Jump to content

Dual boot between XP-SATA & OSX-PATA

jbjonas

By jbjonas,
in OSx86 10.4 (Tiger)

 Share
31 posts in this topic

Recommended Posts

jbjonas
jbjonas
Posted
Posted

From a pm by rakusuira

I have been running Mac OS X 10.4.3 on my Intel P4 3.2GHz HT for a couple days now. I installed using the JaS 4.2 DVD on a separate IDE drive. On a SATA drive, I have Windows XP. My problem is that I cannot boot into OS X when my SATA drive is connected simultaneously with the IDE drive. After I tell the bios to boot using the Primary Master IDE drive, the cursor blinks indefinitely. However, it works flawlessly when the SATA drive is not connected. I would like to fix this error so that its easy for me to transfer the .iso for 10.4.4 made using 10.4.3 to my Windows XP drive for burning. It would also make dual booting much easier. I really appreciate your time and help.

I took the liberty of starting a new topic for you rakusuira, because I think your issue is not necessarily the SATA controller itself, and others can always gain from your solution...

 

First- what motherboard are you using (specifically what chipset, and what SATA controller)?

 

Second- Even if we fix this problem, you should know that you will never be able to "transfer the .iso for 10.4.4 made using 10.4.3 to my Windows XP drive for burning". This is because NTFS drives can only be mounted in OS X as read-only. (This is no problem of course, if for some reason you have your XP installed on a FAT32 partition.) Perhaps you will be able to burn it directly from OS X...

 

Now, down to the issue: From what you describe, I think that you have been trying to dual boot by changing the primary boot volume in your BIOS. But you say that if you tell the BIOS to boot to the PATA OS X drive, that it will not boot if the SATA drive is also connected. Do I have all that correct so far?

What I propose you do, is install a bootloader. There are many options (search the forum here for many many choices- Lilo, Grub, the built in Darwin or XP bootloaders). I use what I think is the easiest, and prettiest, since it is graphical: Acronis OS Selector, which is a Boot Manager, part of the Acronis Disk Director Suite (maybe available by itself?)

What you should do if all of this makes sense so far (and you want to use Acronis bootloader):

-plug in your SATA cable, so both drives are connected.

-go into the BIOS and set it to boot directly to your XP install on the SATA drive.

-Boot XP, and find and install Acronis.

-Load the Acronis OS Selector application, set your options, and make sure it is 'active' or whatever they call it.

-Reboot the machine- you should see the Acronis Boot Manager, with the icons to choose that correspond to your 2 OS choices. note: Acronis is usually pretty good about automatically recognizing different OS's. It will probably recognize your OS X install as 'unknown', but thats no problem. You can rename it, and choose from several Icons for it. :D

Let us know how this goes, and good luck :o

Link to comment
Share on other sites
ampTK
ampTK
Posted
Posted

I also have OS X on PATA, Windows and Linux on SATA

 

And no problems with Lilo

 

i haven't boot the machine directly to the IDE drive in a wile, but it allways worked fine, weird issue rakusuira

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jbjonas
jbjonas
Posted
  • Author
Posted

well thats funny. My motherboard is also 875P, and I have the same core cpu! My setup works fine with SATA XP and OS X on PATA. so hopefully so should yours. (see my specs in signature)

I wonder if this problem came about because a setting in the BIOS is not perfect (I know the BIOS settings for hard drives on my mobo- Asus- can be confusing). Either way, this solution is a lot better than switching in the BIOS every time - even if that were to work properly. ^_^

Link to comment
Share on other sites
rakusuira
rakusuira
Posted
Posted

I installed the Acronis multiboot program, but it gave me a couple blue screens, and sometimes hung when booting up (after the hangs, the only way I could get my computer to boot up again was by choosing primary sata through the normal BIOS). I will try and setup the darwin bootloader or lilo tomorrow. Hopefully they will give better results :dev:.

 

Also, the one time I did get the Acronis Bootscreen to load correctly, OS X hung on my USB keyboard. This is very strange because it has never done this since my first os x boot and has been fixed ever since.

 

Thanks again,

Rakusuira

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jbjonas
jbjonas
Posted
  • Author
Posted

hrmmm,

sorry it didn't work as well for you as it does for me... :dev:

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jbjonas
jbjonas
Posted
  • Author
Posted

I did some searching myself... had trouble finding much. Probably because the darwin bootloader is so simple and easy to use :spam:

You'll need to set the BIOS to boot from your OS X disk, since the darwin bootloader is on it's MBR. As long as the timeout in your com.apple.Boot.plist file is not set to 0, pressing F8 as soon as you see darwin pop up will give you the bootloader menu. If all goes well, The darwin bootloader should then show you the OS X option, as well as the XP Pro option from the other drive. Hope that helps. I'll check some more for better documentation in the wiki, and let you know if I find anything better... :dev:

 

Edit: In the wiki I found this entry on using Windows XP's bootloader (another simple option) Here

