Help Dual Booting Mac OS & Windows 7

H

HugoYamil

Member
I installed a Hackintosh using Empire EFI 1.08.

Acer ASPIRE 5738Z

4 GB RAM
500 GB HD two partitions 200 GB MAC OS X Snow Leopard
300 GB Windows 7

if I boot from the Empire EFI ISO CD, I have no problem booting on either partitions.

if I boot from Disk using EasyBCD Beta 2.0 first r97 and now r99,
Bootloader start, if I choose Windows7, boots with no problem.
If I choose Mac OS, It looks like it starts, but aparently it the bootloader restarts
and asks again to choose windows 7 or Mac OS.

here is the bootstring of EasyBCD

There are a total of 2 entries listed in the bootloader.
Default: Windows 7
Timeout: 30 seconds
Boot Drive: C:\
Entry #1
Name: Windows 7
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Entry #2
Name: NST Mac OS X
BCD ID: {6a83261d-6beb-11df-91d6-de3cebd7177c}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \NST\AutoNeoGrub0.mbr

Any suggestions?

Don't like idea booting from CD all the time

Thanks for your prompt Response....

HugoYamil
 
I've been monkeying around with trying to get a preboot.dmg into the nst_mac.iso with no success yet. I can make a preboot.dmg easily booted to my Mac...but how to change the nst_mac.iso? What tools should I use to make a working version of this? All my attempts on the Mac side have failed.

By the way, if adding the preboot.dmg works, it would be great to have the option, in EasyBCD, to insert your own custom-made preboot.dmg when adding the Mac to the BCD list.
 
Ok, using Daemon Tools I can edit the nst_mac.iso, but no matter what I change my Mac HD boots exactly the same way...as if none of the kexts in my Extras folder on the Mac HD (or the nst_mac.iso if I change that) are loading. I've added a preboot.dmg to the ISO also, and tried it in a couple of places...no help. Should it be an ISO instead?

I did notice that there's a "boot image.iso" on the nst_mac.iso. Does that need to be altered in some way?

My main problem is that unlike Computer Guru I really don't know how this stuff works.
 
I'll be checking back to see if anyone comes up with a fix for this. For now I've had to start from scratch with my installations and will have to switch to the Mac OSX drive using BIOS settings. Until someone gets a viable method, I won't be using EasyBCD.
 
I'm keen to find a resolution to this problem too. I need to load custom kexts in order to boot and no matter how i edit the nst_mac.iso it just will not work. In fact as soon as I edit anything in the nst_mac.iso I am left with a long winded grub message when I reboot (even if I just open the iso, remove a file and put the exact same file back in).

Any help would be appreciated.

P.S. I did try creating the preboot.dmg as suggested earlier in this thread however as mentioned about editing the nst_mac.iso simply breaks it altogether.

Regards

Andy.

P.P.S - The mac installation is on a seperate drive and boots fine if I change the boot order in bios or select to boot from that drive at power on.
 
Hi,

We don't get much cooperation rfrom the Mac OSx86 community. There's only so much we can do with what we're given.
 
I don't know if this will work for you, but it's worth a shot. I just installed a hackintosh myself. Using a program called multibeast from http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2010/04/iboot-multibeast-install-mac-os-x-on.html, I was able to Boot into OS X from the windows boot manager without a disk, using easybcd. I used iBoot instead of empireefi, but I don't think that should matter. It worked for me, anyway.

I hope this is what you were trying to accomplish and that it works out for you.
 
Well I managed to make a little progress but not much. I solved the bizarre grub error - that turned out to be caused by the way I was creating or editing the nst_mac.iso.
When rebuilding the iso I found that setting it to bootable and using cdboot as a boot image made the grub problem go away. Unfortunately I still can't boot successfully. When i select osx from the bootloader it does start to load however it doesn't appear to pick up any of my kexts and so eventually kernel panics. I have tried copy my entire extra folder over, the apple.com.boot.plist and even creating a preboot.dmg - unfortunately nothing yet has worked :frowning:

I have 4 physical disks in my pc, disks 1, 2 and 3 are all single partition ntfs formatted 1tb disks (disk 1 is the system disk containing the Windows boot partition and main OS partiton) and disk 4 is my osx snow leopard install containing the usual EFI partition etc.

