Manual Legacy/Bootcamp/BIOS OS stanzas

[James Cullen]

So I have a Mac Pro, with one Mac volume, and four NTFS volumes - only one of which is bootable.

The autoscan feature doesn't detect any Bootcamp volumes unless I give it a one second delay, and then it displays all four volumes. Regardless of what choice I pick, it boots the "correct volume" anyways, but it's downright frustrating and ugly. Furthermore, there's no real way to set the bootcamp volume to boot by default.

Being able to create a "Bootcamp" or "Legacy" manual boot stanza would solve all three issues. The autoscan, the multiple (and unneccesary) entries, and the inability to set a default boot entry.

Before anyone suggests it, my Mac Pro is an early 2008 model, and doesn't support booting Windows 7/8 in EFI, despite having a 64-bit EFI implementation.

[Roderick W. Smith]

Believe me, I'm very aware of rEFInd's awkwardness at booting BIOS-mode OSes. I'd like to significantly rework the code (which I did not write and don't fully understand), but I need a block of time to study the issues involved in more depth and test various possible solutions. Adding the ability to specify boot loaders in a manual boot stanza will require a similar amount of study on my part, and so won't happen overnight.

You may be able to remove unwanted entries by wiping boot loader code from one or more partitions. This would require erasing the code using dd in OS X or Linux, but I'm afraid I don't have a detailed example. This approach is also potentially dangerous, since a mistake might damage your filesystem. Thus, I recommend you try this only if you research the issue in more detail, and only after making full backups of your data.

I'm sorry I don't have a simple and immediate fix for you; the problem is just an ugly one that requires more study -- and time -- to fix.