Darwin/X86 boot issue

[minchin]

Hi all,

I have search around the forum regarding dual booting Vista and Kalyway 10.5.1. I have successfully install Both, on disk0. Partition 1 is Vista and Partition 2 is OSX. I am using Vista bootloader, which is edited by EasyBCD 1.7.1 to add the macOSX boot entry (using nst_mac.mbr)

 

I have a Tyan S5396 based dual Xeon setup. My issue is that I can select MacOSX from Vista bootloader and Darwin will come up. However, my USB keyboard, cannot sent F8 to Darwin bootloader.... For some strange reason (probably my BIOS issue?) whiel Darwin is counting down, it won't recognize USB keyboard's key presses at all. Darwin will always boot the Active partition, which sends me back to Vista bootloader again (becoming a loop)... I have to attach a PS2 keyboard in order to press F8 to boot into OSX. Once F8 is pressed on the PS2 keyboard, arrow keys (for selecting OS) and other keys (for enter e.g -v -s etc) on the USB keyboard works just fine. I am pretty sure that the keyboard is a good one because Vista bootloader can see arrow key (up/down) and F8 works in Vista bootloader.

 

So I thought, okay, I will just edit com.apple.Boot.plist. I added Kernel Flags rd=disk0s2. but that didn't seem to help at all... it will always boot back to Vista bootloader unless I press F8 on the PS2 keyboard to manually select. When I do that, OSX is listed as in: HDD(0,2) OSX.

 

I think this maybe specific to the motherboard BIOS that I have that resulted in the Darwin/X86 bootloader not seeing any key presses while it is counting down from USB port. My questions are:

 

1. Are all the various distribution using the same Darwin bootloader? (So say if I switch to use IAKTOS, would I see the same issue?)

2. Is there a way to bypass Darwin/X86 bootloader and use an alternative bootloader to boot Leopard?

 

Other suggestions?

 

Much appreciate your input.

Min

[Coadey]

I've never used Vista or EasyBCD, but does the Darwin bootloader see your Windows partition?

 

Try adding this to /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist

 

<key>Timeout</key>

<string>10</string>

<key>Quiet Boot</key>

<string>No</string>

 

If the Darwin bootloader can see/boot Vista, I'd just change the active partition to OS X and see if Vista works.

[minchin]

I've never used Vista or EasyBCD, but does the Darwin bootloader see your Windows partition?

 

Try adding this to /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist

 

<key>Timeout</key>

<string>10</string>

<key>Quiet Boot</key>

<string>No</string>

 

If the Darwin bootloader can see/boot Vista, I'd just change the active partition to OS X and see if Vista works.

 

Darwin bootloader does see the plist file. I know that because each time I update plist, I would change the Timeout just to make sure that the bootloader is reading it. I have tried to used "rd=disk0s1", which actually got Darwin to boot into VISTA. So I know the part disk0sX is the correct physical disk and that the "Kernel Flags" is read and processed. However, when I changed it to "rd=disk0s2" which IS the OSX partition, it will again jump back to the Vista bootloader (which is the bootloader in MBR, ie I am doing Vista Boot -> (Pick MacOS) -> Darwin bootloader). It acts as if it can't see disk0s2 and kind of rebooted in a way.

 

I wonder if there is a way to have Darwin bootloader to display a menu like Vista bootloader without pressing any key so that I can use Darwin bootloader instead...

[Feri Vagasi]

I have the same boot problem with Mac.OS-X.10.4.9.JaS.Amd.Intel.SSE2+3.PPF1+2, that is changing the Kernel Flags rd in com.apple.Boot.plist to the windows partition doesn't seem to work at all, however changing the timeout setting or manually (F8) choosing the partition works for me too. I've tried this in a vmware machine with an OS-X and a Win XP SP2 dual boot setup, using EasyBCD and vista's bootloader.