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Two entries for Windows 7 with different icons design and slightly different labeling, though both icons seems to take me seemlessly to the OS.

General Discussion
Sven Erik
2018-03-16
2018-11-13

  • Sven Erik

    Sven Erik - 2018-03-16

    I am following a guide to triple boot MacBook Pro in which the first step is to boot camp, and then shring the Windows partition while inside Windows.

    Then installing rEFInd and then installing GNU/Linux.

    However: after the rEFInd is installed and I am booting up, I get two entries for the Windows 7 with different icon design and slightly different labeling.

    The first one (the second from the left. The MacOS is the very first from the left) is showing an icon of four grey/white squares in a diamond shape and the labeling says "Boot Legacy OS from FAT volume".

    The second one (third and last from the left) is showing a blue windows icon with the labeling "Boot Windows (Legacy) from BOOT CAMP".

    Note: "BOOT CAMP" is the name I gave to the windows partition in the DiskUtility.

    Both of the entries seems so far to work seemlessly and takes me to the same Windows 7 partition. But why does it show two entries? And is one of them "more legit" than the other one?

     

  • Christoph P.

    Christoph P. - 2018-11-04

    I'd like to know that too.. :-(
    Didn't find a solution. I always have to use the windows bootlader...

     

  • Roderick W. Smith

    Roderick W. Smith - 2018-11-13

    Based on your description, it sounds like rEFInd is detecting two distinct BIOS-mode boot loaders. It's possible that one of these is in the Master Boot Record (MBR; the first sector) of the disk and the other is in the Partition Boot Record (PBR; the first sector of the partition) of the Windows partition; however, it was my recollection that rEFInd was supposed to hide the MBR option if a PBR option was found. I could be wrong about that, though; or it could be that rEFInd has found two PBR options, with one chainloading to the other, or both indepently booting the same installation.

    As a workaround, try using the dynamic hiding option, as described here:

    https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/configfile.html#hiding

    You can hide whichever one you like. One of them (I'd guess the gray-diamond one) is likely booting through the other and so is less direct, but this extra step won't add a noticeable amount of boot time.

    In the long term, switching from BIOS-mode to EFI-mode booting is the best solution, but AFAIK that's not practical with Windows 7 on a Mac. (Later versions of Windows boot in EFI mode on most Macs just fine, though.) BIOS-mode booting is becoming less and less important as time goes on, and I never fully understood the BIOS-mode booting code in rEFInd, which it inherited from rEFIt, so if future developments cause it to break, there's a good chance it'll stay broken. This may be what's happened here, albeit in a very minor way.

     

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