Can no longer boot from hard drive

I wanted to get my MacBook Pro (OSX 10.6.8) to boot from a CD, which it did (turns out CD was faulty and didn't work). In order to do this I went to the System Options and selected boot from Disk option.
Only problem is now my Mac will only boot from a CD and not from the hard drive! How do I get it to boot from the hard drive again?

Hold down the option key while booting, then you will have your selection again.
Once in OS X, set it as the boot disk in System Preferences.
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3046

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DV7-6185us wont boot from hard drive.

I recently installed a new hard drive after the one it came with completely crashed. After installation of new hard drives, I inserted and installed all of the recovery disks needed for the new hard drive. Upon completetion it said it needed a restart and after restart I get a message saying I need a OS for the hard drive for boot up.
I went into my bios to make sure the hard drive was first in boot order which it is but when trying to pick where to put from on the bios screen it only give me the cd option. I ran a full diagnostic of the hard drive and everything checks out. I made sure to unplus the hard drive and tried a different slot and still get the same thing. Installation when fine but still won't boot from hard drive.
Is there something that i'm missing? The hard drive is fine. So what could it be?

Hi,
Assuming this is just a problem with the recovery media, here's an alternative option you could try.
Before trying the following, make sure you can still read the 25 Character Product Activation key on your Windows COA label ( 5 blocks of 5 alpha/numeric sets ).
An example of a COA Label can be seen Here.
You can create a Windows 7 installation disc yourself using another PC - just download the correct Disc Image ( this must be the same version that originally came with your notebook - this is listed as Windows 7 Home Premium ) from the link below and use an application such as ImgBurn to burn the ISO correctly to a blank DVD - a guide on using ImgBurn to write an ISO to a disc is Here. These Images are clean and from a well-respected source - Digital River.
Windows 7 Images.
Use the disc to perform the installation, enter the Windows activation key found on the COA Label when requested and when the installation has completed, use the 'Phone Method' detailed in the link below to activate the OS - this method supported by Microsoft and is popular with people who just want a clean installation of Windows 7 without the additional software load normally bundled with OEM installations.
http://www.kodyaz.com/articles/how-to-activate-windows-7-by-phone.aspx
Any additional drivers and software you may need can be found Here.
Regards,
DP-K
****Click the White thumb to say thanks****
****Please mark Accept As Solution if it solves your problem****
****I don't work for HP****
Microsoft MVP - Windows Experience

V120 server boot from hard drive freezes

Hi
I just installed open solaris build 75 on a sun v120 server. After the instalation all went well and I configured the processes and users on the server just like I did yesterday on another v120. What i did afterwards that was different from yesterday is that I put the machine on standby by holding the power off (0) switch for a few seconds, then unpluged the power chord. After turning the power on again the server will freeze the boot process in the first 2 steps after it tries booting from hard drive. (It does pass all hardware checks). To comunicate with the server I connect a windows PC on the lom port with serial cable and the SecureCRT software. I tried to break into lom with #. after poweron but it doesn't seem to work. And the lom console in standby wont let me boot from cdrom or anything while in standby. Can anyone give me some guidance here? I don't have much experience with this kind of hardware.

Well, LOL, I did that prior to buying the software. It does meet the specifications. I found the solution on the support site. When I googled before I hadn't googled the error message verbatim. Doing so led me to this page: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3926 where I was instructed to create a tiny partition (128MB) and then run the installer again. No explanation was given as to why, but this did work and I am typing this via the new OS. Thanks for trying to help me baltwo! Best regards.

How can get formatted data from hard drive

how can get formatted data from hard drive?

