1. System Information shows that QE is not supported and CI is software only. My graphics card, GeForce 8500GT should support QE/CI according to the HCL. What can I do to get this to work?
You can try using an EFI string from UInstaller or EFIStudio. Or use NVInject or NVdarwin, plus add your devID to the appropriate nvidia kexts.
2. My external hard drive that I'm running OSX off is basically an IDE hard disk in an external USB enclosure. I have one other IDE har drive(internal) that I'm running XP on. If i just pull the IDE hard disk out of the enclosure and put it internally as IDE, can I set up a dual boot or do I need to reinstall iPC all over again?
It's possible. I also have an IDE hard drive in an external enclosure, but I use it for storage, not an OS, so I haven't tried that, though I do use IDE drives for booting my OS X and (if I have it installed) Windows (each on their own drive).
3.My IDE drive(NTFS) did not show up inside OSX while my SATA drive(FAT32) did.How do I check if this is because if not recognizing IDE or not recognizing NTFS, because I did select NTFS-3G-Fuse at install.
This is a bug with the Mac OS X installer that you boot into. I do not see my external NTFS drive when I am booting the install DVD, but it shows up when I get into the actual system after installing, and I can write to it provided I install the MacFUSE+NTFS-3G package.
4. Any chance there's a way I could lose the -v -f at boot up. Doesn't matter if I can't but it would be nice that's all.
Do you mean not having to type them at all? If so, you need to mod com.apple.Boot.plist and add those flags to the kernel flags part of the file. To do this, open up terminal and type:
sudo nano /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist
This will bring up the following:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs$
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string></string>
<key>Timeout</key>
<string>5</string>
</dict>
</plist>
In the empty <string></string>, you need to add -v -f, so it looks like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs$
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>-v -f</string>
<key>Timeout</key>
<string>5</string>
</dict>
</plist>
If you want to use the graphical boot, then you can simply just take out the -v part.