Triple boot reconfigure of Acer AspireOne

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Triple boot reconfigure of Acer AspireOne

Postby [DRuG]NikT on Sat May 22, 2010 7:29 pm

It's been over a year since I set up triple boot on my netbook, now it's in a state where the versions are showing their age, so it's time to rebuild.. I thought it'd be a good idea to document where I'm getting everything from, so it's easier for me to backtrack if anything goes wrong in future with it, or anyone else wants to see how it was done.

Current build (now needing rebuild) - Triple boot:
Windows 7 Ultimate evaluation version 7057
Mac OSX 10.5.5 with damaged IOUSBFamily.kext (not permissions, it's really screwed)
Acer XP home image - won't work at all anymore.. verrry broken.

Arrangement:
1. 3 Partitions (all primary) - 1. XP (36.4Gb) 2. OSX (19.5Gb) 3. WIN7 (55.9Gb)
  • changing which partition is active with a PE boot CD or XP will allow you to set which boots by default.
  • good idea to label them as xp/osx/win7 too
2. Win7's boot.ini, offering Windows 7 or OSX/XP
  • people can choose which OS they want to boot after hitting space at the OSX bootloader, since the partition labels that appear there infer which OS they select.. this way, XP isn't accessed from within the Windows 7 bootloader, but rather, from the OSX bootloader nested within it.
3. Within the OSX/XP selection, iDeneb OSX bootloader offering 10.5.5 or Acer Windows XP factory install.

New arrangement as above, but newer versions - Triple boot:
Windows 7 x32 Enterprise build 7600
Mac OSX 10.5.8 (iDeneb 1.4 OSx86 ISO & iDeneb Combo Update KIT 10.5.8)
Acer XP x32 since it's perfectly set up with all the drivers & some update tweaks by me.

Resources:
Installing OS X onto your Acer Aspire 1
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index. ... pic=129774
http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/view ... 14&t=11796
http://thireus.dareyourmind.net/index.p ... 58-install
iDeneb 1.4 OSx86 ISO
iDeneb Combo Update KIT 10.5.8
Windows 7 Enterprise 7600 VL x86-x64 Official Microsoft ISO
Windows PE/BartPE disk to ghost and tweak partitions with..
(For PE I use MiniPE2-XT by Digiwiz - mine's v2k5.06.06)

Prep:
Find XP CD (found XP x32 SP2)
Burn Win7 7600 x32
Burn iDeneb 1.4 OSX 10.5.6
If you have a ghost of the factory image
  • The XP that ultimately shook down to being the active one for me was installed to the first partition prior to the steps below (yet the reinstall of SP2 just resolved issues I had with it no longer starting) - Boot from a windows PE CD and restore your tweaked factory ghost image to the XP Partition, not disk, such that nothing in the other partitions is affected.
Log of install:
1. Boot from XP SP2 CD I have lying around.
Decided by the time I update everything, it won't matter what build I'm using too much.
2. Install, leaving file system intact on current, primary XP partition 1 of 3 (labelled XP)
3. Boot.ini is now default from XP install, checked AOK for system booting to new XP.. shutdown.
4. Boot from iDeneb 1.4 DVD
5. Launch the Disk Utility via the menus - Utilities, Disk Utility.
6. Assuming you already have your 3 partitions laid out, select the osx partition (mine's 2 of 3)
7. Select the Erase tab and choose Mac OSX Extended for the format and Name as OSX then click erase.
8. Ensuring the OSX partition is highlighted, select the option to repair it, then close Disk Utility.
9. Continuing through the installer will now offer a drive to install upon.. that was the point of step 8.
10. Step through the installer until you reach customize.. click it.
11. Select only "iDeneb Essential System", Applications and "Netbook, AspireOne"
12. Set OSX partition as active using whatever tool you prefer - google diskpart set active
13. Boot and press space at the first prompt, then use -x to start in OSX "safe mode"
14. Continue from step 16 of

