dual boot on separate HDDs without fiddling with bios settings?
 

HI. wondering if anyone can help me.

I have Vista in 1 HD and OS X (iATKOS v5i updated to 10.5.8) in a separate HD (not a partition), how can i dual boot?

so far, i've been going into bios and change my SATA settings before i can boot into one or the other OS. I've tried chameleon RC2 but no luck. when the screen flashes up, when i tried to choose either OSs i'd get an error.....can't remember what the error is atm, 'til i fiddle with bios then it would boot in the selected os properly. maybe i have to tweak my chameleon? change certain setups in the bios to work properly with chameleon? any fixes/patches i can apply?

any ideas? please help.

I have an HP m9250f.

thanx.

katie d.

Fiddle in the BIOS again and set your OSX HDD to boot first. If you have Chameleon in there it usually ask you which OS you would like to boot.

Maybe you have some weird partition layout in your vista hd and chameleon is not working well with it.

Try use the repair function in the installation disk you have and go to command prompt,
then type this commands:
diskpart
select disk X <----- Osx and vista installed disk.
select partition X <----- Vista partition.
active
exit
bootrec /rebuildbcd

then boot to your windows vista and install EasyBCD and add the MACOSX to your boot...

Yes, i do have my BIOS to boot into OS X. but still doesn't work.

the hp m9250f came with 2 HDDs and one of them is partitioned for Recovery disc. I purchased a 3rd HDD to put OS X in.

if the partition is the problem that chameleon doesn't work well, what can i do?

thanx.

kate d

Are you sure its not a Recovery partition? Somehow I find it weird HP is putting whole disks in their systems just for Recovery. You can get a low level report of partitions with "diskutil list" in Terminal.
If you have a foreign partition and Chameleon thinks thats Vista maybe thats why it doesnt work, or maybe Vista boot files are in that partition.

sorry, i don't know much about PC but I believe you are right that it's a Recovery partition. all i know is that the system came with 2 500G HDDs, and i notice that there's a recovery partition so i assume that it's probably a partition from one of the 500GBs and most likely the Main one where Vista was installed.

so, what can i do from there if there's anything i can do.

thanx

kd

If you have 2 500Gb HDs they could be set up as RAID array, maybe thats why Chameleon is not letting you boot Vista from there.
Without knowing how your system has the partitions and disks set up it would be hard for anyone to know whats going wrong and how to fix it...

Did you try the EasyBCD and add the MACOSX boot option???

No, not yet. hopefully soon when i have the time to. I'll keep you guys posted.

thank you so much for all your help.

kate,

hope you are still following this thread andr3as.....

i finally tried easyBCD and added the MACOSX boot but didn't work. when i checked the setting in easyBCD, i noticed that the MACOSX is listed in Drive C (same as windows) but in fact, it's in a different HDD.

also, would i have to set my bios to boot into vista os first?

thanx.

kd.

Hi, when you say fiddle with your bios, do you mean go into it and change which HDD it starts from? or something else. It's just that whenever i have loaded a second OS into my PC that has 3 HDD's the boot always seems to be on the first HDD, unless i disconnect the drives-install-reconnect then when it starts i click F11(on my PC on the laptop its F12) then select which drive/OS i want.
As a suggestion do you have a copy of Gparted if not download it burn it to disc and run it as a live CD, it will then give you a good idea of what you have in your setup as far as HDD's and partitions go. I.e where boot is etc.

Raz

I always set mine to boot up from the OSX HDD. i always have to go in BIOS and change my SATA setting, switching b/w RAID setting (for vista) and AHCI (for osx). Exit bios, reboot and go into my boot menu (by pressing ESC when booting) and select the appropriate OS that i want to boot up to, in accordance to what i selected in BIOS.

I've tried EasyBCD but it didn't work. like i said that in the setting of easyBCD, i noticed my osx is set to boot from C, same hdd as vista but it's not. it's on another hdd. how can i fix that?

thanx.

kd.

I'm not sure but I think you cant use EasyBCD to chainload OS X from vista bootmgr when they are in different disks, maybe the 2.0 beta can do it, try it if you havent yet.

thanx thorazine74. I'll see if i can find EasyBCD v2.0 beta. I think the latest one that i dl is 1.7....something.

it would be nice if i can set to boot from different drive.

would you recommend me setting my bios to boot from vista hdd?

kd.

Could you post a screen shot of your disk management screen, it would help to see how your system is set up.

