dual hard drive macbook pro, triple boot, win7 won't load

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dual hard drive macbook pro, triple boot, win7 won't load

As you have requested @ChristopherMurphy:

I've got somewhat of a unique situation (I believe).

I have a 13" Macbook Pro 9,2 (mid-2012). It came with a 750gb SATA HDD and internal optical drive. I installed a Samsung 840 Pro 256gb SSD in place of the HDD, then put the HDD in place of the optical drive. I have the system set up so that the SSD is my primary OSX drive with one single visible partition. Then I have the HDD set up so that the first 500gb is an HFS partition, and the rest is set aside for bootcamp. It was originally one 750gb single HFS partition, but then I used the boot camp assistant to section off the last 250gb for windows.

For the life of me I couldn't get a bootcamp install to work off of a Boot Camp Assistant created a x64 Win7 USB stick, until I read somewhere that I needed to actually disconnect the sata connector for my SSD. This worked, and Win7 was able to format from FAT32 to NTFS, then install and boot correctly from the HDD (with the SSD unplugged), and leave the HFS 500gb partition intact.

Then when I plugged back in the SSD, OSX can see that there is a bootable partition when I go in to "Choose Startup Disk" in SysPrefs, and if I hit the option key while booting, but all I get is a black screen with a blinking cursor. I believe that x64 Win7 is mad at me because I have changed the drive numbers that it uses to references how to boot up properly. I believe the solution may lay in running a Win7 boot repair set of commands, but I can't seem to access the Win 7 recovery console or "Repair Installation" feature using the USB stick that BCA created.

To complicate matters further, I successfully created a Ubuntu 13.04 USB stick, used rEFIt to boot off of it, and then had it split off and use the second half of my 250gb ntfs partition on the HDD to install linux.

To complicate things even further, I am using filevault2 with FIPS encryption module to encrypt both the SSD, and the HFS partition on the HDD.

I have installed rEFIt and used "bless" to have it be my boot selection menu (as instructed here: https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple/MacBookAir/2-1#EFI_and_Partitio ning). I can boot successfully into OSX, and I can boot successfully into Ubuntu. I still can't boot into Win7 though.

Here is the output from a variety of commands I've seen you ask others for: (http://pastebin.com/u3V01iWR)

mbltccmbp:~ trevorcobb$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *750.2 GB disk0

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_CoreStorage 501.8 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk0s3

4: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 124.0 GB disk0s4

5: Microsoft Basic Data 115.5 GB disk0s5

6: Linux Swap 8.5 GB disk0s6

/dev/disk1

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *250.1 GB disk1

1: EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1

2: Apple_CoreStorage 249.2 GB disk1s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk1s3

/dev/disk2

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: Apple_HFS Macintosh SSD *248.9 GB disk2

/dev/disk3

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: FDisk_partition_scheme *8.3 GB disk3

1: DOS_FAT_32 WININSTALL 8.3 GB disk3s1

/dev/disk4

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD *501.5 GB disk4

mbltccmbp:~ trevorcobb$ sudo gpt -r -v show disk0

Password:

gpt show: disk0: mediasize=750156374016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1465149168

gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0

start size index contents

0 1 MBR

1 1 Pri GPT header

2 32 Pri GPT table

34 6

40 409600 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B

409640 980102336 2 GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

980511976 262144 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

980774120 792

980774912 242186240 4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

1222961152 225603584 5 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

1448564736 16582656 6 GPT part - 0657FD6D-A4AB-43C4-84E5-0933C84B4F4F

1465147392 1743

1465149135 32 Sec GPT table

1465149167 1 Sec GPT header

mbltccmbp:~ trevorcobb$ sudo gpt -r -v show disk1

gpt show: disk1: mediasize=250059350016; sectorsize=512; blocks=488397168

start size index contents

0 1 PMBR

1 1 Pri GPT header

2 32 Pri GPT table

34 6

40 409600 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B

409640 486717952 2 GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

487127592 1269536 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

488397128 7

488397135 32 Sec GPT table

488397167 1 Sec GPT header

mbltccmbp:~ trevorcobb$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 91201/255/63 [1465149168 sectors]

Signature: 0xAA55

Starting Ending

#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [ start - size]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

1: EE 0 0 1 - 1023 254 63 [ 1 - 409639] <Unknown ID>

2: DA 25 127 15 - 1023 254 63 [ 409640 - 980102336] <Unknown ID>

3: AF 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 980511976 - 262144] HFS+

*4: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 980774912 - 242186240] HPFS/QNX/AUX

mbltccmbp:~ trevorcobb$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk1

Disk: /dev/disk1 geometry: 30401/255/63 [488397168 sectors]

Signature: 0xAA55

Starting Ending

#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [ start - size]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

1: EE 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 1 - 488397167] <Unknown ID>

2: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused

3: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused

4: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8), OSX ML, Win7 SP1, Ubuntu 13.04

Posted on Aug 27, 2013 10:50 AM

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Answer 1

Aug 27, 2013 11:02 AM in response to trevorcobb

Windows 7 is on disk0s4 and Ubuntu is on disk0s5 and disk0s6. This implies Ubuntu was installed after Windows 7. Is this correct?

