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EFI booting thread

kinkadius

By kinkadius,
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Spanky Deluxe
Spanky Deluxe
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I really think my idea from the other thread will work since I'm pretty sure that everything Windows installs during the pre-reboot part of the install is simply generic drivers and so should include the drivers it needs to read the Vista DVD disk in the drive.

 

http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?s=...indpost&p=44681

 

I gave it some more thought and realised that what you'd ideally want to do is first install OS X leaving about 20 gigs of unpartitioned space and then connecting the drive via firewire to a PC like I said above and install Vista into the empty space with VMWare.

 

Spanky

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kinkadius
kinkadius
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Hello again...

Hey can you see the EFI Toolkit of intel?

I think that it have a complete BIOS implementation for loading with EFI, and a lot of programs too.

If it is true, this BIOS can be used to make a great step for booting BIOS systems too...

The files are on BINARY folder of this archive... I hopeful that will be useful...

 

toolkit download: http://developer.intel.com/technology/efi/agreetoolkit.htm

 

 

yes i see the efi tools folder. i'll have to poke around with that more

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jeffberg
jeffberg
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so wait.... what have we tried that has not worked

why was the vista install cd not in the drive when you pushed any key to boot from "cd"?

and have you tried putting the cd in there when you boot?

if not that have you tried doing the firewire drive thing yet?

 

im anxious to see whats happening.

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bofors
bofors
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I am wondering if this GUID Partition Table (GPT) stuff is an issue here or not:

 

Here is the reason to NOT booting into Win:

 

Shipping Intel-based Macintosh computers use Intel's new Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI)[17.1]. The partition scheme is GUID Partition Table (GPT)[17.2], part of the EFI standard. The default filesystem is still HFS+/Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and all other conventional Mac OS X filesystem formats are available, but they are now within GUID Partition Table (GPT) instead of Apple Partition Map (APM). Only a Mac OS X 10.4.4 (PowerPC) system (or newer) can read, but not boot from, a GPT disk. Conversely, a Mac OS X 10.4.4 (Intel) system (or newer) can read, but not boot from, an APM disk.

 

You have to make a GPT to boot from it.

 

_http://appleintelfaq.com/#10

 

There is a thread at ArsTechnica on related issues: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/fo.../m/843000827731