No chance without special tools/knowledge. There are companies that can do it, unless you use multiple format or rewrite data with special erase ustility or unless you have done low level format.
Regards
Milos

T400 problem booting from hard driver, cursor blinking on top left screen corner

I'm having problems with T400 (2765-TDG). It has trouble with booting, which requires 5 minutes power off/on in order to propely boot operating system.
Notebook is less than two months old, fully properly driver updated then so after that nothing is been done on it neither from user or from system administrator.Problem occured suddenly after two weeks of mentioned maintenance.
Symptoms:
After mouse intialization, screen goes black, and on top left corner white cursor blinks
There is no keyb key which can contine booting process, expect rebooting
There is no other device connected to notebook, not even mouse
It's needed several, sometimes 3-4, sometimes even 10, times to reboot with power key in order to get operating system booting
When it suceeds booting, just before booting operating system, in diagnostic mode of booting (with quick boot disabled) I can hear only one beep
What I tried to do:
I've changed BIOS setting to force booting only from hard drive, turned off any other booting device.
Also, changed from AHCI to Compatibility mode for hard disk but with no help.
Turned off quick boot, but during booting process, there is no specific error shown
Upgraded BIOS version to 2.03-1.01 but with no help
Restored BIOS default setup, no help
Did some general diagnostics, and here is what I've noticed:
After changing settings in BIOS, save&exit, computer hangs with black screen. I have to turn it off and back on in order to continue booting. Settings in BIOS are saved properly.
When I succeed with booting into operating system (XP), graphic card sometimes is not recognized, not even by original driver installation. In device manager, I see two recognized graphic card drivers with warning sign, and "Intel management engine interface" device with warning sign
In event viewer, then only error line is "Problem with HECI driver communicating with firmware" or something like that
Operating system is not able to enter in standby mode, it justshows blank screen and I'm forced to switch off notebook by pressing power off button for longer time
Any help appreciated. Thanks! I hope I can deal with this before I send notebook to authorized service.
Vedran
Solved!
Go to Solution.

I'm sorry to tell you, but in may case, I had to send notebook to authorized service provider. They replaced mainboard and hard drive (!?). Now everything works fine, but puts shame on Thinkpad T series notebook.

My iMac (late 2006) no longer boots from FireWire drives, although they contain all the system files.

My iMac (late 2006) no longer starts (boots) from Firewire drives, although they all contain a current system (Mac OS X 10.6.7). If the drives are connected with USB 2, they boot normally. The FireWire drives appear in the Start Volume program, but they do not boot. If I press and hold the Alt key while booting, only the internal drives and the USB drives appear as options. What can I do in order to boot from FireWire drives as I always could in the past?

I'd first recommend doing a SMC reset and if that doesn't work refer to:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10333969-263.html
and
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/firewiretroubleshooting.html
SMC RESET
Shut down the computer.
Unplug the computer's power cord and all peripherals.
Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
Release the power button.
Attach the computers power cable.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.
PRAM RESET
Shut down the computer.
Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
Turn on the computer.
Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
Release the keys.
Roger

Can not boot from Hard Drive and or CD

Hi
I have a SUN Blade 1000. I loaded Solaris 10 a few days ago
and had it running pretty good until I ran an update program.
Now I cannot boot the dam thing. IT just hangs at a * prompt somwhere in the boot process.
I would like to re load Saolaris 10 but do not have a clue how to
make the machine boot from the CDROM if I cannot get to the OK prompt and I cannot get to ANY prompt that will let me get ANYwhere for that mater.
Is there some key or combination of keys I could push or something to get this dam thing to boot from the CDROM so I can start over???
Thank you in advance.
I have almost no experiance with SUN Solaris on SPARC or any other platform.
I know Windows and x86 hardware very well and have built many machines.
Is there a way to get into the Bios at boot time like with an x86 system? The last question is not as important as the first one of how do I boot this pig from the CD.
Thanks
Jim

How did you begin the previous installation?
Have you spent any time reading these forums?
Use the forum search function, keywords ...
"get to the ok prompt"
(in quotation marks)

Can no longer connect to hard drive via HH3

Hi,
Please can someone help me....the bt customer services have been the least useful people ever and had me pulling my hair out
I have an external hard drive plugged into my HH3. First plugged it in, in December, set it up, connected to it with all my computers and laptops via (map a network drive). Worked flawlessly until a few weeks ago. Now all of a sudden I cannot connect to it.
I have tried mapping to it, but it is no longer there. However if i login to the BT Home Hub it is appearing there as a connect device. Have deleted it from here and then plugged it in again. That didn't work..
Have tried both ip addresses suggested: 192.168.1.254 and .253 but neither worked.
Have plugged the hard drive directly into my laptop and it is working fine. Something has changed somewhere, after a firmware upgrade on the home hub maybe?
Any suggestions?
Many Thanks.