http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=11796#p74825 wrote:16.- Follow the required data. (Select the ISO keyboard and set a password for your account).
17.- Login with your password.
19.- Download Diablo's iDeneb 1.4 tools from http://webmaster-mexico.com/ideneb-v1_4 ... instalador extract it and install "DoNotSleep"and "GMA950" packages and reboot.
20.- Go to system preferences->energy saver, set both options to NEVER on power adapter and battery profiles.
21.- OPTIONAL - I didn't do this step and my keys are fine so far - Full ISO Keyboard fix:
In the tools files, there is a folder "Keyboard ISO" inside of it there is a file called ApplePS2Keyboard.kext copy it into /System/Library/Extensions/ApplePS2Controller.kext/Contents/PlugIns/ to replace the original one.
(right click on /System/Library/Extensions/ApplePS2Controller.kext "Show package content")
BE CAREFUL: don't install it in /System/Extensions/ but INSIDE the ApplePS2Controller.kext you'll find there.
Open Terminal and type:

Code: Select all
sudo su
(type username password)
chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions/ApplePS2Controller.kext/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePS2Keyboard.kext
chmod -R 755 /System/Library/Extensions/ApplePS2Controller.kext/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePS2Keyboard.kext
rm /System/Library/Extensions.mkext

22. From the tools files, copy the folder ShutdownSound into /Library/StartupItems
23. From the tools files, run OSX86Tools and enable Quartz GL and reboot (If after the boot process it ask for fix something, just hit FIX)
24. Run in terminal "diskutil repairPermissions /"
25. Enjoy!

Update 1: Fix for slow boot I didn't need to run this because I use a hard disk based model
If a SDHC card is inserted after installing iDeneb v1.4 it makes extremely slow boot, if the card is removed, it would boot fine, so you can remove the following files and it would boot fine with the SDHC card still in place.
/System/Library/Extensions/IOSDHCIBlockDevice.ktext
/System/Library/Extensions.ktext

15. It should all now be working perfectly - if not, you may be learning the hard way to only select the base and netbook options under customize.. other combinations left the system not booting properly - I could only get away with adding applications. Are you sure you only ticked AspireOne within Netbook?

iDeneb OSX 10.5.6 install complete!
Proceed only if you wish to update to 10.5.8 (quartz broken - but no big deal)

Alternatively, you could skip to the Windows 7 install section to triple boot with 10.5.6

16. Boot into OSX then insert the iDeneb Combo Update KIT 10.5.8.
17. Extract and run iDeneb.MacOSx86Upd10.5.8.pkg - it will run for ages saying 2 mins remaining - view the logs if you need to reassure yourself it's still running using "window, installer log".
18. Reboot, press space at the first prompt and type voodoo -s
19. This will boot you into text mode (I warn, so you don't think it's crashed), where it will offer you to change the file system to read/write using a quoted command... do so - the command is mount -uw, it should tell you the path to mount on the screen.
20. At the command prompt, type each line following and hit enter.

Code: Select all
cd /System/Library/Extensions
rm -r AppleIntel*
cd ..
rm Extensions.mkext
shutdown -r now

21. If it doesn't boot next time round, press space then type voodoo to load the correct kernel.. but note it will only be in the default 800x600 mode (as apposed to crashed, which is what would have happened without steps 18 to 20). Now we have to load back in to modded Intel GMA drivers.
22. From the earlier installed Diablo's iDeneb 1.4 tools from http://webmaster-mexico.com/ideneb-v1_4 ... instalador, extract and install "DoNotSleep"and "GMA950" packages again and reboot.
23. You should now have an OSX install - at this stage you'll need to press space then type voodoo at boot time until we set it to default to that kernel... Note you'll have proper rez and 10.5.8 now, but quartz transparency on menus will have stopped working.
24. To permanently change the kernel used, you will need to change the permissions of the folder and file in finder by highlighting them and selecting "get info", then adjusting to read/write down the bottom..
25. Open finder and move to the folder /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/ - change it to read/write
26. Within that folder, change com.apple.Boot.plist to read/write.
27. Open the above file in textedit and change the kernel line to voodoo.. you might wanna adjust the timeout, too.. if you have XP on one of the other partitions, pressing space and selecting it will boot you into that OS.