I'm not really sure where to go from here as I have read that others have managed to get this working.

Just had a thought, I am using the cdboot image from the USR folder created under the NST folder on the root of the C Drive - perhaps I am using the wrong cdboot image - I guess if it doesn't match the bootloader that I am using on my osx86 install then it would most likely not know where to look to find my additional kexts. I shall investigate further when I get home.
 
Thanks.
Needless to say I didn't get anywhere though :|

Addendum:

If there is any information or log files that I can provide to help resolve this then please feel free to let me know.
 
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I finally got dual boot working however it involved reinstalling snow leopard to an mbr partition using a modified installer and then using the mbr and chain0 method with easybcd. No matter what I tried I simply could not get the EFI option to boot via easybcd and it looked as if starting again was the fastest option.
 
Booting OS X via different methods is highly hardware-dependent. That's a huge part of the reason we've had so much trouble supporting it, *and* why OS X out of all the other OSes is the only one with multiple boot techniques present in EasyBCD.

Glad you got it to work in the end though, Andy.
 
Similar Problems

Hello When i try to boot into mac in the boot menu at start up,Chameleon bootloder come up as always and then i get a kernel panic,but if I boot using empire efi disc then it works,any advice on how to replace the chameleon bootloder with the empire efi.
Thank you
 
Spartian said:
Hello When i try to boot into mac in the boot menu at start up,Chameleon bootloder come up as always and then i get a kernel panic,but if I boot using empire efi disc then it works,any advice on how to replace the chameleon bootloder with the empire efi.
Thank you
Click to expand...

Sorry but we do not support getting Mac running on a PC. We only can support getting it added to the bootloader via EasyBCD.

Mac OS X - EasyBCD - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

NeoSmart Technologies does not provide any instructions whatsoever on getting OS X installed. EasyBCD only boots into OS X, nothing more, nothing less.
 
Thats such a cop out to say that you don't support booting into mac from a pc. The fact is that you implemented a way to boot into mac on a pc and should support a way to change the boot loader from chameleon rc4 to any other boot loader someone wishes to use to the same thing your program says it does "boots into mac on a pc". I am one of those people that need the answer to this question also because chameleon rc4 is junk with snow leopard and even worse with lion. I need to use any other boot loader out there besides the one your program uses to effectively boot into my lion install and your program either doesn't allow it or you wont tell us how to do it. Why would you put that option in there in the first place if you don't support it? all we want to know is how to change from the boot loader you provided with easy bcd to a different one. we aren't asking how to put mac on our pc or how to even boot into mac from a pc we are asking how to work with your program to use a different boot loader that you didn't even provide. Its like saying you wont help use easybcd because you know our windows xp/vista/7 install is not legal when its designed for windows7. the legality of our software is not your concern as long as it didn't come from your company. If you make a product you should fully support it not this horse crap of you make something capable of something and then say you don't support it. As you can tell the ridiculousness of your statement has angered at least one person me and left myself and I'm sure many others up against a brick wall.
 
If someone says "please help me get this pirated software working", we will not place ourselves in the position of being an accessory to a criminal act. It's not a question of the software not being capable, we just don't do it.
As to the problems booting into a Mac, that's a different issue.
When the "boots into mac on a PC" statement was made, it was true.
Unfortunately, forces beyond our control, (let's call them iForce) keep changing the way their software works and decline to publish (for their own reasons - perhaps for this exact purpose)) what those changes are.
With no access to their code or design, we are unable to make anything more than "best efforts" to respond to such changes no matter how willing our overworked author might be (He's a Mac user too btw)
 
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Insulting the developers and support moderators isn't a good way to get what you want. We don't really care that you've "been angered" - there are better ways of encouraging and eliciting support.
 
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