Are you trying to power the drive from the hubs USB port, or does it have its own external power supply?
There are some useful help pages here, for BT Broadband customers only, on my personal website.
BT Broadband customers - help with broadband, WiFi, networking, e-mail and phones.

Can no longer boot from DVD or USB HD since installing Win10

5/2/15
I download and installed the latest Win10 last week and popped it on a spare HD I have in the system;
the mistake I made was to leave my SSD which has Win7 on it connected during the install.
Now I’m in a bit of a pickle. When I boot up with the Win10 disk disconnected I get a splash screen that tells me:
A required device isn’t connected or can’t be accessed. It offers me an option to press F9 to boot to another OS and indeed it does boot me into Win7 but insists all my hard drives need a chkdsk. They are fine
So I thought I’d simply boot from a DVD or USN drive and “fix” the Win 7 install.
Lol , it won’t boot from a DVD or the USB HD. If I pull the Sata cable from the SSD containing Win7 it boots right up from either the DVD or the USB HD.
I’d really not like to do a clean install of Win7 on my SSD just to get around this.
When the drive I loaded Win10 is connected it still won’t boot from a DVD but does allow me to boot into 7 or 10.
Yeah, yeah I know I should have installed it in a VM but I didn’t. Any suggestions?
Mobo ASUSTeK Computer INC. P8P67 Rev 1.xx
12G Ram
CoreI5-25K
Win7 Ultimate on the SSD
Last weeks build of Win10 on a spare HD in the system

press Windows+R then in the box, msconfig
this will allow you to modify the boot settings as desired
this tool works as well to clean up programs that want to load with windows unnecessarily
Place your rig specifics into your signature like I have, makes it 100x easier!
Hardcore Games Legendary is the Only Way to Play!
Vegan Advocate How can you be an environmentalist and still eat meat?

Can no longer boot from ANY OS disc on MBP

I recently purchased a 15" 2.16ghz Core Duo Macbook Pro. It came with the original 10.4.5 discs. The previous owner installed 10.6 on it using a retail disc, then upgraded to 10.6.6. I had planned on upgrading the original hard drive. However, I cannot get the laptop to boot from the original discs or my own retail 10.6 disc. I've tried a number of different approaches (booting from an external DVD, holding down "C", holding down "option", attempting to mount in on the desktop first, etc.). Either the machine hangs or it ejects the disc (when using the internal drive). Nothing seems to work. Both the internal drive and external drive have been tested and work fine. Is it possible that when upgrading to 10.6.6 a firmware upgrade was done that won't allow the machine to boot from a disc containing an earlier version? I don't know what else could be causing the issue. The laptop has not displayed any other issues. Thanks for any suggestions or explanations.

I don't know how much help I'll be to you. Seems to have a lot of posts lately about not being able to start up from the install disks.
I assume you can still boot up from the internal drive.
When you hold the option key to start, does the screen come up with the option to choose a startup disk and is your Install Disk in when you attempt this?
While booted up normally, does the Install Disk open up with the install OSX menu? If so, does going through the install menu reboot the computer from the CD automatically?
Even if there were a firmware upgrade, seems like you would be able to use the 10.6 Install Disk to boot from.

NB200 -00L stopped during the middle of formatting, can no longer use the hard drive recovery option

Hello,
NB200 -00L is the model
Power was down during the beginning of hard drive reformat,I had tried to press 0 (zero) during restart
I had also tried to press F8 during it restart, then choose repair option, but it kept rebooting itself in a loop with no error message.
I really would like to restore to the manufacturing settings.
I had my usb drive, but the system does not recognize the mirror image on my usb flash drive anymore.
Unfortunately, my model does not come with a dvd reader neither.
What are my options?

