Problems booting from install disk with MacBook Air

(I'm posting this here b/c it's been three days since I posted this in the /MacBook Air/Networking section and no one's touched it...)
Somehow, the hard disk in my MBA has been corrupted, or something. First symptom I noticed - when booting up, I get stuck on that blank blue screen for, oh, 5 minutes or so, before flashing back to the grey Apple logo screen, then finally getting to the desktop. I tried repairing permissions via Disk Utility; it spun for 10 minutes without doing anything, so I stopped the process. The "Repair Disk" function in Disk Utility was not available for some reason, so I tried "Verify Disk." This failed. I forget the exact wording of the error message, but it said, in essence, that the disk was corrupted and I should run Disk Utility from the system install disk.
Here it gets interesting. I have an MBA SuperDrive, so I first tried booting from there. I'd forgotten about holding down "c" I just held Option, selected the disk, and tried to boot from it. I got a grey screen with the grey Apple logo and a spinning gear; then the Apple logo was replaced by a grey circle with a diagonal line through it (like, from a "no smoking" sign or something) and a spinning gear... this persisted for another 10 minutes or so without going anywhere, so I forced a shutdown.
Thinking the problem might be the SuperDrive, I tried to do the same procedure via Remote Disk (from an iBook G4 running 10.5.5). I followed the instructions, connected the MBA to my wireless network, it found the remote disk, tried to boot from it - but I got the same behavior. Grey Apple screen giving way to grey circle with a diagonal line through it, and an endlessly spinning gear underneath.
What in the world is going on here?
Message was edited by: Jonathan Kussmaul

You seem to have a lot of problems, the last being a kernel panic. This is often attributed to a hardware failure including the possibility of defective RAM.
They are not easy to track down but here are some suggestions to assist you.
What is a Kernel panic?
Resolving Kernel Panic's by Dr Smoke
However, try once again to boot from the install DVD and perform Repair Disk, otherwise, start on the troubleshooting.

Similar Messages

Problems booting from install disk

Somehow, my hard disk has been corrupted, or something. First symptom I noticed - when booting up, I get stuck on that blank blue screen for, oh, 5 minutes or so, before flashing back to the grey Apple logo screen, then finally getting to the desktop. I tried repairing permissions via Disk Utility; it spun for 10 minutes without doing anything, so I stopped the process. The "Repair Disk" function in Disk Utility was not available for some reason, so I tried "Verify Disk." This failed. I forget the exact wording of the error message, but it said, in essence, that the disk was corrupted and I should run Disk Utility from the system install disk.
Here it gets interesting. I have an MBA SuperDrive, so I first tried booting from there. I'd forgotten about holding down "c" I just held Option, selected the disk, and tried to boot from it. I got a grey screen with the grey Apple logo and a spinning gear; then the Apple logo was replaced by a grey circle with a diagonal line through it (like, from a "no smoking" sign or something) and a spinning gear... this persisted for another 10 minutes or so without going anywhere, so I forced a shutdown.
Thinking the problem might be the SuperDrive, I tried to do the same procedure via Remote Disk (from an iBook G4 running 10.5.5). I followed the instructions, connected the MBA to my wireless network, it found the remote disk, tried to boot from it - but I got the same behavior. Grey Apple screen giving way to grey circle with a diagonal line through it, and an endlessly spinning gear underneath.
What in the world is going on here?

Hi,
Sounds like your hard drive might be the problem here, sometimes when a hard drive is faulty, it can prevent a system from booting, even to the CD. Unfortunately, with the macbook air, you can't remove the hard drive to test this, and in any case, I would certainly take it in to have it looked at.

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Hi everyone,
I have a macbook and macbook pro, I had to reinstall system after harddrive went on the macbook. I can't find my macbook restore disks/installation disks. Would I be able to use the macbook pro install disks with macbook?
Much appreciate your help.
Mo

It might work but it's risky. The MBP installation disks may well not contain the right drivers for the MacBook. It would be better, if at all possible, if you contacted Apple tech support and asked for a new set of disks for your MacBook. They'll send you a set for a reasonable fee. If you can't wait, perhaps there's an Apple Store or other Apple dealer near you that would have a set you could borrow in-store to do the reinstallation.

