1 Topic by elliveN

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Topic: OS X won't boot on tripple boot setup

Hi all

Trying to get a tripple boot setup going with XP, Win 7 and OS X. XP and Win 7 were co-existing happily with no hassles, using Windows 7's boot manager. Then added another partition, installed Leopard. Using EasyBCD I added the Mac OS X entry to the Windows 7 bootmanager. Now there is a brief message displayed when switching the Acer Aspire laptop on reading "Boot0: done", before in goes into the boot manager. From there XP and Win 7 still startup without any hassles. However when I select OS X, it fails with a "Disk read error" message.

GParted sees all the partitions including the HPS+ one of OS X. I used GParted to double check that the OS X drive is active but when I set its flags to boot, it takes the boot flag off the XP partition, which is the primary partition and then nothing works. So I set the XP partition back to boot so am back at square 1.

Any help would be much appreciated. This is all on a single physical drive.

Kind regards
Neville

2 Reply by elliveN

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Re: OS X won't boot on tripple boot setup

PS - The OS X partition is not corrupt as the installation completed successfully. We also managed to start up into OS X on this partition by booting from and external OS X drive with Chameleon on it.

Any suggestions would be most appreciated.

3 Reply by cmdr

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Re: OS X won't boot on tripple boot setup

Hello Neville,
you should give us the print-out of

fdisk -l -u

(l is a lower-case L, open "Terminal" icon,  type the above line and press [ENTER]).

You could do even more, if you upload the Volume Boot Record of the "OSx" partition to a file sharing site and give us the link. See here for the procedure.

Regards
cmdr

4 Reply by elliveN

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Re: OS X won't boot on tripple boot setup

Hi cmdr

Thanks for the reply. Sorry for my late response, just been a bit busy with other things. I couldn't figure out how to get the info from the fdisk command onto my USB stick (NO Linux skills) so instead followed the other link you provided. Here are all the files as per those instructions:

http://cid-a47e5b34ffdf3731.skydrive.li … d/drvs.dat
http://cid-a47e5b34ffdf3731.skydrive.li … ed/sda.MBR
http://cid-a47e5b34ffdf3731.skydrive.li … d/sda1.PBR
http://cid-a47e5b34ffdf3731.skydrive.li … d/sda2.PBR
http://cid-a47e5b34ffdf3731.skydrive.li … d/sda5.PBR
http://cid-a47e5b34ffdf3731.skydrive.li … d/sda6.PBR
http://cid-a47e5b34ffdf3731.skydrive.li … d/sda7.PBR

These are for all the partitions on my machine as I'd rather provide too much than too little info. As I recall its sda7 that has the OS X installation on it htat does not want to boot from my windows boot manager.

Please let me know if you need any more info. Any help you can give will be much appreciated!

cheers
Neville

5 Reply by cmdr (edited by cmdr 2009-05-12 23:44:15)

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Re: OS X won't boot on tripple boot setup

Hello Neville,

good work done ! The Master Boot Record's code has it's origin from Windows 7, I assume, because you installed it after Win XP. I see this code for the first time. But - as we both know - it works with Windows 7,  so that it should not be part of the problem.  "sda7", the HFS+ (OSx) partition is contained as logical volume in an extended Windows partition, whose partitioning table is not stored in MBR, but in the extended partition itself. Of course, I need it; see below, how to get it. I further need the first three sectors of the HFS+ volume, which should contain the size data, that MacOs uses. These values have to match Windows values in the Extended Partition Boot Record table.

How to get it :

Since Extended Boot Record preceeds with known distance the appropriate Volume Boot Record, we can easily get it in one file. You use again "MC_HxEd", unfold treeview completely and double click below "sda" on "Show_Block(s)". Then type : 213921540#70. A file named "sda_213921540_70.BLK" gets created. Note, this file is not stored automatically on your mounted stick ! You have to copy it manually, but this is an easy task. Perhaps you remember, that there are two blue screens following each other. The second belongs to filemanager "Midnight Commander". You just highlight sda_213921540_70.BLK on the right side with arrow keys (mouse is not working !), press [F5] + [ENTER] and you see the copied file on the left side (your stick), too. To change active side use [TAB], if necessary.

I think, we also should have a look at  the way, how Windows 7 calls OSx partition, but I must admit, I don't (yet) know, how to get it. I think, there is something like "BCDedit" with Vista. Try to provide as much information as you can retrieve, especially things related to drives, drive GUIDs, partition numbers and alike stuff in this context.
Keep in mind, that HFS+ partitions are hidden for Windows(7), i.e. there is no assigned drive letter.

On we go with our scavenger hunt !

Regards
cmdr

6 Reply by elliveN

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Re: OS X won't boot on tripple boot setup

Hi cmdr

Wow! Impressive...! I can see you really enjoy this stuff and appreciate the challange wink
Here is the info you asked for and hopefully a little bit extra...

Boot info on Windows 7 via BCDEdit:
http://cid-a47e5b34ffdf3731.skydrive.li … CDEdit.txt

Whilst in Win7 I dug around a bit to get you the following on the partitions, I hope it helps.

