Windows On Mac :: REFIt Not Showing CDs - Triple Boot
Mar 25, 2009
I've got rEFIt installed, and a semi-successful triple-boot system: Leopard, Vista 64-bit, and XP 32-bit (partition order; XP was installed before Vista). I've got only two issues with it, which might be related. First, rEFIt hasn't shown boot discs since XP was installed. Second, I can't boot into Vista directly; Vista installed BOOTMGR to the XP partition, and is using that; I can only chain-load, which is precisely what I was hoping to avoid by using rEFIt. If it's not possible to directly boot Vista, I'd just as soon uninstall rEFIt, but how do I know the XP partition will be the one that shows up when I press option at startup?
I was just about to order Snow Leopard, but then it hit me. Could it screw up rEFIt and my triple booting-ness? I asked my friend who is also using rEFIt and they think it could mess things up. What's your opinion, will it do no harm, or will it? And if it does, should I still get Snow Leopard? It was a bit of a pain installing everything, and I've just finished installing 80GB of games onto my Windows partition, so obviously I don't want that getting wiped or unable to boot!
I do not have ubuntu, but I have seen people talking about booting with and customizing rEFIt here, and this seems like a knowledgeable place to seek advice. So here's my problem: I have a macbook pro on which I have OSX 10.5.8 and Windows7 x64 (installed through bootcamp 3.1). I downloaded rEFIt and tried to modify the rEFIt interface following the instructions here: [URL] After trying to change the background (hostname.bmg) to a different image rEFIt opened to show the new background (.bmg file) but nothing else (no mac or windows logos like previously) so I can't select an OS to boot to!!
I can still hold down the option key during startup to bring up the regular bootcamp menu which allows me to choose between my bootcamp partition (with windows 7) and what is now called the rEFIt partition (previously called Macintosh HD before I installed rEFIt) So I CAN boot to windows, but cannot boot into OSX without going through rEFIt, which is not showing me any options to choose from. The modifications I made to rEFIt were through the rEFIt.const file in the rEFIt folder in the efi folder on my Mac partition. This const file now reads:
I can see and read my mac partition in windows, but cannot save to it to reverse these changes I made to the .const file. I was also hoping that the timeout in rEFIt would automatically talk me into OSX even though I cannot see any icons, but after 5+ minutes waiting on rEFIt nothing happens. Also, I made sure not to list badges under hideui so they should still be shown...........
I would like to triple boot my uMacbook Pro. I currently have Mac OSX and Windows XP SP3 installed on it. I would like to add another partition for Windows 7 (just want to try out 7 before making the real switch later on), but I found that when I try to run the boot camp assistant, it gave me no options to partition the drive further more, and only showed me to restore the drive back into one partition. How can I partition the already two partitioned drive into one more partition? Would I do this through disk utility? Or do I do it through Windows 7 installer?
My new 27" i7 iMac is arriving this week, and I'm trying to get everything lined up for the great awakening. Here's my situation:
My wife will use this beauty for her work during the day, and will need to use a resource-intensive, windoze-specific genomic software program that is 32-bit only. I of course will also be on it, using mostly OS X but needing to run some windoze-specific applications myself, and I can go 64-bit. I *do* have VMware Fusion 3.0 ready to go, but I'd prefer to use it with the BootCamp partitions instead of as virtual machines because this is better for my backup situation. Also, a bootable external HDD is not an option at the moment, so there's that.
So, to my question: Can I triple-boot with Win7 32-bit and 64-bit? I've read this guide but it's for XP and Vista. I have reason to believe it's possible with adequate preparation, using Disk Utility to partition the disk right away and going from there. I'm just worried about unforeseen issues. I'm thinking if it works I will somehow boot into windows and then somehow be given the option of going into 32- or 64-bit. If it doesn't, I guess I might have to go the virtual route for my 64-bit'-ness.
I set up a triple-boot system on my MBP (Early 2008) with OS X SL, ubuntu 9.10 and Windows 7 Home Premium. I have a 500GB Hard Drive, and allocated 100 GB for Mac OS X, 60 GB for Windows 7, 40 GB for ubuntu, and the remainder I formatted as FAT32 for storage to share between the three operating systems (to hold iTunes and iPhoto libraries, movies, etc).
I use rEFIt as my bootloader, and all three operating systems happily load whenever I choose them to. The problem lies with the FAT32 storage partition. OS X recognizes it quite nicely and I use it regularly. Windows and ubuntu, however, do not mount it. What's more, Windows Disk Manager identifies the space as unallocated space.