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OK, so let us suppose that you have the correct disk, the possibilities are:
• the optical drive is not functioning properly. However, since the disk shows up on the desktop the drive is apparently reading it.
• the disk itself is the issue. It could the wrong disk, but let us assume it is not. It could be damaged so that it is no longer bootable, or it could dirty. I would begin by giving the disk a good buffing and see if that will encourage it to boot the computer.
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Hi there,
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Message was edited by: jomimata
Message was edited by: jomimata

Unfortunately, it sounds like you have a hardware problem beyond the hard drive. Even if there was no hard drive installed at all, you should still be able to startup from the the original install disk. Do you hear a "chime" at startup? If not, then you definitely have a hardware problem. You should take your MacBook into a local Apple store and make an appointment with the Mac Genius (or another local Apple Authorized Service provider). If you can't startup from the original install disk by holding down on the "c" key or holding down on the "option" key and then selecting the install disk, you have a hardware problem that can't be resolved with troubleshooting here.
-Doug

No install disks with MacBook Pro

I recently purchased a MacBook Pro (mid 2012 model) and no install disks shipped with it. Anyone else have this problem? Is Apple no longer supplying install disks with its laptops?

Nope, no longer supplying disks since Lion first shipped with late 2011 MBP. What you have instead is Lion (or Mountain Lion) Recovery partition. From here you can do all that you could do with installaton disc(s).
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I have an Intel Xserve.
I have had it for some months,it has been working fine, it is a standby backup machine to others and is used as a testbed.
I have just installed from the supplied DVD 10.4.8.
The installation goes smoothly, however after the first reboot. The system is trying to install from dvd again.
I have tried installing a known working Intel boot disk, and this just gives a folder with the flashing question mark.
I have tried formatting the disk and partitioning making sure to use GUID partition and it doesn't boot.
I can however boot from a external FW drive with 10.4.10 installed.
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Welcome to the forum!
You're missing the first disk which is "Rescue and Recovery", followed by CDs 1-7.
Make sure to re-align the partitions before or after OS installation in order to get the proper utilization of that SSD.
Good luck.
Cheers,
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In daily use: R60F, R500F, T61, T410
Collecting dust: T60
Enjoying retirement: A31p, T42p,
Non-ThinkPads: Panasonic CF-31 & CF-52, HP 8760W
Starting Thursday, 08/14/2014 I'll be away from the forums until further notice. Please do NOT send private messages since I won't be able to read them. Thank you.

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Reboot holding down the shift key until you see the spinning cog. When the desktop finally appears (it will take a good while) launch DU and Repair Disk. Then empty the Trash. Then reboot. Then try again to boot from the (correct) OS installer DVD (not a CD).

Macbook Pro will not load OS and will not boot from Install Disk

When I try to turn on my macbook pro it goes to the gray logo screen with the spinning gear however it does not progress from there and then after several minutes it proceeds to restart itself and the same process repeats itself. I have tried to boot into single user mode with success and have run /sbin/fsck -fy and that has returned that the volume appears to be ok. However, when I hit reboot it returns to the same process of the gray screen and spinning gear to black screen which repeats. When I boot into verbose mode it progresses to AppleYukon2: RxRingSize <= 1024, TxRingSize 256, RXMAXLE 1024, TXMAXLE 768, STMAXLE 3328 then it stalls for several minutes and then it shows continuing
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When I try to boot from the install disk it will not boot from holding the c key it goes through the same aforementioned cycle. When using option to boot I can see the Disk then when I select it the cycle happens again.
Also I have XP installed and I am able to boot into that successfully. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Welcome to Apple Discussions.
Do you have multiple Accounts defined on that system? The last time you successfully were running, did you run from the Account with Administrator privileges?
Do you have another computer from which you could boot and connect the Macbook Pro in Target Disk Mode to take a look at the drive from your working machine? Perhaps you can run Disk Utility from the working machine and point to the hard disk on the failing Macbook Pro.
Message was edited by: Rick Lang

