Using EasyBCD to Chainload Chameleon or Clover from the legacy Windows Bootloader

[fusion71au]

Hey Guys,

 

I wanted to write a short guide on how to chainload Chameleon or legacy Clover from the Windows Bootloader using EasyBCD/Grub4DOS. 

 

This maybe useful for people who are reluctant to touch their legacy Windows installation and want to keep their OSX installed and separate on a new GPT Hard Disk.

 

A common scenario would be to have an existing legacy install of Windows on a MBR partitoned hard drive.  After installing OSX and then a bootloader (Chameleon or legacy Clover) on a separate GUID hard drive, you can still give the original Windows drive first boot priority in the BIOS and chainload to Chameleon/Clover from the Windows Boot Manager when required.

 

Eg Below is the current disk/partition arrangement for my legacy BIOS (Non UEFI) desktop rig: Gigabyte P55aUD3/Intel i5 750/AMD Radeon HD 5770

diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *120.0 GB   disk0
   1:               Windows_NTFS System Reserved         104.9 MB   disk0s1
   2:               Windows_NTFS WIN7_X64SSD             119.9 GB   disk0s2
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:       Microsoft Basic Data TSH_DATA                1.7 TB     disk1s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            133.6 GB   disk1s3
   4:         Microsoft Reserved                         133.2 MB   disk1s4
   5:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s5
   6:       Microsoft Basic Data WINDOWS                 134.1 GB   disk1s6

• Windows 7 X64 is installed in legacy mode on an MBR 120GB SSD booted by the Windows Bootloader.
• OSX Yosemite and Windows 7 X64 are installed in UEFI mode and booted by legacy CloverEFI on the 2TB GPT Hard Disk.
• The SSD (and therefore the Windows Boot Manager) has first priority in the BIOS but I can also choose the GPT Hard Drive by pressing F12 during the BIOS post to boot Yosemite and UEFI Windows via Clover.

Procedure

Requirements
1.  Existing install of legacy Windows on a MBR partitioned hard drive
2.  OSX installed on a separate hard drive booted with Chameleon or legacy Clover
3.  EasyBCD 2.2

Install Grub4DOS to enable chain loading
1.  Open EasyBCD 2.2 and click on the BCD Backup/Repair button to save the current boot configuration data to somewhere safe.
2.  Click the Add New Entry button and select the NeoGrub tab in the Operating Systems section
   a.  Click the Install Button

                       
   b.  Click the Configure Button

                       
3.  Notepad should open Grub4DOS's menu.lst file (located in C:\NST\menu.lst) and you can now add the following lines to chainload the OSX bootloader from the MBR of the second hard drive....

chainloader (hd1)+1
rootnoverify (hd1)
boot  

                       

Notes:  For GRUB, (hd0) represents the first disk, (hd1) the second disk, (hd2) the third etc.  So chainloader (hd1) is used to boot the MBR of the second hard disk. The "+" symbol is used to specify a blocklist - in this case +1 is the first sector of the device (hd1).

To chainload to a Partition Boot Record (PBR) on the second hard drive, a similar entry could be used eg to boot to the first partition on the second hard drive...

root (hd1,0)
chainloader (hd1,0)+1
boot

4.  Close Notepad.
5.  Click the Edit Boot Menu button to Rename your new menu entry from the default "NeoGrub Bootloader" eg I've named mine "Clover" since I use Clover but you can name it "Chameleon" if you use Chameleon.  You can also move an entry up/down, set a timeout etc.

                       
6.  Finally, click Save Settings, exit EasyBCD and reboot the computer.  Select Clover/Chameleon from the Windows Boot Manager to chainload Clover/Chameleon and boot into OSX.... 
                       

                       

[fusion71au]

Alternate Method: Install boot0md to enable chain loading to Clover or Chameleon
1.  Open EasyBCD 2.2 and click the Add New Entry button.
2.  Under "Operating Systems" click the Mac tab and select "MBR" for mode.  You can then click "Add Entry".

 

 

3.  Click the Edit Boot Menu button to Rename your new menu entry from the default "NST Mac OS X" eg I've named mine "Clover" since I use Clover but you can name it "Chameleon" if you use Chameleon.  You can also move an entry up/down, set a timeout etc.

 

 

4.  Click Save Settings and exit EasyBCD.

5.  In the folder C:\NST, replace the file nst_mac.mbr with the attached file (actually boot0md renamed as nst_mac.mbr).

 

 

6. Finally, reboot the computer and you should see the Windows Boot Manager:

• To boot into Windows, choose the Windows Entry from the Windows Boot Manager
• To boot into OSX, select Clover/Chameleon ---> chainloads to Clover/Chameleon and boot into OSX....

nst_mac.zip

[mspritch]

Brilliant. I was going to use Clover for SLIC injection but it refused point blank to boot an MBR Windows partition. Now doing it the BCD-to-NeoGRUB-to-Clover way instead, with the SLIC added to the BIOS itself so Clover's only used for OSX.

[Tetonne]

question : the NeoGrub tab in the Operating Systems section is not active here on EasyBCD 2.3 with a existing EFi dual boot conf.

Any help woud be welcome.

I was using dual boot with clover (OSX 10.11.4 & Win 8.1), till yesterday Win 10 install was not possible, but

for unknown reason my computer boot directly to win 8.1 without clover GUI, so i try and successed to install win 10.

after a update on .efi (replace old ones in win boot efi) my clover gui is back.

so i have now clover and the choise, but i would like to have winbootloader and the choise as described here

[fusion71au]

@Tetonne,

This chain loading method only works for Windows installed in legacy mode on an MBR or hybrid MBR/GPT disk (bootsectors installed in MBR, PBR etc).  Clover also needs to be installed in legacy mode.

For Windows installed in UEFI mode, you can use your BIOS boot key (eg F12 for Gigabyte boards) to choose between the OS loaders or just stick with Clover to choose .

[Ambush]

what is the recommended hard drive order for this to work ?

 

my current machine is a legacy bios with the following drives

 

disk 0 = 500gb guid - gpt drive (for yosemite)

disk 1 = 2tb mbr hard drive (for windows 10)

 

or should i swap them around ie :

 

disk 1 = 500gb guid - gpt drive (for yosemite)

disk 0 = 2tb mbr hard drive (for windows 10)

 

starting to get a bit confused by all the different methods of booting so will your tutorial work for this or is there a better way of doing it ?