Raz

Edit: Yes

hi Razy60. disk management in windows or OSX? how do i go about doing it?

sorry, i am a newbie when it comes to computers. :(

Thorzaine74, i've tried to install easybcd 2.0 beta but i still cannot change the drive for my mac os x.......

i hope there is a way to dual-boot post-installation coz i am not gonna be happy if i have to reinstall mac os x again to get dual-boot.....:(

thanx.

katie d.

I overlooked this, you have 2 troubles mixed up:
1) Having to use the boot menu to select the main disk.
2) Having to switch the SATA mode between AHCI & RAID.

For 1) I dont know the solution, you should post the disk layout from both Windows & OS X, maybe someone has an idea. From Windows you type "Computer Management" in the search box and the console should open, then look for Disk Mmanagement, or even better (harder) use diskpart.exe command line. From OS X you can type "diskutil list" in Terminal.
From what I know you cant boot OS X from Windows boot manager in different disks.
When your OS X disk is primary, do you see the RAID partition in chameleon menu? If not I dont have any idea to fix it, apart from using another boot manager on top of both windows bootmgr and chameleon.
For 2) you may be able to boot OS X in RAID mode if you have an Intel ICH SATA chipset, using one of the legacy kexts posted here

LaFemme69 wrote.

Windows. You should have on your keyboard a key that will print screen, it would be something like: PRTSC, it may be in or around the F keys, you may have to use it with the shift key.


Raz

Ok, i will do that tonight. when i went into vista disk management, i noticed i have 1 HDD w 4 partitions but has NO drive number......not assigned any letters. i assume that it would be my osx drive.

i'll also try to remove chameleon rc2 in osx and install rc3 to see if it'd make any differences.....rc3 should be compatible with Leopard right?

thanx.

katie d.

1) I'll try to post my disk management later......but don't know how i can upload a photo on here.....look @ my reply to razy60 with regards to my disk management.....when the chameleon screen boots up, i see 4 icons and assume they correspond to my hdds n partitions.....osx icon, vista, recovery partition and another icon (which is probably my 2nd hdd that came with the system. that HDD only contains DATA). could chameleon and vista bootmgr conflict with one another?

2) how do i check if i have an intel ICH SATA chipset? would cpu-z tell me? thanx for the link. if this helps, this is my mobo Asus IPIBL-LB (http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...roduct=3688702)

thanx.

katie d.

2) You have an Intel ICH9R controller, you should be able to use one of the kexts from that thread to boot OS X with the ICH controller in RAID mode.

1) It looks like you definitely have a weird disk layout maybe with a raid array and a recovery partition, try posting the output of "diskutil list" (typed in OS X Terminal).

thanx thorazine74. I am gonna tried tonight to install the kext you recommended and hopefully it will resolve the problem, by booting osx in RAID mode without having to change over to AHCI mode.

when the pc boots up, one of the screens that pops up said that my disks are non-raid or no raid disks......as far as i can see, the recovery partition is from the main hdd where vista is installed. the other hdd is just data. of course with the addition of another hdd for my osx.

I tried last night to capture an image of my disk management in vista but my keyboard is a MAC so it doesn't have the Print Screen.....dang!!!......LOL! I'll try to 'diskutil list' from my osx terminal.

thanx again.

katie d.

Hi, read through this link it will help with your keyboard in windows .http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7592_102...threadID=12112

It has this helpful link in.http://www.dieselstation.com/software/
hope it helps.

Raz

THANK YOU razy60. you and thorazine74 have been much helpful. i appreciate you both for trying to help me.

I will try and see if i can print screen in Vista using MAC keyboard. will post as soon as i can get a screen image of my vista disk management.

mucho gracias.

kate d.

Ok, this is what comes up when i 'diskutil list' in OS X Terminal

dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: FDisk_partition_scheme *465.8 Gi disk0
1: Windows_NTFS HP 455.9 Gi disk0s1
2: Windows_NTFS FACTORY_IMAGE 9.9 Gi disk0s3
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: FDisk_partition_scheme *465.8 Gi disk1
1: Windows_NTFS Data 465.8 Gi disk1s1
/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *931.5 Gi disk2
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk2s1
2: Apple_HFS Main 200.0 Gi disk2s2
3: Apple_HFS Data 731.1 Gi disk2s3

if that means anything to you 'coz it doesn't to me. LOL!!! :p

Katie

Thanx razy60. i now able to print within vista with my mac keyboards.....woohoo!!

I already have an image of my vista disk management but how do i post or attach on here??? LOL!!!

thanx.

kate

NO go!!! I installed the ICHX kext (with osx86 Tools) and rebooted. after reboot, i shut down. went into bios and made few different changes but nothing works......i've tried to do the following but none worked, 1) change sata setting in bios to RAID, still boot with OSX HDD to access Chameleon 2) change sata setting to RAID, booting with Vista HDD to use easybcd v1.7.2 bootloader 3) change sata setting to AHCI and boot from Vista HDD.