Link to comment
Share on other sites
rakusuira
rakusuira
Posted
Posted

I changed the timeout to 5 seconds in the com.apple.Boot.plist and I now see the Darwin Bootloader. However, I only see it if I go through the Dell BIOS Boot Menu and choose Primary Master Drive. If I do not do this, the Darwin Bootloader is skipped and OS X boots. This is all without the SATA drive connected. When I reconnect the SATA drive, without going through the Dell BIOS Boot Menu, Windows XP boots. If I choose Primary Master, the cursor blinks indefinitely. Also, if I turn on my computer without the SATA connected, it does not automatically load OS X, i get a few errors: Primary SATA Drive 0 not found, press F1 to continue, etc. Is there a way to make it boot OS X with the SATA connected, without these errors?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grav3Mind
Grav3Mind
Posted
Posted

which hard drive is your main drive? because i couldnt get my setup to work untill i made the drive with mac the master drive and windows my slave drive and then in order to boot to windows i have to hit f12 to go to the bios boot menu and choose my slave (windows) drive otherwise it just boots into OSX. so try switching the drives around priority wise.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jbjonas
jbjonas
Posted
  • Author
Posted

There should be a setting in your BIOS to set it to boot straight to whatever drive you choose by default. Change that to select the ATA drive with OS X, and you should go straight to the darwin bootloader (with the SATA plugged in). Look around in your BIOS, or read the documentation from dell. (Like I said earlier, some of the BIOS settings can have tricky names, or maybe there are multiple settings that you need to set to do this- ie choose primary boot volume, as well as change the boot order or something along those lines)

good luck-> don't give up! :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites
rakusuira
rakusuira
Posted
Posted

Good news and bad news :). By setting my SATA drive as a slave, and my IDE as a master, I was able to load OS X without having to open my box :)! However, I could not boot into Windows without changing my SATA drive back to master. My boot menu (F12) consisted of the following options:

1) Normal

2) Primary Master Drive

3) Hard-Drive C:/

4) MBA

5) USB

 

Choices 1,2,3 all booted into OS X.

This is great improvement, opening my box was a hassle. But any ideas as to how to fix this new problem? Thanks a lot for the help.

 

EDIT: I think that I might not be setting up the slave / master drives correctly. Before I boot into Darwin, I get a Secondary SATA Drive could not be found, press F1 to continue prompt. In my BIOS, I can only set the IDE drive as master or slave, the SATA as primary or secondary.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jbjonas
jbjonas
Posted
  • Author
Posted

So now if you have the IDE set as Master, and you boot to it and hit F8 to get the darwin bootloader, does it show you an option to boot into XP as well as OS X? I'm confused.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
rakusuira
rakusuira
Posted
Posted

Nope, I only see OSx86 in the Darwin Bootloader. I think this is because its acting as if the SATA drive is not even in the computer. It says SATA Secondary Drive, or something along those lines, is not found, press F1 to continue, before I get to the Darwin Bootloader (right after the dell bios).

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jbjonas
jbjonas
Posted
  • Author
Posted

What happens if you set the BIOS to SATA as Primary, and IDE as Master.... Hmmm. Also, are You SURE that there is no setting in the BIOS to set the boot order? so it looks at one drive for boot instructions, before going to another? Usually its the same place where you would set it to boot from CD before the HDD. I have a feeling that your problem is in the BIOS settings.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jbjonas
jbjonas
Posted
  • Author
Posted

Yeah, I think you should leave those settings that way... There has to be a different option in the BIOS.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
rakusuira
rakusuira
Posted
Posted

If I set my SATA drive to Primary, and my IDE drive to Primary Master, Windows automatically boots, and if I go through the Dell BIOS Boot Menu (F12) and manually choose Primary Master Drive, I get an indefinite cursor on the bottom of the Dell BIOS boot menu screen.

 

Because this was not working, I tried the earlier solution again - setting my SATA drive to secondary, and leaving the IDE drive at Primary Master.

 

I copied down a bunch of information from my BIOS:

Drive Configuration:

SATA Primary Drive - Off

SATA Secondary Drive - Auto --> Unknown Device

Primary Master Drive - Hard Drive

Primary Slave Drive - Off

Secondary Master - CD

Secondary Slave - CD

IDE Drive UDMA - ON

 

Hard Drive Sequence:

1. System Bios Boot Devices

2. USB Device

 

Boot Sequence:

1. IDE CD

2. HD Drive C:

3. MBA v3.1.29 Slot 0200

 

When I ran this setup, I get SATA Secondary Drive 0 not found, strike F1 to continue. After striking F1, I get into the Darwin Bootloader, but do not see Windows XP.

