I have just attempted to upgrade from refit, OSX 10.6, triple boot to
refind, OSX 10.11, triple boot. I know ambitious but as I had duplicated
HDs I though I would give it a try.
The HD config was:
2TB Users
2TB Win7 + XP secondary drives
320GB OSX, Win7, XP main partition/boot
4TB Time Machine
As you might guess it did not go well and I had the following issues:
Although the boot menu identified all three OS drives (i.e OSX, Win7,
XP in that order) it would only boot into OSX and win7. If I attempted
to boot into XP it would boot Win7.
After booting into Win 7 a few times the system became corrupted and
I could no longer boot the system. Flashing folder with a question mark.
I have switched over to my copied HD set and after a few reboots all is
back .
My question is, is there a better way to approach this admittedly
ambitious upgrade? Many thanks for your assistance.
Regards
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Concerning your first problem, my suspicion is that your hybrid MBR became damaged or changed somewhere along the way. You need both the Windows 7 and Windows XP partitions to be present in the hybrid MBR. You can read more about this subject here:
As to the second problem, I'm less certain. Any number of issues can cause that symptom. I recommend you start by holding down Alt or Option as you power on the system; that should bring up the Mac's built-in boot manager, which might be able to find your OS X installation. You could also try using an emergency disk of one sort or another -- an OS X installation medium, a Linux installation/emergency disk, a rEFInd USB drive or CD-R, or whatever. If you can boot something, you can then use its utilities (disk partitioners, etc.) to further diagnose the problem.
Concerning your upgrade plans more broadly, keeping two versions of Windows booting on a Mac along with OS X can be tricky. If you need to start over, you might want to consider putting at least one of the Windows installations in a virtual machine (VirtualBox, VMware, etc.). That will help simplify the configuration, which will minimize the chance of problems occurring. Also, Windows 8 and later can usually be installed on Macs in EFI mode rather than in BIOS/CSM/legacy mode. The latter is what requires a hybrid MBR, so switching to Windows 8 or 10 could obviate that need and make things go more smoothly -- but you must be aware of the differences and realize that you must convert your hybrid MBR to a standard protective MBR if you plan to make this change.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Hi
I have just attempted to upgrade from refit, OSX 10.6, triple boot to
refind, OSX 10.11, triple boot. I know ambitious but as I had duplicated
HDs I though I would give it a try.
The HD config was:
2TB Users
2TB Win7 + XP secondary drives
320GB OSX, Win7, XP main partition/boot
4TB Time Machine
The process I followed was:
recovery mode.
As you might guess it did not go well and I had the following issues:
Although the boot menu identified all three OS drives (i.e OSX, Win7,
XP in that order) it would only boot into OSX and win7. If I attempted
to boot into XP it would boot Win7.
After booting into Win 7 a few times the system became corrupted and
I could no longer boot the system. Flashing folder with a question mark.
I have switched over to my copied HD set and after a few reboots all is
back .
My question is, is there a better way to approach this admittedly
ambitious upgrade? Many thanks for your assistance.
Regards
Concerning your first problem, my suspicion is that your hybrid MBR became damaged or changed somewhere along the way. You need both the Windows 7 and Windows XP partitions to be present in the hybrid MBR. You can read more about this subject here:
http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/hybrid.html
As to the second problem, I'm less certain. Any number of issues can cause that symptom. I recommend you start by holding down Alt or Option as you power on the system; that should bring up the Mac's built-in boot manager, which might be able to find your OS X installation. You could also try using an emergency disk of one sort or another -- an OS X installation medium, a Linux installation/emergency disk, a rEFInd USB drive or CD-R, or whatever. If you can boot something, you can then use its utilities (disk partitioners, etc.) to further diagnose the problem.
Concerning your upgrade plans more broadly, keeping two versions of Windows booting on a Mac along with OS X can be tricky. If you need to start over, you might want to consider putting at least one of the Windows installations in a virtual machine (VirtualBox, VMware, etc.). That will help simplify the configuration, which will minimize the chance of problems occurring. Also, Windows 8 and later can usually be installed on Macs in EFI mode rather than in BIOS/CSM/legacy mode. The latter is what requires a hybrid MBR, so switching to Windows 8 or 10 could obviate that need and make things go more smoothly -- but you must be aware of the differences and realize that you must convert your hybrid MBR to a standard protective MBR if you plan to make this change.