I am trying to follow the following guide to do a triple boot, but I am stuck in Windows 7 installation triple boot snow leopard, windows 7, & ubuntu
I have done the following: 1. Did a clean installation of OS X Snow Leopard on hard drive (Not yet partitioned the hard drive)
2. Installed rEFIt I am not sure what the poster means by making sure it works by pressing the option button. I am assuming it means that I will be able to see the options I can choose when I press option? (I do see options to pick either "Hard Drive" or whatever disc in the DVD)
3. Partitioned 30 GB (or was it 40 GB? x.x I forgot sorry) space in Boot Camp Assistant for Windows installation. Chose the option to install Windows later.
4. Inserted OS X Snow Leopard installation disc and boot from there.
5. Opened up the Disk Utility and partitioned a hard drive (called Hard Drive_2) via the Partition section as instructed by the guide. Formatted in MAc OS Extended (Journaled)
So now, in that area I see "Hard Drive", "Hard Drive_2" and "BOOT CAMP" (so I am assuming that is what the poster meant by "3 partitions".
6. Restarted the computer with Windows installation disc.
Problems occur right here: Problem 1: I do not see anything called "C something" as the poster said. But I do see something called "Boot Camp"
Problem 2: All the partitions that are available says that "Windows 7 can't be installed". So my question is am I supposed to "delete" a specific partition to install it?
I have pictures of the screen which I will upload later if this isn't clear enough.
I've followed the Cnet guide on installing Windows 7 from a USB drive, installed refit, but I can't boot into it? All I see is Macintosh HD, I have my USB drive plugged in, how can I boot from it, REFIT wont show up?
Long story short, I wanted my Mini to dual boot Ubuntu 9.04 and OSX, and the guides I was finding said to use rEFIt. This worked fine until I allowed Ubuntu to install a bunch of updates, which must have done something to my partition table, as now I can no longer boot OSX or Ubuntu, and the CD I stuck in there won't eject either (so I can't get my OSX install disc to even load). Is there a rEFIt command from the shell I can run to eject the disc and try getting my OSX install disc in there?
Really stuck - When I cold boot, rEFIt gives me choices of OSX or Ubuntu, both just spin and die during boot. Tried holding space bar, c key, option key, left mouse, all on cold boot and upon selecting OSX option from rEFIt menu, no luck getting disc to eject. I followed the guide here: [URL] Did I do something wrong when I let Ubuntu 9.04 self-update? It REALLY seems to have screwed up my partition setup.
I have done some research on triple boot systems, and it appears that a third OS must be run virtually, but all the information I came across was a few years old. Microsoft is running a deal right now on Windows 7 for students so I would like to pick up a copy and try it out.
Is it possible to run 3 operating systems through Boot Camp 3.0? I am not interested in running a virtual OS.
Current Setup: 13" macbook pro Snow Leopard and Windows XP through Boot Camp
I've been trying to get this working with a 2 drive setup on my mid 2010 i7. The biggest issue I'm having is that the windows 7/Linux distros won't boot from an external usb cd drive with the 2nd drive installed. This works flawlessly with just one HDD and the normal SD installed. Refit is installed. The windows install gets stuck at "windows is loading files", it hangs while trying to load disk.sys. As for Linux, refit complains that apple's efi firmware does not well support legacy booting. Has anyone successfully booted win7/Linux from an external USB cd drive?
Well, my MacBook Pro arrives in a few days and I wanting to triple-boot OSX, XP and Ubuntu. It's got a 500GB hard drive so I'm wanting to split the partitions up into 250GB, 200GB, and 50GB. I need to have all 3 on the same computer.I'm following this short tutorial:Quote:# Make sure you use Leopard and have it updated (10.5.2).
#Start BootCamp and create a partition for Windows XP (15G is enough).# Don't install it through Bootcamp.# Insert Windows CD and reboot holding C when you hear the beeping sound.# Windows installation should start, follow the usual installation process of Windows.# If it reboots during installation, you press ALT during reboot so that you can pick Windows installation.# After Windows is installed, insert your Leopard DVD and it should install all your Apple drivers and stuff.# Update your Apple Software (there will be an option on the start menu to do so).