???

katie.

Well I think if you can boot Vista in AHCI mode it means you dont have any RAID array. I would keep SATA in that way, you should be able to boot both Vista & OS X in AHCI, by choosing the HD to boot in the BIOS menu, correct?

To fix the other problem you need to find out what partition are you booting from?
Check in Vista Disk Management, which partition is marked as "System" and which one is marked as "Boot". Do you see the one marked as "System" in Chameleon Boot menu? If not press F10 or TAB and see if you see it, thats the one you should choose there to boot Vista from Chameleon.
Check in OS X partition if you have a file named "boot" and a folder named "Extra" in the root directory. If they are there it means you are booting OS X from System partition, not from EFI partition, thats the partition you have to add in EasyBCD as OS X. And make sure you use EasyBCD 2.0 beta, I'm pretty sure the old version doesnt support many of the feature needed to do this kind of multibooting.

Hi,I am sure you click the image icon in the box at the top of the reply page then just use the browse button to find your image then follow the instructions.

Raz

ok. here we go.....hope this will help.

kate d.

HI, looking at your management screen it looks ok, although you have 2 active partitions which i would only expect to see 1.
Could you post a few screen shots of easybcd.

Raz

i've posted my vista disk management.

to answer to your question, i CANNOT boot vista when the sata controller is set to AHCI. it seemed like it's booting but the pc reboots itself.

in the chameleon boot menu, all i see are MAIN (osx hdd), HP (1st partition), Recovery (2nd partition) and Data (the other hdd). I can only get into Main when i set my bios sata controller to AHCI and HP (vista) when i set sata controller to RAID.

katie

Ok the situation is like this:
Your Vista will only boot in RAID mode as it is.
Your OS X will only boot in AHCI mode as it is.
So you have several choices to fix that no-go:
- Keeping SATA in RAID mode and making OS X boot in RAID mode with the kexts from the thread I posted above, provided you installed the kexts correctly (permissions, ownership ok and rebuilding cache) it should work.
- Reinstalling Vista with the SATA in AHCI mode. With no RAID arrays this is the preferred setting as both Vista and OS X should boot without troubles. Involves formatting and reinstalling which can be a hassle
- You can also switch Vista from using Intel RAID Driver to Using MS AHCI Driver without reinstalling, see this for more info or google a bit. It involves a bit of registry editing and can be complicated a bit for a newbie.

yes, that seems to be the case that vista is ONLY bootable under RAID and osx is ONLY bootable under AHCI coz no matter which combo of bios set up i have or how i set bootloader, DOES NOT seem to work.

(1) i've tried to install the kexts that you recommended and yet still doesn't work for osx to boot under RAID sata controller. unless i did it wrong. i just dl the kext and using OsX86Tools to install the kext.

(2) yes, i agree that reinstalling any OS is a B***H!!! lol! Unless I decide to install Windows 7 and crap Vista, since windows 7 is better. so would you insist that i install windows 7 under AHCI mode????

(3) in the meantimes before either reinstalling vista or fresh install of windows 7, i'll look @ the thread you gave me.

thank you so much for your help thus far.

katie d.

just quickly looked @ the links you provided, seems easy enough and 'do-able' . will try tonight and get back to you......HOWEVER, if you don't hear from me for a week or so, PLEASE come and rescue me!!! lol.

katie.

One thing i would add is that it may be better to partition your first drive so that vista and Osx are on the same drive then leave the other drives as ntfs, that way you get all the storage which is shareable to both systems, Just ensure that you install the ntfs kext to allow you to do this in OSx.
Also by installing both on one drive it will stop a lot of the problems you had.
I realise that it's maybe not what you intended but it is easier to do.:)

Raz

you guys ROCK!!!

Thorazine74: thank you for the links. so far, that solved the problem. Vista is capable of booting in AHCI mode but not always enabled, like mine so I had to enable it through Vista registry (from the links) before I can boot via AHCI. I've set the BIOS to AHCI mode and boot drive to OSX HDD, utilizing Chameleon dual-boot. so far, i've only tried to get into Vista and it WORKED!!!!! later tonight, i am gonna try to get into OSX from the same boot menu. I assume it would work since it worked before under the same BIOS settings.......I AM SO EXCITED!!!! THANK YOU!!!

my next step......triple boot with Windows 7!! :)

thank you razy60 and thorazine74.

katie