Q: Cannot Boot Vista SP2 on Mavericks 10.9.3

Loner T,

Thank you so much for the information and being so patient with a newbie.  Unfortunately I think even changing the partition type is proving to be an issue, and I am moving backwards!  Here is the output of diskutil list, modified just slightly so that my actual name is redacted, but all else is intact:

Redacteds-MacBook-Pro:~ redacted$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0

   1:                  Apple_HFS                         209.7 MB   disk0s1

   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            250.0 GB   disk0s2

   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

   4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                249.2 GB   disk0s4

Shouldn't partition 1, highlighted in red be EFI?  To effect such a change, I ran GPT fdisk; here is the dialogue from the command line.

redacteds-MacBook-Pro:~ redacted$ sudo gdisk /dev/disk0

Password:

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.10

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their

partition table automatically reloaded!

Partition table scan:

  MBR: protective

  BSD: not present

  APM: not present

  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): t

Partition number (1-4): 1

Current type is 'Apple HFS/HFS+'

Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = AF00): L

0700 Microsoft basic data  0c01 Microsoft reserved    2700 Windows RE         

3000 ONIE boot             3001 ONIE config           4100 PowerPC PReP boot  

4200 Windows LDM data      4201 Windows LDM metadata  7501 IBM GPFS           

7f00 ChromeOS kernel       7f01 ChromeOS root         7f02 ChromeOS reserved  

8200 Linux swap            8300 Linux filesystem      8301 Linux reserved     

8302 Linux /home           8400 Intel Rapid Start     8e00 Linux LVM          

a500 FreeBSD disklabel     a501 FreeBSD boot          a502 FreeBSD swap       

a503 FreeBSD UFS           a504 FreeBSD ZFS           a505 FreeBSD Vinum/RAID 

a580 Midnight BSD data     a581 Midnight BSD boot     a582 Midnight BSD swap  

a583 Midnight BSD UFS      a584 Midnight BSD ZFS      a585 Midnight BSD Vinum 

a800 Apple UFS             a901 NetBSD swap           a902 NetBSD FFS         

a903 NetBSD LFS            a904 NetBSD concatenated   a905 NetBSD encrypted   

a906 NetBSD RAID           ab00 Apple boot            af00 Apple HFS/HFS+     

af01 Apple RAID            af02 Apple RAID offline    af03 Apple label        

af04 AppleTV recovery      af05 Apple Core Storage    be00 Solaris boot       

bf00 Solaris root          bf01 Solaris /usr & Mac Z  bf02 Solaris swap       

bf03 Solaris backup        bf04 Solaris /var          bf05 Solaris /home      

bf06 Solaris alternate se  bf07 Solaris Reserved 1    bf08 Solaris Reserved 2 

bf09 Solaris Reserved 3    bf0a Solaris Reserved 4    bf0b Solaris Reserved 5 

c001 HP-UX data            c002 HP-UX service         ea00 Freedesktop $BOOT  

eb00 Haiku BFS             ed00 Sony system partitio  ed01 Lenovo system partit

Press the <Enter> key to see more codes: L

ef00 EFI System            ef01 MBR partition scheme  ef02 BIOS boot partition

fb00 VMWare VMFS           fb01 VMWare reserved       fc00 VMWare kcore crash p

fd00 Linux RAID           

Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = af00): ef00

Changed type of partition to 'EFI System'

Command (? for help): q

Redacteds-MacBook-Pro:~ redacted$

By the above dialog, one would assume that the partition type would have changed.  Then I promptly rebooted the machine.  Am I missing something stupid simple here that's not causing the writes to be committed to disk?  Do I have to use single user mode, or log in as root?

Thanks again for your help and patience

Loner T,

Thanks.  Duh!  I will have to chalk that up to a stupid newbie mistake.  I think I finally have some inkling of the procedure after reading through things several times.  There may be other issues though.  I am fairly comfortable with things in the Windows Recovery environment, and I did try reading information there.  From the partition information in DISKPART, it may even happen to be that the Windows Vista partition is actually hidden, but I am unfamiliar with the commands in either Windows or Mac to "unhide" a GPT based partition.

Further, as you said it is a good idea to back up the partition data, and I do understand the command in gdisk to do that is "b".  But is there any particular way that the file needs to be named, as in something.exrension  You also mentioned that the file needs to be backed up to a USB key.  Is there any particular way the file name needs to be handled in order to back up to the USB key?  Does the USB key receiving the backup partition need to be formatted in a special way, e.g., FAT vs NTFS or OS X Extended Journaled.)  Can I write the backup directly to a USB key from gdisk, or should I drag and drop the file to the USB key?  My reason here for asking is my relative lack of familiarity with Mac OS X file paths using the terminal, in Windows I am OK.  Also, where does the backed up partition data exist on the hard drive on the Mac?

Assuming I get all the data backed up, is the next step to load the recovery environment from gdisk and write a hybrid MBR table? option r, then h.  Then specify that partitions 2,3, and 4 be included in the new table, and also that partition 1 be EFI (I think the wording is "suitable for GRUB" or something similar?

Please reply back when you can.  Thanks for your help.

Hi Loner T,

Forgot to mention that partitions 2, 3 and 4 need to be made bootable by answering "Y".  Also, just to check, partition 1 is now EFI:

Redacteds-MacBook-Pro:~ redacted$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0

   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1

   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            250.0 GB   disk0s2

   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

   4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                249.2 GB   disk0s4