Boot Manager: A Boot Screen Alternative in the status bar of your Mac.

[1151105]

Hey abdyfranco & co!
Thank you so much for your work! I just purchased a Mac Pro which I also use for work so I need to be on the safe side. So...

What would be the most elegant/safest way to do a fresh install of windows 10 to a disk in the standard sata bays?

My Stats:
Mac Pro 4.1 -> 5.1 firmware flash
SATA Bay 1: SSD with macOS Mojave 10.14.1
SATA Bay 2: HDD (This is were I want to install windows)
GPU: Stock Sapphire RX580
DVD Drive is also installed.

Windows has never been installed on this machine before.

Best regards

Jann

follow h9's post here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ut-a-boot-screen.2114788/page-9#post-26689280

or you could put in your old osx disk and use the native bootcamp

 

[Jayson A]

I wonder why Apple got rid of the ability to hold X to boot into macOS and hold W to boot into Windows. That was so useful back in the day. No longer works!!

 

[1151105]

probably need the space for other things on the bootrom since its already kind of small.

 

[Intell]

I wonder why Apple got rid of the ability to hold X to boot into macOS and hold W to boot into Windows. That was so useful back in the day. No longer works!!

I don't think the W into Windows was ever an option. While X into OS X was, it only worked on earlier PowerPC Macs along with 9 into OS 9.

 

[Jayson A]

I don't think the W into Windows was ever an option. While X into OS X was, it only worked on earlier PowerPC Macs along with 9 into OS 9.

Oh. Still, it would’ve been super helpful for quickly switching OSes

 

[norda72]

Is this solving the problems with a videocard not giving boot screen? I have Nvidia Geforce GTX680 and no boot screen.

Due to the requirement to have a Metal compatible graphics card to install Mojave, many users upgraded their graphics cards to PC cards that do not have EFI firmware and therefore cannot display the Startup Manager (also known as Boot Screen).

Many Mac Pro users usually install Windows in dual boot using Boot Camp or in EFI mode, and even some install even Linux. Due to the lack of boot screen, it is very difficult to switch between operating systems, although there is the possibility of using "Startup Disk" from "System Preferences", but does not always work well (usually does not work with Windows installed in EFI mode) or does not detect all operating systems correctly (as is usually the case with Linux).

There are other options and alternatives to the "Startup Disk" option, such as BootChamp and QuickBoot, however both applications are discontinued, without support, updates and hardly work in new versions of macOS.

Boot Manager is an alternative to all the options described above, is completely free, is open source and works with the latest versions of macOS. Boot Manager is an application based on QuickBoot, with updated code to run on recent versions of macOS and with major improvements over its predecessor, including support for Windows, macOS and Linux in both BIOS (Legacy) and EFI mode.

You can download the latest version of Boot Manager at the following link: http://abdyfran.co/software/boot-manager

Any suggestion, recommendation, feedback or bug report are welcome, you can write me a personal message or post it in this thread.

Installing Boot Manager
1. First of all, Before installing Boot Manager you must disable the System Integrity Protection (a.k.a. SIP).
To disable the System Integrity Protection, you must restart on the recovery partition (Recovery HD) and access the terminal in the Utilities menu and then execute the following command:

csrutil disable

2. Then go to the website and click on the Download button, and select the latest installation package, and install it normally by double-clicking on it.

 

[hwojtek]

OK, I am on a cMP2,1 running pikified El Capitan and Windows 10 on a separate HDD installed in legacy mode. Any risks or will it work as intended?

 

[skizzo]

chiming in to say this App works perfectly for me. I likely would have been stuck on the Legacy boot thing if I didn't catch a post in here about needing to check that for Legacy BIOS boots to work.

 

[bllx]

Hello, just wondering where I can find details of how to uninstall Boot Manager.

Unfortunately Boot Manager does not work for me: while it sees my Windows startup volume, when I select it and click Boot, and enter my pw, the cMP nevertheless reboots into macOS. Tried Legacy mode too. I can choose the Windows boot volume successfully by holding down option on startup, but I wanted to find another way so I do not have to have my Mac video card installed along with my unflashed GTX970.
(I think I have an issue with my Windows installation as choosing the Mac volume for boot in the Boot camp control panel in Windows does not work either.)

 

[joevt]

I have like 17 bootable OS's. Some EFI, some BIOS. Here are some of my observations:

1) It would be nice if I could grow the Boot Manager Boot Drives window.

