Win7 and ML on same SSD (how to start)

[jschma]

I'm not familiar with WinSetupFromUSB. Why use a 3rd party tool when Microsoft already provides one?

Can BIOS boot your USB stick (in BIOS mode maybe).
Have you verified your USB stick works in another computer (that can boot in BIOS mode)?

Fair enough The tool provided my MS didn't work for me. At the end I got the message "wasn't able to make it a bootable usb device. startover"
The other tool (recommended in many forums) worked on first try.

I only have Macs here, not one real windows machine. So it's hard to try... but I'll find a way.

Just out of curiosity, is it easier making win7 run on a second harddrive and get it into chimera after this?

 

[RehabMan]

Fair enough The tool provided my MS didn't work for me. At the end I got the message "wasn't able to make it a bootable usb device. startover"
The other tool (recommended in many forums) worked on first try.

I only have Macs here, not one real windows machine. So it's hard to try... but I'll find a way.

Just out of curiosity, is it easier making win7 run on a second harddrive and get it into chimera after this?

Hmm... I've always had luck with the MS tool. Of course, I was running it on bare-metal, not a VM.
Did you try the F10 (refresh) thing with your DVD?

I'm not sure installing on a second drive makes things any easier -- just different.
I've got it both ways here:
- Desktop (Win7+Win8 on ssdA, Lion/ML/SL/Ubuntu on ssdB)
- Laptop (Win7+ML+Ubuntu on ssdA)... and if I put my HDD caddy in (Lion+SL+random test stuff on hddB)

Bummer the UEFI BIOS is making things so difficult on people.
I guess that's how it is with new tech -- always half baked when it first comes out.

 

[jschma]

Hmm... I've always had luck with the MS tool. Of course, I was running it on bare-metal, not a VM.
Did you try the F10 (refresh) thing with your DVD?

I'm not sure installing on a second drive makes things any easier -- just different.
I've got it both ways here:
- Desktop (Win7+Win8 on ssdA, Lion/ML/SL/Ubuntu on ssdB)
- Laptop (Win7+ML+Ubuntu on ssdA)... and if I put my HDD caddy in (Lion+SL+random test stuff on hddB)

Bummer the UEFI BIOS is making things so difficult on people.
I guess that's how it is with new tech -- always half baked when it first comes out.

Wow, that's a lot OS your running on So my only Problem is still UEFI mode. I tried so many things to fix it, I'm not 100% sure if I tried the refresh a second try, but I'll do so tomorrow.

I guess that's how it is with new tech -- always half baked when it first comes out.

Yeah, like bananas shipped out green

I'm kind of baffled here what else to try, would it help to prepare the win7 partition into NTFS using ubuntu live cd? If it's already NTFS, maybe it could work using my DVD again to install it...or will I get the uefi issue again?

 

[RehabMan]

I'm kind of baffled here what else to try, would it help to prepare the win7 partition into NTFS using ubuntu live cd? If it's already NTFS, maybe it could work using my DVD again to install it...or will I get the uefi issue again?

I like to pre-format the partition as NTFS (using Linux gparted, followed by gptsync) before running the Windows installer -- it results in the hybrid MBR/GPT being better "in sync."

But that really isn't the root of your problem. Your issue is with booting the installer media in UEFI mode. My understanding of the Windows installer is that if it is booted in UEFI mode, it does a UEFI install. BTW, I've discovered some BIOSes call this "Legacy Mode." See any options around Legacy mode?

It is probably possible to take a UEFI install and transition it to a BIOS install. These are just files on the hard disk, after all. But I think in order to do so, you would have to get it to boot in BIOS mode because I think the behavior of BCDEDIT changes depending on how the system was booted (UEFI vs. BIOS). And you would want BCDEDIT operating in BIOS mode... Kind of a catch-22.

I'm still completely surprised/baffled that there isn't a way to force booting your media in BIOS mode.

One other thing you could try... Remove the EFI files on Windows installer USB stick. Maybe it will BIOS-boot the stick if it doesn't find the EFI boot files...

 

[RehabMan]

BTW, a final option would be to try to use the Clover boot loader, which is a UEFI boot loader, and can load Windows in UEFI mode...

I tried a few months ago to make Clover work, because if I could get it to work, it would make things much simpler, in that I wouldn't have to use hybrid MBR/GPT any more -- just pure GPT. But then I'd have to upgrade my server to Windows Server 2012 Essentials (my current server running Windows Home Server 2011 can't backup pure GPT drives). At any rate, when I tried, I couldn't get it to work (Clover), but it has been under constant development so it might be an option for you.

 

[jschma]

I like to pre-format the partition as NTFS (using Linux gparted, followed by gptsync) before running the Windows installer -- it results in the hybrid MBR/GPT being better "in sync."

But that really isn't the root of your problem. Your issue is with booting the installer media in UEFI mode. My understanding of the Windows installer is that if it is booted in UEFI mode, it does a UEFI install. BTW, I've discovered some BIOSes call this "Legacy Mode." See any options around Legacy mode?

It is probably possible to take a UEFI install and transition it to a BIOS install. These are just files on the hard disk, after all. But I think in order to do so, you would have to get it to boot in BIOS mode because I think the behavior of BCDEDIT changes depending on how the system was booted (UEFI vs. BIOS). And you would want BCDEDIT operating in BIOS mode... Kind of a catch-22.