Next on the agenda is to load Windows 7 onto the third partition.. but first ghost what you've done so far.

Known issues outstanding - quartz - that's transparency of the window pulldowns and other widgets, is broken in 10.5.8. I'm sure there's a fix but it's low priority now.

Known miracles so far: XP - initially I restored a ghost of the factory partition I had stored away to the XP partition, but it wouldn't boot properly, so I reinstalled XP from an old SP2 CD I had.. telling it to just install to a new folder, leaving everything where it was.. (changed default install directory to \XP)... now when I choose to boot from the XP partition, it boots the original AspireOne image complete with all my tweaks and SP3?! (this one runs out of \WINDOWS that I told it to leave alone) - Not what I would have expected, rather, the SP2 bog install, but, amazingly, precisely what I wanted! (I was gonna say for once, but I get lucky like this all the time - thankyou Gods of cyberspace ;) )

iDeneb OSX 10.5.8 and XP install complete!
Proceed only if you wish to go from dual boot to triple boot including Windows 7.

28. Boot from Win7 x32 7600 DVD
29. Install to partition 3
30. I told it to leave the current install.. it's going to move it to Windows.old - it was a timed out evaluation version.. but has some files I'll want.
31. Allow it to reboot as it installs, it won't need to boot off the DVD again after the initial setup.. it will eventually leave you with a well labelled bootloader containing only one unnecessary entry for "previous OS install".
32. To remove the dodgy entry and increase the bootloader timeout, so people get a chance to choose, you need to boot into Windows 7 and use bcdedit (boot.ini is deprecated in the Win7 bootloader).
33. In Win7, run the command prompt as administrator and type the following to remove the "previous OS install" entry:

Code: Select all
bcdedit /delete {ntldr} /f

34. To increase the selection timeout, type the following at the command prompt:

Code: Select all
bcdedit /timeout 5

The correct path to load XP should be from within the OSX bootloader, while Win7 should be from it's own boot menu which it should offer on boot. The options available should be Windows 7 and OSX / Windows XP.

If you need to further edit your bootloader, instructions can be found at http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/26 ... w-use.html

Windows 7, iDeneb OSX 10.5.8 and XP install complete!
Enjoy your triple boot goodness. :D
I would strongly suggest ghosting first before you go changing settings.. also don't expect you'll be able to install all the partitions from the ghost image back in one go & not get errors.. ghost gets confused with mac partitions, but the backup still comes in handy to use with the "restore partition from image", while "restore disk from image" will get you the layout back, but in my experience, each of the partitions still needs personal attention afterward... so you need to take care of the builds, not just rely on the ghost image.. if anyone knows something that will properly back it up and restore them all working, let me know.


"But my head's all messed up, so you better driive brother"
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Re: Triple boot reconfigure of Acer AspireOne

Postby zog on Sun May 23, 2010 2:53 pm

Ubuntu NBR FTW!
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Re: Triple boot reconfigure of Acer AspireOne

Postby [DRuG]NikT on Sun May 23, 2010 3:18 pm

I love unix/linux shell, OSX gives me that, but I don't run linux as a desktop, only as a monitorless server.. it just takes too long to tweak things when you're in a pinch, imho, which is OK on a server - coz the settings stay how you set them, but just gets annoying on a desktop, when people are usually waiting for whatever you're tweaking.


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Re: Triple boot reconfigure of Acer AspireOne

Postby fairy12 on Mon Mar 19, 2012 4:57 pm

hi thanks for your information
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Re: Triple boot reconfigure of Acer AspireOne

Postby [SiK]DemonSeed on Tue Mar 20, 2012 3:08 am

NP Mr.Bot.
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