Hide Partition issues - BOOTMGR is missing Snow Leopard

[e60]

Hey guys,

first of all thank you for the awesome work! Chameleon 2 RC5 is working perfectly for me, except one little thing that is really frustrating me. If I try to hide my NTFS data Partition using the <key>Hide Partition</key> string, I am always getting a "BOOTMGR is missing" error trying to boot up Snow Leopard. Without this string everything is working perfectly and Snow and even Windows is booting flawlessly. My com.apple.Boot.plist looks like this ...

Code: [Select]

<dict>
<key>DropSSDT</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>GenerateCStates</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>GeneratePStates</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>-v</string>
<key>PCIRootUID</key>
<string>0</string>
<key>Hide Partition</key>
<string>hd(2,4)</string>
</dict>
</plist>
Could someone please point me to the mistake? By the way, Snow Leopard is located on hd(2,2) and Windows 7 on hd(2,3). Many thanks in advance!

[Zeppo]

AFAIK, you are successfully hiding your boot partition.
Although you might have done the right thing in terms of partitions like you see them in your OS, Chameleon is having a different view. If  I am not mistaken, it sees itself as disk0s1. And all other drives are shifted. In example: my Win7 Data is disk0s2 but I need to hide 2,2 in my com.apple.Boot.plist.
My Snow is on disk2s2 but my com.apple.Boot.plist defines my Default partition as 1,2. And it still boots from disk2s2.
So, you just need to find the right diskXsX and you'll be fine.

[Gringo Vermelho]

Correct. Do not rely on Apple Disk Utility to report the partition order correctly, as far as Chameleon is concerned, disk order is relative to where Chameleon is installed, and this doesn't always match with physical or BIOS drive order.

[e60]

Thank you two for the quick reply! I did not use diskutil to identify the partition, I used "tab" on the Chameleon bootmenu as you can see here ...



Is there any other possibility that could couse this behavior?

[Zeppo]

Sorry, not that I know of.
You still should experiment with partition numbers. Like 1,2 instead of 2,2 for OS X.
Also, in your screen shot I cannot distinguish between your Win7 System Reserved and your Win7 Data Partition. Are you sure your boot partition (System Reserved) is the one you are pointing Chameleon to?

Sorry if I am just poking blindly around. I had the same issues back than. It took me some time to solve with trial and error method. But I know now that Chameleon is kind a strange on that matter.

[e60]

Hi Zeppo,

I really glad that you're trying to help me because I've no idea what is causing the problem. Maybe some diskutil infos will help to solve the issue. My disk looks like this ...

Code: [Select]

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            150.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data                         150.0 GB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data                         699.9 GB   disk0s4

Snow Leopard is located on disk0s2, Windows 7 is installed on disk0s3 and disk0s4 contains only some data. In Chameleon they are labeled as hd 2,2 (Snow), hd 2,3 (Windows7) and hd 2,4 (data). I have used this guide to set up the Dualboot.

[Zeppo]

OK I might have a solution for you:
Usually OS X shows partitions like this:

/dev/disk0s1 (hidden EFI-Partition)
/dev/disk0s2 (System Partition)

Now you have Chameleon seeing itself as disk0s1 (or, in your case disk2s1). Hence, your other partitions should have +1 in their names.
2,3 Snow
2,4 Win7
2,5 Win Data

Since 2,4 hides your Win7 boot partition try to hide 2,5 instead of 2,4
I cannot guarantee it'll work, but it seams logical to me.

EDIT: You also might want to rename your Wndows partitions to something more distinguishable like Win7Boot and Win7Data - Chameleon will show this names on your boot screen. Easier to track what's hidden and what not.

[e60]

Hi Zeppo,

I've tried to use hd(2,5) instead if hd(2,4), but this has no effect. If took another picture from Chameleon while it is loading ...



As you can see, Chameleon sees itself on hd(0,1) and Snow on hd(2,2) where it is located. Hd(2,4) is definitively my data partion. This whole thing is very strange.

*Edit*

By the way, I am using Chameleon on a USB drive

[Zeppo]

Strange is correct. Well, I am officially out of ideas at the moment.
However, I'll look around. If I find something helpful, I'll come back here.
Sorry.

[Zane]

BootMGR is missing eh.

Just a few questions.

1. Post the specs of your PC. Do me the favor of posting the lanport model, wifi model, sound model and chipset model with the rest of your components.

2. You said you were running Chameleon off a USB drive?

3. Which did you install first? Windows or OS X?

[e60]

@Zeppo
Please excuse the delay. Thank you anyway for your contribution!

@Zane
Here are the spects:

* GA-E7AUM-DS2H (rev. 1.0)
* Chipset:............ MCP7A-U, GeForce 9400 & nForce 730i
* Onboard-GPU:... DSUB, DVI (DVI-D, Dual-Link), HDMI (HDCP)*, 64 bis 512MB Frame-Buffer (shared Memory)
* Expansion Slots:....... 1x PCIe 2.0 x16, 1x PCIe x1, 2x PCI
* Memory:... 4x DDR2, bis 16GB
* Audio:................ Realtek ALC889A, 7.1, SPDIF In/Out
* LAN:.................. Realtek RTL8211CL, PCIe-GB-Lan
*Storage Interface:........ 5x SATAII (unterstützt RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, RAID 5 and JBOD)
* Storage Interface:....... 1x ATA-100/66/33 (JMicron 368), 1x FDD (iTE IT8718), 2x IEEE 1394a (T.I. TSB43AB23)
* External IO:........... 1x PS2, 1x DVI-D, 1x DSUB, 1x HDMI, 1x IEEE 1394a, 1x RJ45, 6x USB2.0, 1x SPDIF, 1x eSATA, 6x Audio
* Internal IO:........... 2x Fan, 1x IEEE 1394a, 3x USB2.0, 1x COM, 1x LPT, SPDIF In/Out, CD-In

Chameleon is running on a 2 GB Delock USB stick, yes. First I've formated the HD with the SL Installlation Disk and after doing so I've installed Windows 7. Only then I've installed SL.