[GUIDE+FIX] DualBoot problems w/Vista + OS X + EasyBCD

[CrazyC]

Soo... first off, credits for this method go to devilhood for providing the info about bcdedit and to the authors of the Kalyway DualBoot install guide for the link to tboot.

 

The Problem:

OK, so you followed one of the DualBoot guides that are out there, restored your Vista bootloader and used NeoSmart's EasyBCD to edit your Vista bootloader and add an entry to boot Mac OS X. But instead of booting to Mac OS X, you get a few seconds of black screen and then get back to the Windows Vista bootloader.

 

CAUTION:

1. I'd like to say that EasyBCD is a great tool, and, according to this post in the NeoSmart forums, dualbooting Vista and Mac OS X will work without any problems in 90% of the cases. THIS GUIDE IS MEANT FOR THE REMAINING 10%!
   
2. I CAN NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS TO YOUR MACHINE!
   

Solution 1:

Solution 1 can be found in the NeoSmart wiki: Press F8 during the black screen period to bring up the Mac OS X boot options. If this works: congratulations! You will need to search for help with getting Mac OS X boot without problems elsewhere. Since this did not work for me, I can not help you any further.

 

Solution 2:

This post in the NeoSmart forums says that what you experience is a known problem and NeoSmart are working on a fix for this, so this thread may be obsolete in some months, weeks, or even days. For the meantime, however, read below.

 

The problem you experience has its roots somewhere deep in the code of the NeoSmart Mac OS X chainloader. To oversimplify, a chainloader is a tool that basically kicks Darwin, the Mac OS X bootloader, in the butt and tells it to take over the boot process, and with that chainloader not working, you will not be able to boot Mac OS X. To solve the problem, we will simply NOT use the NeoSmart chainloader and use a chainloader called tboot instead.

 

Let's get started!

1. First download tboot HERE, and put the file from the ZIP archive right into your C:\ drive, so its path is C:\tboot
   
2. Then open up EasyBCD and remove the entry you created for Mac OS X earlier. LEAVE YOUR VISTA ENTRY ALONE! Save.
   
3. In EasyBCD, click "Useful Utilities", and then click the "EasyBCD Power Console" button. In EasyBCD 1.7.2, it is the top middle one. This will get you an administrator shell.
   
4. Run in the admin shell: bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Mac OS X"
   This will copy your current Windows Vista bootloader entry to an entry named "Mac OS X". It will reply with a text similar to this: Entry was successfully copied to {YOUR-GUID-HERE}. Copy that GUID (marked blue here), you will need it in the next step.
   
5. Run in the admin shell: bcdedit /set {YOUR-GUID-HERE} PATH \tboot
   This will tell the bootloader to run tboot when you select Mac OS X in the OS selection screen, and tboot will hand over to Darwin. Replace the text marked in blue with the GUID that you copied in step 4.
   
6. DOUBLE CHECK THAT YOU COPIED tboot FROM THE ZIP FILE DIRECTLY TO C:\!
   
7. Reboot. You should be able to boot into Mac OS X.
   

Hope this helps.

 

Regards,

CrazyC

[Big Kahuna]

does this work with both GUID and MBR partitioned Leopard install?

 

I'm using GUID and this is the first solution I've found that's laid out

[Jarkaos08]

Hello!

 

I've been tried this command on EasyBCD: "bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Mac OS X"" in order to edit the boot on Vista.

But everytime when i write the command i get:

"A description for the new entry must be specified

Run "bcdedit /?" for command line assistance."

 

What is wrong??

[Tony Stark]

I get same error :S

[tehsusenoh]

do this instead (found somewhere else on the forums):

Get Tboot first..extract it and put tboot on Vista boot partition, usually C:\

 

Open a command prompt and make sure it’s running as administrator and type:

 

bcdedit /create /d "Your own Leo Name--Up to you" /application bootsector

This will return a {ID}

 

Use the command line below to add the tboot, replace the {ID} accordingly:

 

bcdedit /set {ID} device boot

 

bcdedit /set {ID} path \tboot

 

bcdedit /displayorder {ID} /addlast

 

reboot..there you have your option to boot into vista @ leo..

[zwaldowski]

I thought this was caused by the fact that both PC-EFI and Chameleon both set the active partition to be the default boot, right? So if you have a "quiet" boot set up, it'll just go back to Vista. Or am I doing it wrong?

[tehsusenoh]

Can somebody reupload the tboot.zip file?

Dead link.

[pewusoft]

not dead, you must copy&paste the link manually, because server is blocking connections incoming from other sites.

[Dette]

I thought this was caused by the fact that both PC-EFI and Chameleon both set the active partition to be the default boot, right? So if you have a "quiet" boot set up, it'll just go back to Vista. Or am I doing it wrong?

 

I thought that too.. At one point I had it boot into Mac with Vista being the active partition but I dont know how..

I used EasyBCD beta 2.0

[Oh So Easy]

Hi CrazyC, thanks for your help on the boot system. I did it as described and it worked first time. But, once OSX has loaded, I cannot write to the hard drive. I have been through the permission settings under the "Get Info" box, but cannot change them. It appears I have booted it with read only access. Even applications like iphoto and imovie cannot run as they cannot write to the disk. Can you help on this?

[thefez]

Thanks very much...easy to follow and worked a treat