Screenshots from Acronis Disk Director on Windows 7:

http://cid-a47e5b34ffdf3731.skydrive.li … Visual.JPG
http://cid-a47e5b34ffdf3731.skydrive.li … eneral.JPG
http://cid-a47e5b34ffdf3731.skydrive.li … niture.JPG
http://cid-a47e5b34ffdf3731.skydrive.li … System.JPG
http://cid-a47e5b34ffdf3731.skydrive.li … Blocks.JPG
http://cid-a47e5b34ffdf3731.skydrive.li … Errors.JPG

My local LAN admin guy here says it looks like there might be remains of Ubuntu and/or Grub on the OS X partition hence it is showing up ShagOS. Its just a wild guess though. Yes, I did have a Ubuntu installation on seperate partitions on this machine previously with a the 2 normal partitions it requires, on swap and the other temp if I recall correctly. There also used to be a OEM recovery partition of just under 8GB which I also nuked a while ago. I used EASEUS Partition Manager 2.0 Home Edition to rearrange all of this but unfortunately can't tell you how things looked before I started.

Here is the Extended Boot Record stuff, using the GParted Live CD:

http://cid-a47e5b34ffdf3731.skydrive.li … %7C_70.BLK

FYI, I have EasyBCD installed and used that to edit the Vista/Win7 boot loader sequence.

I hope this helps. Let me know what else you need.... good luck! ... and THANKS!

Cheers
neville

7 Reply by cmdr (edited by cmdr 2009-05-13 16:28:49)

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Re: OS X won't boot on tripple boot setup

Hello Neville,

I'm sorry, but I have bad news :

http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Chain0 wrote:

...
Additional experiences:

If it's still not working, make sure your Mac OS X partition (af) is not UNDER an extended partition. It also has to be a PRIMARY partition. While chain0's source code indicates support for extended/logical partitions, experiences obviously show a different picture.
...
bad:

-hda1, primary, boot, ntfs, etc. (windows partition)

-hda2, extended...

-hda5, logical, af, etc.

-hda6, logical, ntfs, etc. .

(partition numbering corrected by me, the original example is not correct.)

Did you know this issue ?

Regards
cmdr

PS: Where is file "chain0" located ? It should be on C: or D: . "BCDEdit.txt" shows no valid location !

8 Reply by elliveN

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Re: OS X won't boot on tripple boot setup

Hey cmdr

No, I didn't know about this... yikes! sad

I took chain0 out as it didn't solve anything. All it did was to start the XP boot manager on top of the Vista/Win7 boot manager. In other words, the PC would start up into the Win7 boot manager. Then if I select XP, remember here I have 3 entries, XP, Win7 and OS X, it would start the XP boot manager with 2 options i.e. XP and Mac OS. Selecting Mac OS directly from the Win7 boot manager or in the second step from the XP boot manager, made no difference. I'd still get the disk read error.

Btw, right at the beginning of powering up the machine, I get a brief message displayed on the top left-hand corner saying: "boot0: done!". What does that mean?

Oh well, we tried. Thanks a lot for all your help. I was affraid that this might be the case and that I'd have to reformat completely and start from scratch loading Mac OSX first. Damn!

Neville

Oh well, we tried

9 Reply by cmdr

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Re: OS X won't boot on tripple boot setup

Hello Neville,

elliveN wrote:

Btw, right at the beginning of powering up the machine, I get a brief message displayed on the top left-hand corner saying: "boot0: done!". What does that mean?

the message is processed by Win7's Master Boot Record, when it's passing to Volume Boot Record code ( and everything went well ). You see the text in sda.MBR.

I took chain0 out as it didn't solve anything.

That's not correct, it is necessary ! The first sector of (OSx) HFS+ file system contains a Boot Record similar to Master Boot Record. "chain0" is seeking for this structure on your harddisk, and if successfull, starting OSx. Remember, that Windows even doesn't "see" the HFS+ partition. "chain0" should be in the same  root folder as "bootmgr". The device "boot" is correct.

Regards
cmdr

PS: Perhaps you give it a try again.

10 Reply by elliveN (edited by elliveN 2009-05-14 22:09:41)

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Re: OS X won't boot on tripple boot setup

cmdr wrote:

The device "boot" is correct.

Not sure what you mean by this?

Also, can I not use GParted to change the OS X partition to a primary partition? If I do that will it wipe out that partition's content? In other words, will I have to reinstall OS X then?

PS - It is crucial that I do not loose my XP partition as this is where I earn my daily bread and butter from.

11 Reply by cmdr (edited by cmdr 2009-05-14 23:22:10)

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Re: OS X won't boot on tripple boot setup

Hello Neville,

PS - It is crucial that I do not loose my XP partition as this is where I earn my daily bread and butter from.

for heaven's sake,  Neville, then I would NEVER do such experiments (neither Win 7, nor OSx) !
What do you do, when your permission to test Win 7 expires  ( the bootmanager !!!) ????
You need a complete drive image as backup BEFORE you proceed with any action !

The device "boot" is correct.

This relates to your print-out of "BCDEdit" , section "Real-mode Boot Sector".

Also, can I not use GParted to change the OS X partition to a primary partition? If I do that will it wipe out that partition's content? In other words, will I have to reinstall OS X then?

You could create up to two further primary partitions. But you don' t have a single byte unallocated space.  "GParted" supports moving HFS+ partitions. The way would be to cut the partition within the extended partition and paste it outside to a new primary partition. But due to your unfavourable layout, it would again be placed UNDER (= right from) an extended partition, see the cited OSx-Wiki for the consequences.
If you had enough unallocated space to move the shrinked extended partition to the right, thus gaining unallocated space in front of it to paste OSx partiton there, it might work,  but you loose and have to recover bootability, which Win 7 governs  at the moment ... within the extended partition.
This might result in a period of time, where access to your system is not possible ( except for "Gparted"). Do you really want to risk this ??? In addition you need an external storage medium to store your OSx partition temporarily and cut/paste it back finally.

Regards
cmdr