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Mounting Mac EFI messes up the Windows boot


cvicor
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Hello everyone,

First, excuse me if I say something obviously wrong or stupid because I am starting watching videos, reading and trying hackintosh.

I bought a computer last week. I want it for working producing audio and video but I want also for playing games sometimes. Thats why I started learning about hackintosh: I wanted a dual boot pc with windows and mac. I bought two differents ssd disk and I chose the pcu, motherboard,etc thinking on the compatibility with hackintosh.

I installed windows in the main harddisk and Idownloaded the sonoma image from olarila. I installed mac in the other harddisk and I was surprised for the results, all was incredible well and macOS works nice. But when I copied the EFI folder to the mac partition I think there is the problem: I restarted the computer and I was not able to start windows. That is my headache.

I am looking for a solution for two days: I tried to configure bios but nothing results. I tried to restore Windows from the prendrive and nothing, I had to reinstall, I didnt find how to restore windows boot even I could open de windows partition from macOS.

In that moment I did not what I did that this problem happened, but when I come back to macOS and I tried to modify EFI I find out that was mounting the opencore partition that does something to windows booting, because I had to reinstall windows...

I dont know if Its an easy to resolve problem or not. Someone has the same problem? I dint find in the forum.

If you could help me I was gratefully.

That s my computer:

- MSI B760 gaming plus wifi

- Intel core i9-14900KF 3.2/6 Ghz
- Radeon RX6800
- Kingston FURY Beast DDR5 6000MHz 2x32 Gb CL 30 AMD
- Acer Predator GM7 2TB SSD M.2 PCI Express 4.0 NVme

IMG_20240725_211642_569.jpg

IMG_20240725_211740_692.jpg

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Certainly some Windows boot files are on this partition too.

You can disconnect the SSD from the Mac, install Windows and then connect the Mac SSD again. Set the SSD with OpenCore/Clover as primary in the Bios/UEFI and the bootloader will manage what you need and leave each system with its separate files.

 

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You may need to provide more information if anyone is to help you. I don't use Windows, so I can't suggest a solution, but I think you need to tell other readers:—

 

1) Which disk your firmware prioritises. This information should be available to you before you have started any bootloader/boot manager or operating system. And there are various ways of viewing and editing the firmware's preferred boot-order — either (i) directly from the firmware's built-in interface, or (ii) from a utility launched from one of your operating systems, or (iii) from a utility that you launch from your bootloader (you mention OpenCore as being your bootloader).

 

2) How you were intending to choose between your operating systems at start-up. For instance, were you relying on OpenCore auto-detecting Windows or did you write some Windows-specific lines in your OpenCore config.plist file? Or are you loading some other bootloader ahead of OpenCore (& chainloading OpenCore from that)?

 

Provide this information and you're more likely to get a helpful answer!

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Captain Flack said:

You may need to provide more information if anyone is to help you. I don't use Windows, so I can't suggest a solution, but I think you need to tell other readers:—

 

1) Which disk your firmware prioritises. This information should be available to you before you have started any bootloader/boot manager or operating system. And there are various ways of viewing and editing the firmware's preferred boot-order — either (i) directly from the firmware's built-in interface, or (ii) from a utility launched from one of your operating systems, or (iii) from a utility that you launch from your bootloader (you mention OpenCore as being your bootloader).

 

2) How you were intending to choose between your operating systems at start-up. For instance, were you relying on OpenCore auto-detecting Windows or did you write some Windows-specific lines in your OpenCore config.plist file? Or are you loading some other bootloader ahead of OpenCore (& chainloading OpenCore from that)?

 

Provide this information and you're more likely to get a helpful answer!

Thank you for your interest.

I have no much experience with hackintosh and maybe I am quite confused with several words 🤔

I started intalling windows in the main disk and then I installed the olarilla image in the secundary.

This image uses opencore and after the installation, the booter detected windows and mac (like the photo I posted, but with the windows logo next) but prefering windows.

So, I didnt write any windows information in the config.plist., there could be the point? 

Thanks!

Edited by cvicor
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It does not matter whether you have windows, mac os, or linux all on the same hard drive or separate hard drives.

 

Your windows installation needs to be GPT and EFI boot capable if you use an EFI bootloader/bootmanager.

 

A FAT32 formatted EFI or Extended Service Partition on the GPT partitioned boot drive, and specified in BIOS, is where your boot manager/loader should be.  When properly configured, upon startup the bootstrap process  will query the BIOS configuration and subsequently the bootloader/bootmanager will scan all installed and properly formatted/connected/configured drives and offer boot options.

 

You can put Clover, Open Core, Refind, GRUB2 and the windows boot loader/BCD all on the EFI/ESP.  

 

Allow 400 megabytes for everything.

 

Keep everything in one place on the EFI/ESP and back it up along with the partition table for your GPT formatted drives.

Edited by mek21
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I managed to solve the issue, in case it helps anyone: after copying the EFI, right after installing macOS, mounting OpenCore, I replaced the EFI on the boot disk with the one I already had, and of course, the Windows folder got deleted. I had to copy the boot folder and the OC folder inside the EFI folder without deleting the Windows one, and everything worked perfectly ☺️

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Mounting a macOS EFI partition appears to overwrite the Windows bootloader. Try using a tool such as EasyBCD in Windows to repair the bootloader and restore access to Windows. Also, make sure your macOS EFI settings are configured correctly to avoid conflicts with the Windows boot process.
 

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