Windows 7 only boots through Chimera, which is in other drive. Why?

[pic10F206]

Hi,

I'm asking this for educational purposes only. I've been using my Hackintosh for 1 year now. I boot without problems both ML and Win7 with Chimera.

My 2 drives are configured in this way:

- 120GB disk with Mountain Lion and Chimera
- 1TB disk with Windows 7


- 120GB disk is partitioned as follows: EFI partition (200MB); ML partition (120GB)
- 1TB disk is partitioned as follows: Boot (100MB/active); Windows itself (150GB); Storage partition (850GB)


If I enter the BIOS and change the boot order to boot from the Windows 7 drive it gives me an error: "reboot and select proper boot device". It seems that I can only boot Windows if I set the BIOS to boot from the 120GB drive and let Chimera do the work. I would like to know why I can't boot from the Windows drive anymore, given that it has a boot partition marked as active.

Thanks for your time,
Pic10F206

 

[RehabMan]

Hi,

I'm asking this for educational purposes only. I've been using my Hackintosh for 1 year now. I boot without problems both ML and Win7 with Chimera.

My 2 drives are configured in this way:

- 120GB disk with Mountain Lion and Chimera
- 1TB disk with Windows 7


- 120GB disk is partitioned as follows: EFI partition (200MB); ML partition (120GB)
- 1TB disk is partitioned as follows: Boot (100MB/active); Windows itself (150GB); Storage partition (850GB)


If I enter the BIOS and change the boot order to boot from the Windows 7 drive it gives me an error: "reboot and select proper boot device". It seems that I can only boot Windows if I set the BIOS to boot from the 120GB drive and let Chimera do the work. I would like to know why I can't boot from the Windows drive anymore, given that it has a boot partition marked as active.

Thanks for your time,
Pic10F206

It could be that the master boot record for Windows is not on the 1TB disk and instead was placed by the Windows installer to the 120GB disk, and then later overwritten by Chimera. Windows would probably do that if you had the 120GB disk as your boot drive when you installed Windows. The only way to verify would be to look at the boot sector itself to see.

You could "fix" it using the Windows program bootsect, but it is really not necessary unless you plan to remove the 120GB drive and go with Windows only.

 

[pic10F206]

Thanks for your help RehabMan,

I was going to try your fix but I wanted to do it safely. I opened the case and unplugged the 120GB disk so Windows couldn't mess with Chimera. To my surprise Windows booted from the 1TB disk without a problem. Maybe the problem is the order in which I plugged the drives to the SATA ports in the motherboard? (Maybe I've just said something stupid)

I don't actually need to change anything, I'm just curious about it.

Thanks
Pic10F206

 

[RehabMan]

Thanks for your help RehabMan,

I was going to try your fix but I wanted to do it safely. I opened the case and unplugged the 120GB disk so Windows couldn't mess with Chimera. To my surprise Windows booted from the 1TB disk without a problem. Maybe the problem is the order in which I plugged the drives to the SATA ports in the motherboard? (Maybe I've just said something stupid)

I don't actually need to change anything, I'm just curious about it.

Thanks
Pic10F206

Maybe just a buggy BIOS...

 

[pic10F206]

Maybe just a buggy BIOS...

Makes sense, this wouldn't be the first time that the BIOS makes something strange.

Thanks a lot for your comments,
pic10F206

 

[pic10F206]

Maybe just a buggy BIOS...

I checked Zotac website for BIOS updates, downloaded latest one and that solved the problem