Problems booting from onboard SATA with PCI SATA controller installed

I have a K7N2 Delta-ILSR motherboard (BIOS v 7.8), and my Windows XP installation is on a single drive attached to the onboard Promise 378 SATA RAID controller. I have a PCI Promise TX2200 SATA RAID controller installed, currently in PCI slot 5. The OS boots normally off the onboard controller if I do not have my RAID0 array attached to the PCI controller, but I get disk boot failure messages if I have the RAID0 attached to the Promise TX2200.
I have tried putting the PCI controller in different slots to change IRQ channel routing, tried changing boot order in the BIOS, and even tried assigning specific IRQ priorities to the slot with the Promise TX2200.
My basic question is this: how do I get this motherboard to boot from the onboard controller while I have my RAID0 attached to the add-on PCI controller?

Well, Promise got back to me. They were insightful enough to tell me what I already knew and that they didn't support what I was trying to do:
Quote
Case Problem: I have an MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR Socket A motherboard with an onboard Promise FastTrack 376 SATA RAID controller. I wish to continue booting my OS from a single SATA drive on this controller, while using a RAID0 array on my FastTrack TX2200 controller. When the TX2200 is installed and the array is attached, it is detected as C: by the motherboard BIOS and the active boot drive as D:. The TX2200 is detected during boot (after POST) first, the onboard contoller second. I have tested the TX2200 in...
Case Solution: Hi Sorry for the late reply. Are you by any chance running both the FT 376 embedded controller along with the FT TX2200 if so than you will run into bios or driver conflict when both controllers in the system. Promise only recommend and support one cards pre system. Thank you.
... and MSI
Quote
Thank you for contacting MSI Technical Support.
As onboard SATA controller and PCI controller are both promise. It exits compatibility between them. You could try the following procedures to check if they could solve the issue:
1. Please contact the PCI card vendor to ask if there is relative firmware update
2. Please disable all the onboard devices which you don't want to use in bios setup.
3. You could try different MB bios version to have a check. You could download these versions from here.
Please feel free to let us know if you still have any further issues or inquiries
So that leaves me 3... downgrading my BIOS is not worth the risk just to make this work. Looks like its time for a full migration plan so this issue becomes moot.

How to undo boot camp, wont boot from install disk in dvd drive

A few months ago I went through trying out boot camp and parallels. Now, I think something is messed up. I dont need either right now, so I just want to wipe out the whole system, repartition the drive, and restore to a blank new install of os x 10.5 leopard.
But when I put in the install disk, it wont boot up off it.
I tried holding down the c key while powering it up, and it just cycles through: hearing the drive whirl, a bling sound, and then repeating it again while the screen is blank. Finally, I held down the click button on the touch pad so it would eject the install disk.
Maybe this will help someone recognize part of the problem. Ever since messing around with boot camp and parallels, my machine wont "reboot". To reboot it, I tell it to reboot, then it hangs on the star like screen, then I have to hold the power button down, then if I do nothing, it tries to boot, but ends up in a dos looking screen saying no bootable device. So when I power it back up, I hold down the alt key, and then I have one choice: the hard drive. I pick that and it boots up ok.
So... I thought, well, maybe the boot camp is still messed up; maybe I should undo boot camp. When I start the boot camp assistant, there is only a "partition" and "back" button; nothing to "restore" the hard drive to just one partition.
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Forgot to specify:
Im using an older Unibody Macbook (back when they were not all macbook pro's) 2008ish with Snow leopard 1.6.8
The thread you linked me to, Eric, shows the guy 'Niganit' with the eXACT SAME PROBLEM as me! He seems to have found out the problem but I dont see his resolve.
I just dont have the option to install windows 7 in any other form that a cd
a picture;

