Error Not Found While Loading Legacy Loader

[Daniel Smith]

Hi, I am a new user to rEFInd and just got it installed onto my Macbook Air OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 and i tried to boot windows 10 but all it said was

Starting legacy loader
Using load options "HD"
Error: Not Found while loading legacy loader

Is there someway to fix this because i have spent hours trying to find ways to fix it.

[Roderick W. Smith]

It looks as if rEFInd is trying to launch a BIOS/CSM/legacy-mode boot loader but failing. The first question is: How is Windows 10 installed -- in BIOS/CSM/legacy mode or in EFI mode? Apple now favors EFI-mode installations of Windows 8 and 10, so it may well be installed in EFI mode, which would render a BIOS-mode boot impossible. In this case, you can remove the non-working BIOS-mode boot entry by editing refind.conf: Uncomment the scanfor line and ensure that hdbios is not among the options. If you're not sure what boot mode you're using, check your partition table for the presence of a hybrid MBR. You can do this with my gdisk -- a regular GPT disk will include a partition table scan that looks like this:

Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

A hybrid MBR will show MBR: hybrid instead.

If you've got a GPT setup, then you should also see a working Windows boot option in the menu, in addition to the one that doesn't work. If it's not present, then you'll need to re-install your EFI-mode Windows boot loader. You might want to ask on a Windows forum about how to do that, or perhaps on the Windows sub-forum of a Mac forum, where there's more expertise about Windows on Macs specifically.

If you've got a hybrid MBR, then rEFInd should be able to launch via a BIOS-mode boot entry. Perhaps you've got two, and other will work...? If so, you can use the dont_scan_volumes option in refind.conf to hide the non-functioning option. See the description of that option in the rEFInd documentation or the comments preceding it in the configuration file for guidance. If all you see for Windows is the non-working entry, then the boot loader may be messed up and, as with an EFI-mode boot, need re-installation.

Another possibility is that you installed in one way but then subsequently changed the hybrid MBR status -- that is, you installed Windows in EFI mode but then added a hybrid MBR; or installed Windows in BIOS mode but then destroyed a hybrid MBR. If this happened, then the boot loader you installed will stop working. The solution is to either convert the errant hybrid MBR back to a conventional protective MBR or add back a missing hybrid MBR. The former task can be done with gdisk or various other tools; and the latter can be done with gdisk or gptsync (the latter is an EFI program that comes with rEFInd and may already be installed, but is inactive by default because of its potential to wreak havoc if hybrid MBRs are not required).