Netbook NB200-00L (PLL28C-00L011)
Everything for that Canadian model is here.
the system does not recognize the mirror image on my usb flash drive anymore.
I don't understand what's happening. If you cannot boot from a flash drive with recovery media, it may be that the drive does not have the proper contents. You can remedy that by ordering a new flash drive from Toshiba.
See the section Restoring the pre-installed software from your created Recovery Media, which is on p. 3-14 of your User's Manual.
If you cannot boot from a known bootable flash drive, I would seek service.
-Jerry

G3 won't boot from hard drives or startup (original) CDs

I recently installed OS X 10.4 on my Mac G3 (6GB HD, 256MB Ram, blue & white). It ran fine for one week. After one week, when it would boot up, I would have 800 MB of free space. Within a few minutes I would get an out of memory error and my HD would have zero space left...effectively locking up the machine. I was told to increase my memory to 1GB (I did) and to install a new HD (I did, a Seagate 80GB). I partitioned the Seagate into two equal partitions. About the time that the OS finished this task, I received a security upate installation dialogue asking me in install a new security update. I said "OK". About the time the security update was installed, the system ran out of memory...then asked me to restart the machine. I have not been able to get it to restart since. Can't startup with the OS9 CD, the OSX CD OR Diskwarrior. I keep getting the same message..."panic(cpu 0 caller 0x002DE020): Unable to find driver for this platform: "powerMac1,1". Then there is a whole lot of other stuff with a final comment "We are hanging here..." I can't seem to find anyone to help me with this. I brought the machine back to its orginal configuration...didn't work. I disconnected the old 6GB HD and was able to install OSX on the new drive...but, after installing on the new hard drive, I rebooted and I am back to the same errors. I keep getting the OS9 flashing folder with "?"/face. HELP!
Thanks,
Pat
G3 Blue & Whote Mac OS X (10.4.4)

You are having kernel panics as shown in this Apple doc.#106227.
Do everything, in order, in Dr.Smokes Resolving Kernel Panics and don't leave out any steps.
Quote from Dr.Smoke "My FAQ is a roadmap: start at the beginning and work through to the end, following the instruction in the order specified, including the "If all else fails..." section if a cause or resolution is not found in an earlier troubleshooting step therein"
Here's more at a brody's KP site.
Cheers!
DALE

IMac turned off suddenly, won't boot from hard drive/CD drive

Hi guys.
Here is what I have:
27" iMac with:
Core i5 2.7
4GB RAM
Mountain Lion
Win7 on Bootcamp
Lion is installed, but I have the Snow Leopard install disc.
The system had just been recently reformatted so there wasn't really much on the computer itself other than an update to Mountain Lion and a Win7 install via Bootcamp. Other than that, nothing was recentlly installed.
What happenes is I was browsing and all of a sudden it completely shut down. No warning, nothing. Completely shuts down.
Okay.. weird... but when I try to load Mac back up, the Apple logo appears and then after a while of supposedly loading, the screen goes to a plain white screen until I force the computer off. Something similar happens when tryin gto boot into Windows: I get to the "Starting Windows" screen but after that everything goes black and I have to shut down manually.
Great. Now I'll just go into recovery and fix all of this right? Wrong. Can't boot into recovery either. Similar end result: white screen.
Last thing I tried is reinstall OS X Snow Leopard. After loading for about 1-2 minutes, the usual white screen appears after trying to boot from the disc.
I am at a loss. I don't think its the hard drive, because the problem occurs even when trying to boot from the disc. My suspicion is the RAM has gone bad. But, before I go the hardware route, is there any suggestions or recommendations anyone could make first?
In advance, I really appreciate anyone who replies and tries to help.
Thanks.