I'm still completely surprised/baffled that there isn't a way to force booting your media in BIOS mode.

One other thing you could try... Remove the EFI files on Windows installer USB stick. Maybe it will BIOS-boot the stick if it doesn't find the EFI boot files...

I'll try to find out if there's a way to get into legacy mode with my mainboard.

In the root of the USB stick I found a folder called "efi" I'd just rename it so the installer won't be able to find it anymore. I'll try this, I'm back here in about 2h and let you know if I succeeded

Thanks again and best regards,
Jan

 

[jschma]

I assume you intend to install Windows to the first disk (disk0), partition 3 "Windows 7"

Here's what you do:
- Use Disk Utility in ML to format disk0 partition 3 as exFAT (That will give you a hybrid GPT/MBR, if you run fdisk as above, you will notice this)
- Now reboot into the Windows installer and choose custom install, format the exFAT partition as NTFS and proceed to install Windows there. Make sure you boot the Windows install media (DVD or USB flash) in BIOS mode, not UEFI. Disable UEFI if you need to.
- After you install Windows, the Win7 installer will have overwritten your Chimera stage0 boot record, so you need to boot your ML install via the Unibeast USB flash and re-install Chimera using Multibeast
- Now when you restart, you should see both Win7 and ML in your boot selection (press space during timeout or enable Instant Menu)

Hi RehabMan!

Got some great news, I installed Bootcamp (win7) on one of my other macs and generated a new usb stick with bootable win7. With this one I was finally able to boot and install win7 on the second partition (I previously formated this partition with diskutility into exFat.). Win7 was installed successfully. After that I followed the steps quoted above:

- boot via Unibeast USB flash
- reinstall chimera using Multibeast
- reboot
- press space during timeout

But right after that I only see my first partition with ML. But there's no win7 partition...that's weird...do you have any idea what went wrong? Again something with this UEFI issue?

Best regards,
Jan

EDIT
I ran diskutil in terminal and got the following output

Last login: Sat Jan  5 22:18:56 on consolejans-mac-pro:~ jan$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *120.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Lion                    60.0 GB    disk0s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data                         59.5 GB    disk0s3
jans-mac-pro:~ jan$

The content of org.chameleon.Boot.plist is as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>EthernetBuiltIn</key>
    <string>Yes</string>
    <key>GenerateCStates</key>
    <string>Yes</string>
    <key>GeneratePStates</key>
    <string>Yes</string>
    <key>GraphicsEnabler</key>
    <string>No</string>
    <key>Kernel</key>
    <string>mach_kernel</string>
    <key>Kernel Flags</key>
    <string>npci = 0x2000 darkwake=0</string>
    <key>Legacy Logo</key>
    <string>Yes</string>
    <key>Timeout</key>
    <string>2</string>
    <key>UseKernelCache</key>
    <string>Yes</string>
</dict>
</plist>

 

[RehabMan]

I can only guess that the GPT side of the partition table is not up-to-date with respect to the format of the NTFS Windows partition (still thinks it is exFAT, perhaps). One thing I do with all my installs is I format the partition NTFS in Linux gparted, then use gptsync or gdisk (gptsync is easier, gdisk is more powerful) to create the hybrid MBR. Avoids them getting out of sync. So you could reformat in gparted, run gptsync, re-install Windows, and then hopefully Chimera sees the NTFS Windows partition.

One of these days, I'll go through that exact scenario and figure out what the heck is going on because this keeps coming up and it would be nice to figure out. But right now I don't have a free hard drive to wipe out for a test.

 

[jschma]

I can only guess that the GPT side of the partition table is not up-to-date with respect to the format of the NTFS Windows partition (still thinks it is exFAT, perhaps). One thing I do with all my installs is I format the partition NTFS in Linux gparted, then use gptsync or gdisk (gptsync is easier, gdisk is more powerful) to create the hybrid MBR. Avoids them getting out of sync. So you could reformat in gparted, run gptsync, re-install Windows, and then hopefully Chimera sees the NTFS Windows partition.

One of these days, I'll go through that exact scenario and figure out what the heck is going on because this keeps coming up and it would be nice to figure out. But right now I don't have a free hard drive to wipe out for a test.

That's kind of frustrating here. As win7 didn't show up in Chimera I used Ubuntu (gparted) to delete the partition and to create a new one in NTFS. Now I wanted to use my win7 usb again to install it. In win7 setup I'm kind of stuck again. When choosing the partition on which to install win7, i choose the ntfs for sure, I got the error "win7 can't be install on this drive. the drive corresponds to GPT-Partition..."

I thought it'd be the best way to use gpared... but it's still not working :/

Best regards,
Jan

 

[RehabMan]

That's kind of frustrating here. As win7 didn't show up in Chimera I used Ubuntu (gparted) to delete the partition and to create a new one in NTFS. Now I wanted to use my win7 usb again to install it. In win7 setup I'm kind of stuck again. When choosing the partition on which to install win7, i choose the ntfs for sure, I got the error "win7 can't be install on this drive. the drive corresponds to GPT-Partition..."

I thought it'd be the best way to use gpared... but it's still not working :/

Best regards,
Jan

If you use gparted, you have to use gptsync (after any gparted edit) to create the hybrid. gparted always edits to pure GPT.