Christopher Murphy wrote:
disk0=256GB, I'm assuming that's the SSD with both OS X and Windows on it. The GPT and MBR are not in sync, but the hybrid MBR #2 entry is valid so it should be able to boot Windows. What happens if you zap PRAM, allow boot back to OS X, and then look in the Startup disk panel? Is there a Windows option in there or not?
Ok. I zapped the PRAM. I directly restarted and held option and Windows wasn't present in the menu. I used rEFInd to try to boot Windows on the partition and I got "BOOTMGR is missing. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart." (which didn't work). I then restarted again - it booted into the recovery partition (weird). Restarted again holding option and the menu included Windows, but had the same message.
Christopher Murphy wrote:
Possible problem: I don't know that you can just image the DVD installer onto an e.g. 8GB partition. I think there is a way to create a "rescue disk" of sorts for Windows, but I've never done this so I can't tell you how to do it. If you can figure out how to create such a thing, or a minimal install of Windows, that could go on the SSD, and then use fdisk's flag command to remove the active bit (boot flag) on that partition. I haven't tested this exact combination so I don't know that it'll work. But if it doesn't, it's possible to copy the MBR boot strap code to a file, and then erase that boot strap code. It sounds difficult, it's actually easy, as long as you get the command exactly right. If you get it wrong... well, just don't get it wrong. Cross that bridge if we get to it. The fdisk flag command is way easier and less risky.
In looking for a way to create the recovery partition I stumbled upon this thread: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=601414&page=2 . Post 27 (reproduced minus a beginning quote):
Infrared wrote:
I installed Windows 7 without using a DVD. These are the steps I used.
(1) I created a 4GB FAT partition on my Leopard hard drive.
(2) I opened the Win7 ISO in Finder and copied the contents to that partition.
(3) The partition was made active and bootable.
(4) I booted off the partition and ran the installer.
Step 3 requires putting a Vista/Win7 compatible Volume Boot Record at
the head of the partition. You can do this in VMWare by using the Win7
ISO as a recovery disc (bootrec.exe /fixboot):
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392
I already had Server 2008 installed on another disk. I created the FAT
partion from there using Disk Management, and made it active. Doing
that apparently set up the VBR correctly.
This was a long time ago (Jan 2009), but I've seen other references to just copying over the files to a partition created by BCA and getting it to install Windows. The .iso includes files called "bootmgr" and "bootmgr.efi" at top level, so this seems possible to me. (I'm not sure about using VMWare (or Parallels) to write the Volume Boot Record, but the link suggests Bootrec.exe helps troubleshoot the "Bootmgr is Missing" issue. That's probably what's stopping me from booting now.)
So I think my plan is:
1. Get Windows booting on the SSD. I think this requires writing a VBR at the head of this partition, which I'm not really sure how to accomplish. I'll try with Parallels and see if I can follow the steps on that Microsoft support page. It seems the VBR is written in the first sector of an individual partition, so hopefully Parallels won't be stopped from accessing it.
2. Clear out that partition (not format, just trash all Windows files) and place the installer files on the partition. I'm not worried about it remaining 20GB instead of formatting to ~8GB because most of it will be empty and I generally try to keep 30-40 GB free on the SSD.
3. Convert the partition map of the HDD to MBR. My understanding is that this can be done without losing data using gdisk (I can retransfer from an external but I don't particularly want to wait for the nearly 400 GB to make the transfer from my external drive). Because I only have three partitions and one is the EFI partition, I assume this should not require any partition to be destroyed (is that correct?). Additionally, will the recovery partition still work from an MBR only disk?
4. Install Windows from the (hopefully) bootable Windows Installer created in step 2 to a partition on the HDD. Do I need to make this partition first externally? Can DiskUtility do this, or do I need to find another way?
Thanks again for all of your help thus far. I think my next steps are compatible with what you suggested (though I don't intend to migrate the Windows volume, just to use it to install on the other drive). Do you see any major problems with this?
