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How to dual boot OS X and Vista when you're running PC_EFI?


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So I've built my new Hack Pro. The problem manifested itself after about a month so I can't return it and it's not too big an issue.

I have two HD's, dual 500s. Not RAIDed anymore. One's Vista, and Time Machine, the other's OS X Kalyway. Usually I change disk boot priority in the BIOS to choose which OS to boot, BUT my mobo bug is that when I change the boot priority, the mobo hangs unless I plug it out of power for two minutes.

A work around for this would be using a bootloader. As Vista and OS X are on two separate disks, I can't use Darwin. How can I dual boot (which bootloader to use) which will also maintain my PC_EFI functionality?

If I set a new entry in the Vista bootloader, will my computer boot OS X at all seeing as I'm using the stock kernel?

 

Cheers

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I woudl like to know the same thing.... I am running an hp laptop 9540 with dual sata drives.

I have vista on the disk0 (c:) and osx on disk1(technically the d: drive I guess)

 

I can boot vista just fine, but when I want to boot osx I need to swap the drives out with each other... easybcd does not work for this at all...it just spits up an error about not finding a file. something like /nst/mbr/somethingmac.mbr

 

none of these guides really address installing osx and vista on to two separate drives

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I don't get that option. Just the same disk options which isn't of any use to me as my Vista is dev/rdisk1 and OS X (with Darwin) is on dev/rdisk0. I'd LOVE to use Darwin but I can't unfortunately. Thanks for your suggestion though.

Tried using EasyBCD or whatever it's called.

 

Cheers

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It took me a few guides to figure out how to boot my leopard installation... unlike Tiger, after the first (post-install) boot I couldn't get it to boot up again (using Vista bootloader and EasyBCD set to boot Mac X86)... I then got a hold of the iAtkios install which includes a utility called "Darwin_bootloader" that you keyed in a few commands which isntalls the bootloader to your install partition. I then used a seperate (kalyway) install disk to finish the install... For some reason or another, Vista occassionally doesn't boot (if installed on the same drive as Mac)... but it's easy to fix with the Vista install disk using diskpart and marking the Windows partition to active.. if that doesn't fix it, you have to use the Vista "repair my computer/startup" option and that patches things up. From there, I used EasyBCD to set the Vista bootloader to have a Mac OS X option (really easy) and now I can use it to boot Vista and I love that bootloader and have no complaints.

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I think your suggestion is for using the f8 takes into account if both os's are setup on the same drive..how would darwin know if vista is on the other drive?

 

Plus I think wahwahman89 like me probably has vista set on the primary disk (the first drive disk0) and osx on his other drive as I do.

 

If by switching around the drives so that osx were set to boot first how would it know that vista was there. unless you were to set seomthing up within osx so that it knows during darwin boot?

 

lhsonic, I think, aagain you are talking about installing on the same drive as opposed to TWO separate drives.

Using easybcd does not set it to boot off the D drive or disk1, i just get a vista error when I select OSX at the boot prompt.

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on PC_EFI GUID you can dual boot but only if the OSs are on the same disk. I have Vista disk 1 and OS X disk 0 which is why i cant use it.

 

one thing I'd like to have clarified:

 

on PC_EFI GUID...can you dual boot? or does it have to be MBR?

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mikeSSD, if you are running that all on one disk, then you need to eradicate the Vista and XP bootloaders and Darwin will do everything else for you. You'll be able to choose. If you're separating them on different disks, then as far as I understand now, you need to copy mach_kernel to each disk and partition and to choose (in Darwin), type:

rd=diskXsY

where X is your disk number and Y is your partition number. This is what I understand now, but I have not tested it as I've decided to delete that piece of s*** called Windows off my computer.

wahwahman89 and Mac OS X... and they lived happily ever after :)

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wahwahman89 I will try that, it sounds like it might work. I do agree on the "piece of s*** called Windows" part :D , but in my case I gotta keep it around for random stuff like my bigNG fan controller.

 

What I don't get though is that.. I read that if you have PC_EFI and GUID the only versions of windows you can run are x64, is that true?

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