 

~~~~~~~

 

kinkadius have you made a GUID Partition Table (GPT) (or added your Vista partition to your pre-existing one)?

 

In your EFI "Shell" (by the way a real EFI shell is a command line, see Amit Singh's EFI overview) can you view your GPT? I can not tell for sure by the images you have posted.

Edited by bofors
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jeffberg
jeffberg
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Actually here is what I did by the moment – I prepared two 3.5" Diskette images which are to be used for EFI experiments on a normal (BIOS-enabled) PC. On starting up from any of those two diskettes they shall behave just as if you were at iMac (or any other computer with EFI-enabled mobo).

 

Thus we need just the 10.4.4 DVD-image to continue virtual experiments with Intel Macs dual-booting.

 

See the attached archives.

 

IA_32EMB.IMG.zip BIOS32.IMG.zip

 

EDIT: This man also did almost the same a bit earlier:

http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?s=...indpost&p=44775

 

you do realize this thread is about the opposite right. We are trying to get windows on the imac

you might want to create a new thread and see if someone will post their tiger install dvd that came with their imac

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Spanky Deluxe
Spanky Deluxe
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Yeah that's quite a few days old I'm afraid. We're really making progress now though. I don't think it'll take too long to get Vista fully working. I think its just a matter of understanding exactly how the efi file on the Vista CD works and the limitations of the iMac's efi file system support.

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PeteUD
PeteUD
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Doesn't your HD have to be formatted FAT32 before starting the installation? Or at least partition the drive to have a HFS+ volume for OSX and FAT32 for XP/Vista.

 

The new Intel iMac supports booting using Firewire Target Disk Mode and can't boot from USB2 drives. I wonder if you hold down the Option key while starting up gives the opportunity to select an installation of Vista on a Firewire HD.

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Azurael
Azurael
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Look; it's pretty clear that this is not possible at the moment. The EFI implementation in the iMac only supports GPT and APM partitioning schemes, since Apple had no reason to support the legacy MBR fromat used in PCs to date. The Windows Vista betas which are floating around at the moment only understand MBR and Windows Dynamic patition maps. Therefore, you have a 0% chance of booting current versions of Vista beta this way - even the fabled CSM couldn't get round this problem to boot Vista, XP or any other non-GPT supporting OS for that matter.

 

Later betas and the final release of Vista will have 'proper' EFI support and understand GPT hard disks.

Edited by Azurael
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echobucket
echobucket
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Look; it's pretty clear that this is not possible at the moment. The EFI implementation in the iMac only supports GPT and APM partitioning schemes, since Apple had no reason to support the legacy MBR fromat used in PCs to date. The Windows Vista betas which are floating around at the moment only understand MBR and Windows Dynamic patition maps. Therefore, you have a 0% chance of booting current versions of Vista beta this way - even the fabled CSM couldn't get round this problem to boot Vista, XP or any other non-GPT supporting OS for that matter.

 

Later betas and the final release of Vista will have 'proper' EFI support and understand GPT hard disks

 

Okay, speaking from much experience with Linux, Windows and Mac OSX...I can say this.

 

Since Windows doesn't understand GPT, this is a problem for Windows and Mac OS X co-existing

 

Unless the Mac OS X 10.4.4 can understand regular paritition tables, but this would probably take a hacked copy of 10.4.4 to do it.

 

However, it would be possible to have 2 drives hooked up to an iMac.

 

Get EFI to boot something like the Grub bootloader.

 

Grub can boot Windows off of the second drive partitioned with a normal PC partition table.

 

This SHOULD work for Windows XP as well as Vista.

 

Also, Grub can boot CD-ROMs. Which means once you install an EFI enabled version of grub on the system, it turns into your bootloader.

 

We need some linux gurus to get an iMac so they can experiment with this.

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Sudar
Sudar
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Look; it's pretty clear that this is not possible at the moment. The EFI implementation in the iMac only supports GPT and APM partitioning schemes, since Apple had no reason to support the legacy MBR fromat used in PCs to date. The Windows Vista betas which are floating around at the moment only understand MBR and Windows Dynamic patition maps. Therefore, you have a 0% chance of booting current versions of Vista beta this way - even the fabled CSM couldn't get round this problem to boot Vista, XP or any other non-GPT supporting OS for that matter.

 

Later betas and the final release of Vista will have 'proper' EFI support and understand GPT hard disks.

Well, despite I have said that I prefer to keep away from all this EFI theory until the time I am able to put my hands on the Intel-Mac's keyboard, I give you guys a couple of clues to dig for multi-boot info:

 

http://www.intel.com/technology/efi/help/m.../title_page.htm

 

http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServe...be9cf01033.mspx

 

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/GPT_FAQ.mspx

 

