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I had a perfectly good triple-boot laptop running MacOS 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard, 32-bit), Windows 7 (32-bit), and Ubuntu (12.10? 32-bit, anyway). Apple's ads persuaded me that I should take the free upgrade to Yosemite. That started a nightmare.

First I had to do the download about 5 times (times 5 GB!!) because I kept getting "validation errors" on the download. Then the upgrade claimed that it could not install it on my hard drive because "the drive is locked". So I installed it on a USB stick instead. The install to the USB stick took over 10 hours. When I rebooted it later with the USB stick unplugged (thinking it would now boot Snow Leopard from my hard drive), it booted into the upgrade and eventually came up in OS X Yosemite. But at that point, it did not offer Windows or Ubuntu as boot options.

I figured it had wiped out (or lost contact with) rEFIt, so I refreshed it by installing rEFInd. After that, the rEFInd boot menu showed all three operating systems, but only OS X will boot.

After two days of research, I am beginning to think that the problem is that 32-bit and 64-bit OS-es cannot coexist on the platform.

Am I going to have to find a way back to Snow Leopard to get my triple-boot back? Or is there a magic stanza I can put in the rEFInd boot configuration file to make this work?

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  • If your os x was 32-bit then if you performed an upgrade its still 32-bit
    – Ramhound
    Oct 22, 2014 at 17:13
  • @Ramhound OS X has been dual-architecture for ages now. Whether the 32 or 64 bit kernel boots depends entire on what the user chooses or the hardware (the question is missing this) is capable of. /edit: Well, it seems after 10.7 there’s no more 32-bit mode.
    – Daniel B
    Oct 22, 2014 at 17:26
  • Yes; I know both exist or did exist but even os x cannot upgrade a 32-bit version to 64-bit version irrespective of the Bootloader bitness
    – Ramhound
    Oct 22, 2014 at 17:56
  • Why wouldn’t it? It obviously worked. Not being able to upgrade Windows x86 to x64 is purely a design choice.
    – Daniel B
    Oct 23, 2014 at 5:25

2 Answers 2

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Anecdotally [ie, I can't find an official declaration as such] Yosemite doesn't support Win 7 in Bootcamp, only Win 8.

It hasn't supported 32-bit Win for quite some time, unless you have a non-64-bit OS... which I guess you did until recently.

Nix, I've never tried.

ref, non-authoratitive: http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/165559/apple-ends-windows-7-support-in-boot-camp-for-new-mac-pro

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The problem turned out to be simple: The Yosemite upgrade had overwritten the "fake" MBR partition table with a new one which did not contain the existing windows and Ubuntu partitions.

The solution: 1) Boot into the rEFInd command shell 2) Execute the command gptsync_x64.efi 3) Answer the questions with a Y: (paraphrased) the partition tables do not match, would you like to see what it would like like if I fixed it? and would you like me to fix it?

I then rebooted and everything is good.

For those who claimed that OSX is available in 32-bit and 64-bit: Not any more. Going forward, it is 64-bit only, and the early Intel-Macs cannot run systems later than Lion. But the 64-bit EFI boots 32-bit OS-es jsut fine.

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