 

When looking at the BIOS setup, I think there could potentially be problems because a hard disk (preferably the IDE drive with Mac OS X) is not included in the Boot Sequence or Hard Drive Sequence lists. This was all the information I can think of. If there is anything else you need to know, please let me know.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jbjonas
jbjonas
Posted
  • Author
Posted

The SATA controller works like this... Each controller has one drive- no master or slave, right? There are 2 controller ports on your mobo. Your drive is connected to the Primary (1st) one. When you set the primary SATA off, and secondary on auto, it is as if your drive is not connected. So it boots to the IDE drive - the only one it finds. It also warns you (the press F1 thing) that there is no drive connected to the Secondary SATA port!

 

What you said: "When looking at the BIOS setup, I think there could potentially be problems because a hard disk (preferably the IDE drive with Mac OS X) is not included in the Boot Sequence or Hard Drive Sequence lists." Is perfectly correct. I don't know your BIOS, and and they're all a little different, but mine will allow me to change the boot sequence (i usually have floppy, cd, hard drive) and then has a separate option to change the order it looks at hard drives (yours should be IDE, then SATA). There must be a way to change that... I suggest going back into the BIOS, and doing something like this:

 

Drive Configuration:

SATA Primary Drive - Off ON

SATA Secondary Drive - Auto --> Unknown Device OFF

Primary Master Drive - Hard Drive

Primary Slave Drive - Off

Secondary Master - CD

Secondary Slave - CD

IDE Drive UDMA - ON

 

Hard Drive Sequence:

1. System Bios Boot Devices

2. USB Device

 

Boot Sequence:

1. IDE CD ----------------Look at these two options, see if there are other choices

2. HD Drive C:

3. MBA v3.1.29 Slot 0200

 

If you are not sure, move your cursor over the boot sequence options, and look around the screen. Most BIOS have decent instructions built in (ie hit enter, or pgup, pgdn, or + -, etc)

Good Luck... :weight_lift:

Link to comment
Share on other sites
rakusuira
rakusuira
Posted
Posted
Boot Sequence:

1. IDE CD ----------------Look at these two options, see if there are other choices

2. HD Drive C:

3. MBA v3.1.29 Slot 0200

 

There are no other options :angel:. The only thing I can do is change the order, I cannot change the actual devices available for booting.

 

I tried switching back my SATA to primary in my bios like you had indicated. (This is my original setting for whenever I boot into Windows XP.) It directly booted into Windows XP. I went into the Dell BIOS Menu and I told it to boot off the Primary Master Drive, I got the indefinite cursor problem again.

 

However, what you said about SATA controllers earlier in your post gave me an idea. I don't know if this mentality is correct, but it seems as if OS X likes to be on the primary drive, and wants everything else to be secondary / slave. I opened up my box and physically connected the SATA drive into the secondary slot (SATA 1 vs SATA 0). I opened the BIOS and set SATA secondary to Auto, and SATA primary to off and let it boot. It went directly to xp. I tried using Dell's Boot Menu, but I got the same problem again, an indefinite cursor blinking at the bottom of the boot menu screen. Not sure if this will contribute to the actual solution, but I had originally thought it was a decent idea.

 

Thanks for taking all this time to help me :blink:.

Rakusuira

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jbjonas
jbjonas
Posted
  • Author
Posted

well, you can try using XP's bootloader then, since it seems to want to boot to the SATA drive. It should be able to see the IDE drive... Check out these instructions here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
rakusuira
rakusuira
Posted
Posted

No luck :(. My boot.ini looks like this:

 

[boot loader]

;timeout=3

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

C:\chain0="Mac OS x86"

 

and my chain0 file is in C:\, its MD5 checked out.

Are there any possibilities left?

 

EDIT: I'm going to try omitting /fastdetect in the windows os line

Link to comment
Share on other sites
rakusuira
rakusuira
Posted
Posted

Deleting /fastdetect and setting Mac OS X as the default boot drive in System Config (moved chain0 up in the bootini and set default) worked! I never saw a Windows Bootloader though, it went straight from the Dell BIOS to the Darwin x86 Bootloader (I did not see a windows xp option in the darwin bootloader). I'm going to try disconnecting the IDE drive so that I can boot back into XP.

 

EDIT: Stuck in OS X! get chain load error when I try and boot into XP. Going to try the solution in the wiki, need to find an XP boot disk first though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jbjonas
jbjonas
Posted
  • Author
Posted

Hmmm. Do me a favor. In XP, go to control panels > Administrative Tools > Computer Management, and click on storage>>disk management. Does Windows see the IDE drive with OS X on it? It should show up as an unknown partition (it won't even see the label, but it should still show the drive). Let us know if XP can see that drive. if not, there's some other problem...

 

Just to be clear, though. With the chain0 in place, what do you see when you boot to the SATA drive? You should see the windows bootloader come up (and wait for 3 secs) and you should see choices for XP or OS X. I think you should remove the semicolon ( ; ) from the timeout line. It's not in my boot.ini, and I think it's making that line useless... let us know :(

edit: after you restore booting into XP, I would make sure XP is the default again, and remove the semicolon. I think that its is why you never even saw the XP bootloader. It's 'commenting-out' that line, so it just immediately loads the default OS (as it you had timeout=0)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...