And also do not forget to check the attached file.

SBF21.doc.zip

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Cloudscout
Cloudscout
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I was going to wait until I could pick up a 20" iMac locally, but I may go buy a 17" just so I can start tinkering with this.

 

I suspect that attempts to do a "normal" install of Windows XP on an Intel iMac are going to be unsuccessful. The only way I could see this working would be with some kind of hybrid trickery as echobucket describes above.

 

At the risk of being redundant, I'll go over it again.

 

The iMac will only boot to a drive partitioned as GPT or APM and not the legacy MBR format.

 

32 bit versions of Windows cannot READ much less boot from a non-MBR hard disk.

 

This means that any solution is going to involve a boot loader on the GPT-partitioned internal drive or a kludge involving a USB key like kinkadius used.

 

This boot loader (be it grub, elilo, or maybe even a hacked version of the Vista boot loader) would then boot Windows from the external drive.

 

I don't have a copy of Vista right now so I can't look into the specifics of its boot methodology, but if it retains some of the legacy BOOT.INI system from NT-XP, it may be as simple as editing one file to point to the right ARC path.

 

I'm not terribly confident it will be that easy, though. I know that Itanium versions of Windows (XP and 2003) do not utilize the BOOT.INI file. Boot options are stored in NVRAM on those systems. To change the boot menu, you use the BOOTCFG utility which modifies the options stored in NVRAM.

 

I think the biggest question I have right now is whether or not Vista uses an NT/XP-style boot methodology or if it uses the same structure as Itanium versions of XP and 2003.

 

I recommend the following Microsoft documentation regarding the boot process for Itanium-based computers:

 

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documen...mc_str_xzrd.asp

 

See also, this concise description of the BOOTCFG.EXE utility and the NVRBOOT.EFI utility:

 

http://www.osronline.com/ddkx/ddtools/bootini_7p0z.htm

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munky
munky
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cloudscout: dont be a fool man, if you want a 20'', hold out for a 20'' !! there will always be time for tinkering :)

 

then again, im about to spend the best part of £600 on a new machine based on a Pentium D and X1600 graphics, and i dont even know if OSX will work, so who am i to be all sensible? :blink:

 

good thoughts on the boot process.

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settolo
settolo
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UDF is not supported, ACPI is not supported too and Vista needs them. Maybe, CSM can give us the possibility to install XP. There is some new machines that seems to be with EFI and Win XP (i.e. Dell inspiron).

 

I think we should find a way to load these modules into Apple's EFI.

 

Here we have another interesting site with an EFI version: http://www.tianocore.org/

 

I report here an idea of Yaniv in the comments at this post: http://nak.journalspace.com/?cmd=displayco...407&entryid=407

 

First , we have to downlaod the EFI_Shell from tianocore

and also the EDK, after we have to run this EFI-Shell maybe using the EFI Sample Implementation from Intel., booting up in the EFI interface, choose to load the efishell.efi from tianocore (see 2.4.1 from the UserGuide) then we will be in a real EFIShell where we can install / uninstall modules and drivers,

http://efi-shell.tianocore.org/files/docum...utputFinal2.pdf

here the EFIShell from tianocore UserGuide,

 

------------------FROM UserGUIDE

2.4.1 Invoking the EFI Shell

The EFI Shell is provided in two forms:

• As the built-in EFI Shell

• As an .efi image file of the EFI Shell

In the first form, the EFI Shell is built with the firmware and it can be a boot option. In the second form, the EFI Shell is provided as a file, which users can load and run using either of the following methods:

• Through the menus in the EFI boot manager (in EFI 1.10) or the Boot Maintenance Manager (in the Framework)

• By executing the file at the EFI Shell command prompt

----------------------

 

but i'm not sure about the process ..

i dont have a mactel to test ! but i'm sure that now with tianocore framework (that have source code of CSM; ACPI , also WinNT special drivers etc etc ..)

i m sure with this , and little develpoment , compilation , test etc ...

our dream will become real ! :blink:

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Spanky Deluxe
Spanky Deluxe
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I report here an idea of Yaniv in the comments at this post: http://nak.journalspace.com/?cmd=displayco...407&entryid=407

 

That sounds like a really good idea. It would be a far neater install if we didn't have to fiddle with the Windows Install disks at all and could simply run an EFI 'patch'. As long as we're only adding stuff to the EFI implementation and not actually changing anything then it shouldn't affect OS X's ability to run. I'm not sure if 10.4.4 reads anything from the EFI in regards to anti-piracy stuff.

 

 

Spanky

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Peabo
Peabo
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Posted

THis is what someone said on the MacNN forums:

 

"The key to running Vista or even WinXP is with a bootloader like GRUB. The way this works is that EFI will load GRUB, And GRUB will load any OS you have installed. To Install Windows, you will use GRUB to load the Windows Installer. GRUB works with BIOS and EFI and it is what BIOS or EFI loads first."

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