Pismo won't boot from install disks

Hi! I've looked to find the answer elsewhere, but no luck... apologies if this has already been answered.
I have a Powerbook G3 Pismo which I now need to use to run Hypercard. (Yes!)
It has been sitting unused for over a year.
It didn't start up.
I found an article that explained how to remove the PRAM battery. I did so. It starts up fine when connected to power.
I have ordered a new PRAM battery, but it hasn't arrived yet. I decided to go ahead and try to get it to boot.
When I powered up, I got the alternating icon saying it couldn't find an installed system.
I guessed that the hard drive had become corrupt, so I rebooted into Target Disk mode. It worked!
I connected it via FireWire to a MacBook Pro. The Pismo did show up as an external firewire hard drive. Good!
Using OS X Disk Utility, I erased the Pismo drive.
I couldn't decide whether to use OS X Extended, or OS X Extended (Journaled).
I didn't know about any options to install drivers for OS 9, so I probably did the wrong thing. (Pismo can boot into either OS 9 or OS X, I think.)
I tried to fix this later (see below).
I disconnected the Firewire and shut down.
I finally got the Pismo to boot up from a MacWarrior CD (a 3rd-party disk utility that fixes directory problems). I used it to fix the directory.
It still wouldn't boot from the original disks that came with the Pismo. The optical reader whirred away, I got a blank gray screen, it whirred again, I got another blank gray screen, but the cursor never showed up in the upper left corner. After half an hour, it had made no progress.
I reconnected the Pismo to the Macbook Pro using Firewire.
I tried to install Tiger on the Pismo using my officially purchased, large-box Tiger software. The Macbook Pro mounted the disk, but when I ran the installer, it told me I couldn't install Tiger on this machine (the Macbook Pro, duh!) and only gave me the option to quit.I thought that I could use an all-model install disk to install OS X on ANY external hard drive! What gives???!???
I tried to boot from the AppleCare Protection Plan's TechTool Deluxe.
It seemed to be booting fine into 9.1. Yippee!
It halted with a System Error (address error) telling me to restart holding down the Shift key.
I do so. It seemed to be booting fine into 9.1 again, Extensions Off.
But it halted with the same System Error.
I read about OS 9 drivers and went back into Disk Utility using the Macbook Pro.
Using Firewire to access my Pismo hard drive, I re-erased everything and made the partition have an Apple Partition Map.
I did not see any option to check or uncheck that mentioned installing OS 9 drivers. Did I miss it? Was it not there because I'm using a recent version of Disk Utility?
Same problems. Can't boot from the original Pismo "Software Restore" or "Software Install" disks, nor the TechTool Deluxe...
VERY FRUSTRATING! Have I tried everything? Has the hard drive gone bad?
Any help would be appreciated.

My new PRAM battery has been installed. I reset PRAM by doing a command-option-P-R.
The problem remains, but it's getting more consistent, which I guess is progress. With the Pismo connected to AC power (all my batteries are, of course, dead by now), the following has happened:
When I start up with the Tiger installation disk, everything goes smoothly, the gray Apple logo appears, and then, suddenly, a flurry of white text on an irregular black background floods the screen. Darwin says there's a kernel panic and they're in a loop ("we are hanging here").
When I start up with the original Software Restore disk, the blank gray screen blinks, turns a different shade of gray, the cursor arrow shows up in the upper left-hand corner, and it hangs. The cursor arrow doesn't respond to the trackpad; it's frozen.
When I start with the original Software Install disk, the same sequence takes place, but there is no cursor arrow that shows up. It just has the gray screen, a blink with a slightly different shade of gray, then it hangs.
The behavior is exactly the same for all 3 disks (respectively) when I use the MacBook Pro to start up:
Insert Pismo or Tiger disk into MacBook Pro (counterintuitively).
Start up the Pro in Target mode. Connect to Pismo using Firewire cable.
Start up Pismo. Pismo takes awhile to notice the Firewire disk, but eventually does.
Then it tries to use the disk in the Pro, but ends up acting case-by-case as it did when each disk was in the Pismo's drive (kernel panic hanging, gray screen with arrow, gray screen without arrow).
Helllllp!
My last chance will be to take a hard drive from a defunct ice iBook (dual USB) and use it to replace the factory-supplied Pismo drive. That iBook was a G4; the Pismo is a G3 (I believe). If there has developed a deep, difficult problem with the Pismo's hard drive, hopefully this will solve it:
I will try to boot from the iBook-drive-in-the-Pismo. I doubt this will work. If it does, great! If not...
I will try to boot from the Tiger installation disk, and if that works, try to install the Tiger software on it.
If that doesn't work, I will try to boot from the Software Restore and the Software Install disks.
If that doesn't work, I give up!!!! Unless someone here has a better idea.

