to change the default boot partition on drive 0 (the first disk) use these (case sensitive) commands in terminal. 'sudo FDISK -e /dev/rdisk0' (or /dev/rdisk1 etc.) 'h' will show the Command help list 'm' will show the manual ('q' to return to FDISK) 'p' will show the partitions where * marks the boot partition 'f 2' will flag partition 2 as boot partition. 'q' to quit and 'y' to save Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ricren Posted June 22, 2007 Author Share Posted June 22, 2007 thanks a lot for your answer. However, following this procedure fails to make it active. This is a copy of the terminal log: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Last login: Thu Jun 21 21:08:10 on console Welcome to Darwin! Pipa:~ ricren$ sudo FDISK -e /dev/rdisk0 Password: Enter 'help' for information fdisk: 1> p Disk: /dev/rdisk0 geometry: 12161/255/63 [195371568 sectors] Offset: 0 Signature: 0xAA55 Starting Ending #: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [ start - size] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1: 0B 0 1 1 - 1023 32 57 [ 63 - 31457280] Win95 FAT-32 *2: AF 1023 32 58 - 1023 139 63 [ 31457343 - 20971572] HFS+ 3: AF 1023 140 1 - 1023 171 57 [ 52428915 - 31457280] HFS+ 4: 0B 1023 172 1 - 1023 254 63 [ 83886201 - 111480264] Win95 FAT-32 fdisk: 1> f 3 Partition 3 marked active. fdisk:*1> q Writing current MBR to disk. Device could not be accessed exclusively. A reboot will be needed for changes to take effect. OK? [n] y Pipa:~ ricren$ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When I reboot, the partition 2 keeps active. NO matter what. I wonder: Is there any place inside the system where I could edit this entry manually? thanks again Ric Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hagar Posted June 22, 2007 Share Posted June 22, 2007 Darwin essentially boots the first partition it finds, unless told otherwise at the f8 prompt.. the only method I have tried, which is both dubious & risky, but worked for me when I tested it, was to edit the partition table so the entries are in a different order to their order on-disk, making a different one "first". I don't recommend this, unless you're experimenting on a fully backed up & semi-expendable system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ricren Posted June 22, 2007 Author Share Posted June 22, 2007 Interesting. How do you edit the partition table? If it's necessary I could boot on XP and try a windoze utility.Partition magic? Acronis disk director? thanks Ric Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CK Lee Posted June 22, 2007 Share Posted June 22, 2007 Some boot manager programe can allow you to change the order of partition. The one I use is Bootstar but you cannot use it to boot OSX Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ricren Posted June 22, 2007 Author Share Posted June 22, 2007 I wonder, if Darwin essentially boots the first partition it finds, what happens if I erase the OS installation in partition 2, do you think it would go and automatically boot from partition 3 instead? Or it will just stay saying that it can not find a valid OS in partition 2? Any commentaries appreciated. I'm feed up of having to choose partition 3 manually at boot time. thanks Ric Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coreduo0099 Posted September 30, 2008 Share Posted September 30, 2008 thanks a lot for your answer. However, following this procedure fails to make it active. This is a copy of the terminal log:---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Last login: Thu Jun 21 21:08:10 on console Welcome to Darwin! Pipa:~ ricren$ sudo FDISK -e /dev/rdisk0 Password: Enter 'help' for information fdisk: 1> p Disk: /dev/rdisk0 geometry: 12161/255/63 [195371568 sectors] Offset: 0 Signature: 0xAA55 Starting Ending #: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [ start - size] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1: 0B 0 1 1 - 1023 32 57 [ 63 - 31457280] Win95 FAT-32 *2: AF 1023 32 58 - 1023 139 63 [ 31457343 - 20971572] HFS+ 3: AF 1023 140 1 - 1023 171 57 [ 52428915 - 31457280] HFS+ 4: 0B 1023 172 1 - 1023 254 63 [ 83886201 - 111480264] Win95 FAT-32 fdisk: 1> f 3 Partition 3 marked active. fdisk:*1> q Writing current MBR to disk. Device could not be accessed exclusively. A reboot will be needed for changes to take effect. OK? [n] y Pipa:~ ricren$ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When I reboot, the partition 2 keeps active. NO matter what. I wonder: Is there any place inside the system where I could edit this entry manually? thanks again Ric It looks like you tried running FDISK from the same physical drive you booted from. note the line "Device could not be accessed exclusively." Try booting off of another physical drive and running FDISK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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