There can be only one BIOS bootloader on a disk at a time, and currently it's the Ubuntu bootloader (GRUB2). So you either need to go down the rabbit hole of getting Ubuntu to EFI boot, so it uses a separate EFI bootloader, then restore the Windows bootloader. Or you need to get GRUB2 to boot not just Ubuntu but also Windows. Both are possible, both are deep rabbit holes.

To support this triple boot configuration (actually quad boot if considering disk1 also), you need to learn an incredible amount of information about partitioning and bootloaders, or get really lucky and just stumble upon a layout that just works, or bag the whole idea of baremetal booting foreign OS's and just go with using VMs.

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Answer 2

trevorcobb Author

Level 1

0 points

Aug 27, 2013 12:05 PM in response to Christopher Murphy

Ubuntu was installed after Windows 7, that is correct.

Ubuntu and Win7 are installed on the final 250gb section of the 750gb hdd that I have connected to the Optical Drive SATA connector using a HDD optibay caddy.

i can successfully boot into the Filevault2 unlock screen, then into OSX on the SSD using the stock Apple EFI or rEFIt.

i can also successfully boot into Ubuntu using rEFIt.

The Apple EFI bootloader and rEFIt both can see the Windows installation and claim to be able to boot it, but it just hangs at a black screen with blinking cursor. 😟

i have quite a bit of experience messing with partition tables in troubleshooting a friend's borked dell laptop that had a bunch of dell custom partitions on the drive. i've used Hiren's bootcd and many of the tools on it before. This EFI GPT + MBR stuff is a whole different animal for me though.

Can I use any of the commands listed below from a windows 7 recovery USB stick?

Bcdboot C:\windows

BOOTREC /FIXMBR

BOOTREC /FIXBOOT

BOOTREC /REBUILDBCD

BOOTREC /SCANOS

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Answer 3

Aug 27, 2013 12:26 PM in response to trevorcobb

a. Upon installing Ubuntu, the Windows 7 bootstrap code in the MBR was removed in favor of GRUB2 code.

b. rEFIt is no longer maintained, rEFInd should be used instead.

c. rEFInd might be able to directly load bootmgr.exe, obviating the need for the removed Windows MBR bootstrap code. I haven't tested this.

d. rEFInd, without GRUB, but with some configuration, can directly boot the linux kernel using the EFI STUB bootloader build into recent kernel versions (after I think kernel 3.2). Some of Apple's hardware is cooperative booting in EFI mode, while others aren't so this may or may not work better than what you're doing now.

e. The recovery options you mention aren't yet indicated; in particular if you use /fixmbr that will blow away the GRUB code in the MBR and while Windows will then probably boot, Ubuntu will not. Again, only one BIOS bootloader is possible per disk. Either it's Windows, or it's Ubuntu (via GRUB). GRUB2 can boot Windows with the proper entries, and that takes you into grub's crazy world.

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Answer 4

trevorcobb Author

Level 1

0 points

Aug 28, 2013 6:59 AM in response to Christopher Murphy

i've decided to blow away everything on the HDD and start over. I still have ML 10.8.4 encrypted using filevault2 on the SSD connected to the primary SATA cable in the original hdd location.

I can't even install Windows on the second drive using boot camp assistant, as I get an error in the Windows Installer launched from the USB stick BCA helped me create with my win7 iso:

"Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu."

I've found a workaround here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4167610?start=0&tstart=0 (last post) but I'm hesitant to implement it.

I messed with rEFInd all day yesterday and couldn't get it to do what I want it to do.

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Answer 5

The hatter

Level 9

61,001 points

Aug 28, 2013 8:40 AM in response to trevorcobb

cannot have GUID on 2nd drive, simple as that. Unplug or reformat to MBR temporarily (after cloning what is on it). Happened to all the people that removed their DVD and added SSDs or hdd. Happens also on Mac Pro where you have 4 or more internal drive bays (but where drive and case can be opened and slide out after shutdown) and ONLY ONE drive present on which Windows will be installed. And that includes exernal drives too.

Microsoft has an FAQ on GPT and UEFI rules.

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Answer 6

Oct 1, 2015 11:58 AM in response to trevorcobb

trevor were you able to figure this out? i have the same setup as you.

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Answer 7

Loner T

Level 9

59,514 points

Oct 1, 2015 12:06 PM in response to akshizzle101

akshizzle101 wrote:

trevor were you able to figure this out? i have the same setup as you.

You are posting on a 2+ year old thread. Please start a new thread and provide a problem statement and as much detail as possible (without your Mac serial numbers). 😉

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