Kernel Panic when booting from Install Disk

My problem started when I was scanning my hard drive for problems with the Disk Utility.
It notified me that I do have some issues that could be resolved by restarting my computer with the Snow Leopard Installation Disk and running the DIsk Utility from there.
I tried to do that and it starts to boot up from the DVD but after about 30 seconds I get the Kernel Panic messege (You Need To Restart Your Computer...) in various languages and I have to restart again.
I also have the installation USB that comes with the MacBook Air and I get the same messege so I know it's not a problem with the installation disk itself.
Does anyone know what to do? I can't find a solution anywhere online.
Thank.
P.S
I have a Macbook Pro 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM.

Mr.V5 wrote:
I have disconnected all peripherals and I did a Safe Boot and I still get the Kernel Panic message.
I'm using the original Apple supplied RAM and I haven't added anything to the hardware since I bought it 8 months ago.
Eight months ago means you bought it used, yes?
The next step is to reseat the RAM, meaning remove it and put it back in.
If that doesn't work, then remove one module, try booting, move that module to the other slot, try booting, repeat with other module.
If neither RAM module works in either slot, then there are almost certainly other hardware issues (usually the logic board, which covers a plethora of possibilities; unfortunately, the fix for almost any LB issue is to replace the entire LB), as the odds of both RAM modules and/or both slots being faulty are extremely low (but possible).

Can't boot from Install Disk for Leopard

I purchased the new xeon core dual which only boots in Leopard. I need to put Leopard on an external drive, so I purchased Leopard and tried to install it on an external drive. My computer starts to read the disk but before it even gets to the blue screen, it stops, scrolls down in a dark gray screen and says I need to restart by holding the power button down. The screen kind of looks like a kernal panic with oriental writing under the english.
I have tried by restarting and holding down the "c" key with no luck. I tried again with holding down the "option" key and when the hard drive and disk show up as choices. I chose the disk and still no luck. I disconnected all my external drives and tried again with no luck. I called tech support and they said it may be my optical drive. They set up an appointment with the genius bar at my local apple store. The genius listened to my drive and said there was nothing wrong with the drive and that it probably was a bad disk so they gave me a new one. Went home and tried with the new disk and same problem. Can anyone help?!! Thanks.

I purchased the new xeon core dual which only boots in Leopard.
I need to put Leopard on an external drive, so I purchased Leopard and tried to install it on an external drive.
There's your problem. Macs which ship with Leopard can't boot Leopard retail, unless it is newer than the Mac in question. Check the version of Leopard on the Leopard retail DVD you purchased in the second quote. If it is older than what was installed on your Mac Pro based on the Mac Pro install and restore DVD, then it won't work on your Mac Pro. If you want Leopard of the Mac Pro to be backed up to be an emergency boot volume for the Mac Pro on the external drive, use a cloning software*:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
Or follow these directions to backup your Mac Pro DVD*:
http://www.macmaps.com/bootcd.html
If you need an emergency Leopard volume for another Mac, install it directly from that other Mac. If that other Mac lacks a DVD drive, get a Firewire DVD drive to do it.
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

Problems booting from install disk with MacBook Air

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