# Updte Windows XP.# Now that Windows is installed, get back to MacOS, we are going to install Linux now.# Start Disk Utility and create a new partition on Machintosh HD, name it Linux# Insert Linux CD and reboot holding C# On Linux installation, delete the partition you created (Linux) because its HFS, and set it as ext3 and mount /. Don't create swap (I know its going to warn you, but ignore it).# At the last step of setup, click advanced because you need to change where GRUB is going to be installed, choose sdaX (which X is your Linux partition).# Let it install Ubuntu.# Get back to MacOS, install rEFIt, reboot and run the partition manager of rEFIt, which should take care of every detail of booting for each OS.
#If XP was installed before the partition change, it will need boot.ini to be edited to change its partition from 3 to 4.# Reboot and that's it.Has anyone else done this? And is there an easier way? What problems have those of you that did this run into?
I love osx dont get me wrong but i have some programs i need windows for. I want to know i want to load the latest ubuntu with it for a triple boot by redoing the windows partition will it get its own icon when you hold option to choose your hd or when you choose windows it will show grub or lilo the boot loaders for ubuntu
I am trying to get my Macbook Pro (15" 2.53 GHz, 4GB) to play nicely with Windows 7. To get a valid copy of Windows I got in on the Ultimate Steal program last year. For those who don't know what it is, basically if you're a student you could get Win7 Pro Upgrade on the cheap. Before this I didn't have any copy of Windows on my laptop. I had to go through a huge pain in the ass process of installing XP 32-bit > Vista 32-bit > Vista 64-bit > and then upgrade that to Win7. I finally had a 75GB partition of Win7 64-bit installed, when booting up holding down Option I got to select either the Macintosh HD or Windows so everything's rosey.
I wanted to do some virtualization so I didn't have to reboot all the time so I grabbed an eval copy of VMWare Fusion. I kept getting an error about not being able to load the BootCamp partition, getting an error of Resource Busy. When I look at the partition in Disk Utililty the name of it is disk0s2 instead of BootCamp like it used to on my old Macbook. Trying to mount the mount fails and for some reason the partition shows as exFt. Going back into Windows show that it is in fact partitioned as NTFS.
Well not wanting to go through the same install hell that I did before I used Windows built-in functionality to create a system image as well as created a system restore disk. I blew away the bootcamp partition and launched Boot Camp Assistant, recreated the partition and stuck in the System Restore disk. Boot Camp Assistant restarted to install the OS and everything seemed to go well. I can no boot into Win7 and Mac but the partition on the Mac side still shows as disk0s2 and exFat. It *is* now mountable but it shows that the drive is completely empty (107 gb free, 1.8mb used). Another weird issue, the partition isn't 107gb, it's 80gb. And there is definitely more than 1.8mb used. Obviously VMWare still doesn't like this and I'm just stuck.
I managed to finally installed 3 OSes into my mac mini but not all in the same disk. I basically dual boot windows xp and windows 7 from internal disk and SL from external FW drive with another partition for data.
So far I have done this without installing bootcamp into my windows. I partitioned the internal drive with Disk Utility and formatted with NTFS-3G. I don't want to install via bootcamp as bootcamp may mess up my drive and render my windows unbootable. So I am trying to install all the drivers from SL DVD one by one. So far so good as I managed to install the Broadcom network driver and the Nvidia Graphic driver. Can you guys advice me on how to proceed at this stage? I basically copied all the drivers from my SL disk onto my wndows desktop and trying to retrieve each driver. But there are so many. Which do I install specific to mac mini.
If this is done correctly, when I press option key at startup, I am presented with windows and OSX. When I select windows, it will again give another option to either boot into windows xp or windows 7.Not sure if anyone has done this. But I have read many people doing triple boot on one internal HDD. Thought this is easier but you do need an external drive though.Any comments and advice on how to proceed to fully setup my triple boot?
Running a 2010 MBP Core i5 2.4GHz. I had Windows 7 originally installed. Gave me wireless problems and I gave up. Erased the partition. Installed Windows XP and everything was fine.
I got a new copy of W7 Professional x64. I installed it "over" the existing XP, though it erased the partition anyways (I don't care about that).The new 7 install has been giving me the same wireless problems. I downloaded and installed the Broadcom driver. Gave me a BSOD and restarted the computer. Now I have a BSOD on start up, too. On the OSX side of things, it no longer shows any Boot Camp hard drive. It doesn't recognize it at all. Though when I hold the option key on boot, it still shows the Windows install.