Xmotox,
I had the EXACT problem today. EXACT. Discs wouldn't boot, I did get the application disc to run the AHT but it said all was fine.
I called my buddy who said something about unplugging for a minute then holding power button while plugging the power supply back in. I thought it would be futile since we already did all the SMC reset procedures to no avail, PRAM reset didn't do anything, etc, etc... But what do you know, up pops the disc utility and my iMac is now restoring from time machine. It's not done yet, so I can't say it worked... BUT it's the farthest we got tonight. Could not get disc utility up via CMD-R or OPTION keys... but powering down, unplugging for a minute or so, then holding power button while plugging the power supply back in did the trick. Hope this helps!

Powerbook won't boot from hard drive or restore disk

I've looked through some of the older posts here and none of them exactly matches my problem, and I've tried just about any possible solution I can think of.
I recently noticed that my PowerBook was acting a bit strange. It was making more fan noises than usual, and sometimes the computer would make the very last noise it makes as it shuts down (which is the hard drive coming to rest, I suppose?), though the computer would still be running. Then, yesterday the computer froze and I hit command-control-power, and when the computer restarted it gave me a folder icon blinking between a question mark and the Mac logo.
I tried restarting again, but I had no luck. Now when I try to start up I get the start-up chime, then I get one of three things:
1) If I restart it without a CD in the drive, I get the blinking folder.
2) If I restart it with the Software Restore and Install DVD in (but without holding down the C key), it gets to the Apple logo and shows the spinning pinwheel or whatever you want to call it, then freezes and some nasty horizontal bars pop across the screen.
3) If I restart it with the Restore & Install DVD in and I hold down the C key, it gives me the Apple logo, then the "Your computer has encountered a problem and needs to be restarted" box pops up.
I tried zapping the PRAM--no luck. I tried Open Firmware; the screen pops up, then I type in "mac-boot" and I get the same thing as in #2 above.
I used the Hardware Test CD; it told me that there was a Mass Storage error with the error code 2STF/1/4. That doesn't sound too pleasant.
I'm not sure what caused it; perhaps it was a heat thing, but I moved it too a different surface. All the hardware is original except for the Airport card, which has worked fine since Christmas. The only recent software changes I've made were updating to the newest versions of iTunes and Firefox. It doesn't seem like a hard drive problem, since the boot CD won't work.
Am I doomed to sending Apple a couple hundred bucks to fix this? The laptop is right at three years old, so even if I'd had AppleCare it would be expiring right about now. Or is it time to buy one of those MacBooks? Or just buy a couple PC's and use each one till it breaks, then throw it out?
Thanks,
Kevin

I finally got to another Mac. I installed Mac OS X onto my Firewire drive, then hooked up the drive to my Powerbook and used the Startup Manager. The drive showed up on Startup Manager and I chose to boot from it. When I did, the startup process continued briefly, then froze just like it does when I try to boot from the CD.
I know my Powerbook's hard drive is shot, and to be honest, I'm fine with that--there isn't any critical, essential data on there. I tried starting the Powerbook up in Target Disk mode, but that doesn't work either--I hear the chime, press T, but the screen stays black.
Now my question is: can I rip the hard drive out? Or do I have not only a bad hard drive, but also something else gone wrong? I'm not opposed to buying a new internal hard drive and installing it myself if that will fix the problem; what I don't want to do is spend a few hundred bucks to take it to someone who's only going to tell me that my omputer is now a paperweight.
Also, my Powerbook isn't one of the ones with a recalled battery. The computer can get pretty hot, even when sitting on a desk, but I just figured that was normal.
Thanks,
Kevin

Unable to boot from hard drive or install dvd

Out of the the blue my powerbook won't boot up. I've tried to reset the PRAM, I've tried to verbose thing but all it said was that it couldn't establish a connection to the windowserver. I've even tried to power on holding the option key but the hard drive and install dvd both have x's on them. What can I do to get this thing working again?

Have you tried rebooting in safe mode? Failing that, have you tried rebooting from the install disc so you can run Disk Repair? For either of these tests, insert your system disc and follow the instructions here: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1417
Good luck!

Can no longer boot from hard drive

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