2) It should indicate the current boot option (as boot always, or boot next, or whatever).

3a) When I mouse over the current boot option, the Boot Later and Boot Now buttons are disabled. Maybe Boot Later should be disabled when I mouse over the next boot option.

3b) If the next boot option is not the same as the current boot option, there is no way to clear the next boot option.

4) eft-boot-next is String but efi-boot-device is Data. Does it matter? Probably not. Maybe EFI only uses efi-boot-next-data and efi-boot-device-data which are both DATA.

5) I think all my Windows partitions require BIOS booting but Boot Manager will point to the EFI partition when I select any Windows partition on a disk (so all Windows partitions on the same disk will point to the same EFI partition on the same disk). Maybe all OSs that point to the same thing should be a single item. Maybe the partition that Boot Manager will point to should be indicated.

For macOS disks, Boot Manager will point to the partition selected (the info in the HFS partition points to the EFI boot file).

6) My Windows partitions all have boot code. For BIOS booting, rEFInd detects boot code in the MBR and in the first block of each partition, and sets the active flag of the selected partition in the MBR so that BIOS boots that partition. Maybe Boot Manager should do the same (first checking that the disk is MBR and not GPT, or is hybrid MBR/GPT where partitions in the MBR match partitions in the GPT.

Without setting the active flag, we have the same problem as EFI booting mentioned in #5. Maybe there should be an option to update the Active flag for Legacy boot options.

7) I have more than one disk containing Windows. Boot Manager doesn't seem to be updating the BootCampHD property to point to the correct disk. Is there a BootCampHD-next property? Maybe not. For Legacy (or BIOS) booting, Boot Manager selects the Boot Camp EFI thingy, but doesn't set the disk that the EFI thingy should use. The Boot Camp EFI thingy sets up the BIOS compatibility stuff, then executes the boot code in the MBR which then executes the boot code in the first block of the partition that is marked as "Active" in the MBR.

8) Legacy boot options should be indicated in the list.

9) rEFInd had options to boot EFI programs. For example, an EFI partition could have EFI boot programs for Linux and Windows. If Boot Manager doesn't set the EFI program, then the default is used (usually bootx64). Scanning for EFI programs might be beyond the scope of your app? Otherwise you might as well rewrite rEFInd for macOS.

I use the following command to see how Boot Manager, Startup Disk preferences panel, and the bless command change the boot options:

ioreg -w 0 -n AppleEFINVRAM | sed -n -E "/^[ \|]+[ ]+(\".*)$/s//\1/p;"

The output is slightly more readable than:

nvram -p

 

[lilrush]

This doesn't work for me for some reason. I disabled SIP, used the installer, it says installation successful, but it does not appear on the top bar. Strange.

 

[startergo]

Has anybody tried installing Lilu and whatevergreen kexts in the /L/E to see whether they will enable the boot screen on the RX 580?
https://github.com/acidanthera/WhateverGreen/releases
https://github.com/acidanthera/Lilu

sudo cp -R *.kext /Library/Extensions

Then rebuild the caches using the following command :

sudo kextcache -i /

Once finished reboot your system.

 

[5883662]

Hi, since the latest Mac OS X update, this does not seem to work any longer. I have re-disabled SIP as usual and tried both legacy and non-legacy mode.

I have downloaded the latest version of the app.

UPDATE:
I can boot into Windows if that's the only disk inserted - so far so good. I cannot select the startup disk from system panel, which is very weird!

 

[joevt]

Has anybody tried installing Lilu and whatevergreen kexts in the /L/E to see whether they will enable the boot screen on the RX 580?

The boot screen is drawn by code that runs in the EFI environment. Kexts are loaded after that in the OS environment.

 

[startergo]

The boot screen is drawn by code that runs in the EFI environment. Kexts are loaded after that in the OS environment.

So if there is still room in the firmware and we add the driver in the firmware it will load beforehand?
[doublepost=1554471370][/doublepost]@abdyfranco Boot Manager no longer works for me. HS or Mojave. I strictly use scripting now it is the most efficient way compared to other solutions booting to Windows. NTFS for Mac by Paragon also works for Legacy installs. If the legacy install is on a separate drive it is not recognized in HS I can see it though in Mojave.

 

[5883662]

How do you use scripting? Would love to know as I have no boot screen so can't switch with the option key and for some reason can't use the bless command any longer.

 

[startergo]

How do you use scripting? Would love to know as I have no boot screen so can't switch with the option key and for some reason can't use the bless command any longer.

How to: Boot Camp without a Boot Screen

 

[5883662]

I assume this doesn't work if you don't have a boot screen as you can't see the prompts, correct?

 

[abdyfranco]

I noticed that the app stopped working for a lot of people, I’m already working on an update to try to resolve most of the commenter issues here.

 

[startergo]

I assume this doesn't work if you don't have a boot screen as you can't see the prompts, correct?

The purpose of the script is to get around the missing boot screen. So you can boot to Windows or the the Recovery partition through OSX. In Windows once you have Bootcamp manager and the latest ImacPro1,1 drivers you can boot back to OSX.
[doublepost=1554486965][/doublepost]You can install systemwide script menu so it is easy to run the scripts:
https://developer.apple.com/library...riptingGuide/UsetheSystem-WideScriptMenu.html
Also you may need to permit scripting everywhere in the security menu

 

[5883662]

The purpose of the script is to get around the missing boot screen. So you can boot to Windows or the the Recovery partition through OSX. In Windows once you have Bootcamp manager and the latest ImacPro1,1 drivers you can boot back to OSX.
[doublepost=1554486965][/doublepost]You can install systemwide script menu so it is easy to run the scripts:
https://developer.apple.com/library...riptingGuide/UsetheSystem-WideScriptMenu.html
Also you may need to permit scripting everywhere in the security menu

Thanks - just tried it but no luck. It just boots back into OS X (Mojave). When I go into recovery mode and select startup disk to Windows/Bootcamp, I get a "cannot bless this disk" or something along the line.

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_APFS Container disk3 499.9 GB disk0s2


/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk1

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1

2: Apple_HFS BERTHA HD 999.3 GB disk1s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk1s3


/dev/disk2 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *2.0 TB disk2

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1

2: Apple_HFS TIME MACHINE 2.0 TB disk2s2


/dev/disk3 (synthesized):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: APFS Container Scheme - +499.9 GB disk3

Physical Store disk0s2

1: APFS Volume SSD 313.6 GB disk3s1

2: APFS Volume Preboot 21.2 MB disk3s2

3: APFS Volume Recovery 522.5 MB disk3s3

4: APFS Volume VM 20.5 KB disk3s4


/dev/disk4 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: FDisk_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk4

1: Windows_NTFS BOOTCAMP 724.8 GB disk4s1

2: 0x27 496.0 MB disk4s2

3: Windows_NTFS EXCHANGE 274.9 GB disk4s5

 

[startergo]

Well first of all when you copy the diskutil list output from the terminal insert it in the code (the square with the + inside it) so we can see what are the names of the partitions. As you can see there is no 'Recovery HD' partition name on your system so you have to call the partition by its name. Also it is sensitive to CAPS i.e. 'Recovery HD' produces different results than 'RECOVERY HD'. So paste your terminal output in the code window.
Second you have to have SIP disabled beforehand otherwise blessing does not work. If you don't have it disabled type :

sudo nvram "recovery-boot-mode=unused" && sudo reboot recovery

And disable the SIP from the recovery partition's terminal:

csrutil disable

 

[5883662]

UPDATE:

No idea what just happened but for whatever reason I decided to boot into recovery mode again and tried changing startup disk - it worked; no more blessing errors. That got me to try Boot Manager again and it worked! I literally spend 4 hours trying to sort this out with someone else's help too. I did install Mojave over the existing installation, resetting PRAM about 4 times, SMC reset and all the other usual stuff. Something worked. I'm so happy!

 

[coquitocr]

Hello,

When do you think its going to be available ?

I noticed that the app stopped working for a lot of people, I’m already working on an update to try to resolve most of the commenter issues here.

 

[vallejo]

Hi. Problem is, as I did replace the video card to one without the EFI, I can't access Recovery HD also...no chimes, CMD+R does nothing, it boots and goes straight to MacOs Mojave...stuck into this...and the pendrive with linux isn't recognised by Mojave also, so...what? Thanks

Installing Boot Manager
1. First of all, Before installing Boot Manager you must disable the System Integrity Protection (a.k.a. SIP).
To disable the System Integrity Protection, you must restart on the recovery partition (Recovery HD) and access the terminal in the Utilities menu and then execute the following command:

csrutil disable

​

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