On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 8:19 AM, Stephen Warren swarren@wwwdotorg.orgwrote:
On 10/12/2012 06:26 PM, Simon Glass wrote:
From: Stefan Reinauer reinauer@chromium.org
ChromeOS uses a GPT partition table to partition the disk. However, Windows will refuse to install on a GPT partitioned disk if there is no EFI available (Even if there is an MBR, too) To hide the GPT partition table from Windows, we need to write it with a header magic other than "EFI PART". To support old and new systems, Check for the magic string "CHROMEOS" too.
Surely if you wanted to install Windows on a disk containing ChromeOS, you would just wipe the disk and re-partition it? I suppose perhaps you're talking about dual-boot though?
Yes, this is only required if we're dual-booting on Windows and ChromeOS on the same disk.
Either way, it doesn't see like a good idea to be using non-standard EFI
signatures - especially if the idea is to hide the GPT from Windows, and presumably then have Windows use the MBR partitions, since that will end up with a decidedly non-standard partition setup; some partitions will only be represented in the MBR (those Windows creates) and some in GPT (presumably whatever ChromeOS created before).
Yes, you will have to create a hybrid partition setup to make this work. It is unfortunate that Windows enforces this and there is no real way around it. This is a workaround specific to ChromeOS machines, and should be fixed differently in the long run (e.g. by using Tiano Core as a payload instead of SeaBIOS for booting Windows)
Stefan