1. How do I fix the BSOD problem? (All caused by installing the driver)
2. Where the heck is the Boot Camp hard drive/partition?
In my attempt to install Windows XP via Boot Camp, I accidentally inserted an SP1 disc instead of the SP2 disc that I have. The installation proceeded to the point where it does for most who attempt this: the screen where you are prompted to press ENTER. I could not proceed and therefore restarted the iMac and held down the mouse button upon start-up to remove the CD.
HERE IS THE PROBLEM:I can not boot into OS X because the keyboard shortcuts (those that might allow me to select which partition to boot from and/or reset PRAM) seem to be disabled. Instead, a reboot always ends at a black screen with a blinking DOS-esque cursor, or the prompt: "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key."
I have attempted inserting my SP2 disc at this point, to no avail. My keyboard seems to be disabled, as if the SP1 install proceeded just enough to establish itself as the boot drive without drivers for the keyboard. I've tried using all 3 USB ports, disconnecting other USB devices. Oddly, my bluetooth mouse works to eject the CD on reboot...
I created a Boot Camp Partition (an entire drive, actually) and installed XP. The install went off without a hitch ... Except, having rebooted to Mac OS X (10.6.1) there is no way to boot Windows again. Going to Preferences->Boot Disk shows no Book Camp bootable drive.
I have partitioned the harddrive on my Macbook Pro, one partition for OS X and one for Ubuntu, and then i use rEFIt to choose between the two. But some time in performing this process, the time between you turn on the mac, until the EFI(or now, rEFIt) is on, takes up til 15 seconds now. Before, it was about instant.
This is a huge problem for me, but I havent found any way to fix it. Any ideas?
First made an image of the x64 Vista and copied it over the network to my Macbook Air folder. Second installed bootcamp and created a partition without installing Vista.Third I copied the files from the ISO onto the new partition.Fourth I installed rEFIt and shut down and re-powered on the MBA.Fifth I chose from rEFIt the second windows icon, "Boot bootcdboot.efi from BOOTCAMP". (I skip over "Boot bootmgr.efi from BOOTCAMP" which doesn't work.)Sixth see the "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD" screen. I press a key.Seventh I see the "Windows is loading files..." completion bar progress all the way to the end. It gets to the last character and the machine stops.
I just installed Windows 7 via Parallels Desktop on my Mac. I used to have XP SP3 before this where I had it setup that no folders from Windows would show on the OSX desktop, but now that I've installed Windows 7, the folders from Windows are showing on the OSX desktop again. I forgot how to configure this, so can anyone please tell me how to do this?
My boot camp do not work "This disc can not be partitioned because it is impossible to move some of its files." What to do? Is there a way to partition mac without boot camp.
This is the 1st time i got a Mac , i bought a black Macbook 2.4GHz some days ago .
I installed Windows Vista Ultimate using Boot Camp , and all went smoothly .
Only 1 prob is when restarting , i have to wait too long for the Windows to log on , i think about 1min with the black screen.
And if i want to boot in Mac OS , i have to push down the D button or the Alt, it takes quite a long time too .
So do you guys have any solution to this problem ? I want to get rid of the waiting time, way too much.
And do you know how to make my Macbook jump right in the choosing section when it starts ? ( so that i dont have to push down any button when it starts )
I have been trying to install Windows 7 (yes, legit copy) to my Macbook Pro the whole day, but I keep on getting this error message saying "Press any key to boot from cd or dvd . . . ."
When I press any key on the keyboard, nothing happens. I know this copy works because I've tried this on VMWare 3. (I'm going to Boot Camp of BIOSHOCK!)
What I've Tried:
Deleted partition, recreate partition and choose the Windows 7 disk as startup disk.
Well I installed Vista Ultimate using boot camp on my 27 inch iMac using 10.6.2 and now I can't get it to boot in OSX. I tried holding the command key when rebooting but it just goes into the windows part. Looks like windows took over. Does anybody know how I can get it to boot in Leopard?
Have the new 15" MBP with i7 Processor. I had another MBP with a 7200RPM drive and installed drive in the new i7 Mac. Computer was working fine until I installed Windows via Boot Camp. I can't boot to the Mac Partition any more, the partition is there but when you try to boot to it you just see the Apple logo and NO circle. I cannot boot to the install CDs or a bootable external drive. I target disk mode the computer and used another computer to boot using the drive in the i7 unit and it's fine and I can see all the information. I tried booting the i7 into single user mode and saw the following message:
