Can't boot from cd

Just replaced a hard drive in my old G4 titanium laptop and it worked fine until I did the OS update. The first time i did the update and clicked restart, it would only go to a black screen. I reformatted and thought I would just say to he'll with the update and leave well enough alone. My wife used it for a few days and said it was really slow, so I did the update again. I selected one update at a time and when I did the Security Update 2009-005, it gave an error and said try the install again. I rebooted and now my dock has dissapeared and when I try and reboot, it does nothing. I tried to run disk utilities and the program will not open. I tried to reformat the hard drive, but when I hold the C key down to select the DVD to boot and install from, it goes back to my hard drive and just boots to the installed OS. I then tried to select the DVD from my preference start up disk option and there is no CD/DVD option to select as boot drive. I see the mounted DVD disk on my desk top and can access the files on it, but can't boot from it to reinstall. My install was Tiger full retail. The laptop came with an install disk that had Panther. Any ideas would be appreciated.
Mark

Thanks for your reply and yes I did try option as well, with no luck. I finally reformatted through FireWire and another laptop. I am now installing from the disk that came with the G4. So I will try Panther to Tiger even though my Tiger is a full retail disk. I am not sure why Apples up dates to 10.4.11 crash this g4, but I'll try for the third time and see what happens.

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Can't boot from external HD with Leopard on MacBook Pro or PowerBook

I can't boot from an external HD with 10.5.5 Leopard on either my MacBook Pro or my PowerBook G4. I had a PowerBook G4 from which I could boot from either an external FW400 drive or an external FW800 drive. At some point, I stopped being able to boot from any HD, but I'm not sure if it was after upgrading to Leopard or not? Recently I just bought a MacBook Pro 15" and transferred all my files over from the PowerBook to the MacBook Pro during the install. However, even with the new computer, still cannot boot from an external drive. I have Leopard 10.5.5 running on both the external HD and the internal HD.
Is this a common problem? Anybody know how to fix it?
Thanks!

That probably wasn't very clear was it? I have several ext. HD's, some with bootable systems and some just backups. One bootable disk was made with CopyCloner and the other was a clean format and only had an original install of the OS just to use for an emergency boot. They both booted just fine. Then at some point, they stopped being bootable. I have used the Control Panel "Startup" and also used the Option key boot and picked the bootable disk. Neither one boots anymore. It started doing this on the old PowerBook and then also refused to boot on the MacBook Pro. This is not the problem with the HD since it happens with any bootable HD. Something is going on at the system level and it was transfered from the PowerBook to the MacBook.
Thanks,
Bill

Can't log in with valid password, can't boot from disk, can't access disk utility, in single user mode can't reset password as appears locked in caps mode with '?' for forward slash, can anyone help?

Can't log in with valid password, can't boot from disk, can't access disk utility, in single user mode can't reset password as appears locked in caps mode with '?' for forward slash, can anyone help?

Which keyboard layout you were using? German, French ... I suppose your layout is reset to the default: US and you are unable to find the "?" or "/" ...
Please have a look into the keyboard viewer, to see how the layout of your keyboard is actually.
marek

Can't boot from IDE hard drives

Just purchased a barebones system with a KEN NEO Platinum board running an AMD 64 3400+. Tried to install old Maxtor hard drive (40 gb) into new system and a blue screen pops up for less than one second and reboots PC. I can’t read the blue screen but I believe it is saying there is a hardware conflict.
What is causing this. The CMOS recognizes the HD but it can't boot from it. I’ve got two of these units and both have the same problems. I put the drive back into the original PC and it works fine.
Need help desperately.

When I connect the cables, they show which is the slave and which is the master. In the CMOS, everything looks fine. I've noticed alot of people are having difficulty installing used and new hard drives. I've been working with PC's for quite a while and I've never had this much trouble. I was hoping there was something I missed in the CMOS settings.

Disk repair failed how can I back up my files when I can't boot from the start up disk

When disk repair fails, and I can't boot from the hard drive how can I get to my files to back them up. I have a seagate 1 TB connected to the USB port.

Perubbit,
which model MacBook Pro do you have, and which version of OS X is installed on it?

Can't Boot From Install Disc 1 ?

Holding down "C" at Start Up isn't working.
Most of the time I can't get Preferences > Start-Up to even "see" my Disc 1.
When I can get it to show up in Start-Up, and Select it, and Lock it ... it Still Won't Start Up from the Install Disc 1 ... and in fact usually ejects the disc.
Sometimes when I re-push in the disc, I get the message that a Blank Disc has been detected, "what do you want to do with it."
But, it shows up in Disc Utility, and when I run Verify Disc, it all looks good?!
The Disc has Mac OS version 10.4.8 on it. I'm running 10.5.7. I'm all up to date with my software.
Yesterday I ran the latest version of Disc Warrior. When I run TechTools 4.0 it seems to get stuck running Files. When I run Repair Permissions from Disc Utilities, it shows a fairly massive amount of issues. Running it over and over again doesn't seem to make any difference.
I WANT to run my Install Disc so I can run Repair Disc from Disc Utility ... because I'm having a number of issues ... and I seem to get the spinning rainbow a lot.
SUGGESTIONS ?! ... thanks ...

Disk Utility that can repair a 10.5.7 permissions is only found on the Leopard installer disc. Tiger can't repair Leopard when it comes to permissions, and may also have difficulty with the directory.
Secondly, if your MacBook Pro was purchased after October 26, 2007, it can't boot from any Tiger disc.
If your MacBook Pro was purchased prior, you can use the disk, but you'll want to follow these directions for hardware diagnostics:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303081
Only if your MacBook Pro has Tiger installed, should you use Tiger for the directory or permissions*:
http://www.macmaps.com/directoryfaq.html
Macs can only boot from the operating system that shipped with them, and newer retail operating systems. This means:
1. pre-October 1st, 2007 MacBook Pros can boot off:
- - the discs that shipped with them
- - retail 10.5 discs which look like * that do not say Upgrade, DropIn, or OEM.
2. October 1st through October 25, 2007 can do #1, and also use Upgrade and DropIn discs. Those disks were offered as a limited time mail order Up to date program, some were dropped in the box that came with them.
3. October 26th through November 14, 2007 can boot off the discs that came with them, and retail 10.5.1, 10.5.4, and 10.5.6 discs that do not say Upgrade, DropIn, or OEM, and have a label like the image above.
4. November 15, 2007 through June 29, 2008 can boot off the discs that came with them, and the retail 10.5.4, and 10.5.6 discs that do not say Upgrade, DropIn, or OEM, and have a label like the image above.
5. June 30, 2008 through December 14, 2008 can boot off the discs that came with them, and the retail 10.5.6 discs that do not say Upgrade, DropIn, or OEM, and have a label like the image above.
6. December 15, 2008 and later MacBook Pros can only boot off the discs that came with them.
Presumably when Snow Leopard comes out in September, all of the above will be able to use Snow Leopard because of the specs on http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.
Message was edited by: a brody

Can not boot from OSX disc

I recently partitioned my internal drive with an 80 gig partition to run Ubuntu , removed Ubuntu and now can not resize hd to recover the 80 gig that I used , there was a program with this Ubuntu install called rEFIt that was installed for the dual boot , My problem is that Itunes keeps crashing and I have spent somewhere around 8 hours trying to fix this issue and in the process I discovered that I now can not boot from the osx disc but I can boot from the Ubuntu disc , what can I do to correct this issue or is there anything that I can do to correct this and recover the 80 gig that I used ?

The only solution was to erase hd and restore from time machine backup......
According to everything that I have seen , read and tried when you partition the mac hd the way that mac is designed it will lock the hd thus preventing any access even using the startup disc to repair. As far as restoring everything after the erase and reinstall of the OSX that was easy and painless. FOR ANYONE WHO DOES NOT BACKUP THEIR DATA THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD!!!!
Once OSX is reinstalled the migration assistant will ask if you want to restore from a backup , if you have time machine or any other sort of backup simply choose the one you wish to restore from and continue , must admit I was a bit hesitant at first , I must say that everything restored with the exception of some settings that I have had to restore but they were not major settings , after the backup is restored simply run update check and reinstall all updates , may need to do this a couple of times.
Depending on the amount of data you have will determine the length of time for restore (500 gigs about 6 hrs.) but it will restore user account settings , connection settings and network settings.
Hope this will help if anyone has experienced the same problem.

Can I boot from a SATA drive? What if it's RAID?

I'm planning on getting the MSI 875P Neo FIS2R 800FSB motherboard. I'm also planning on getting ONE SATA hard drive. Can I boot from the SATA drive? Do I HAVE to set up it as a RAID drive? Can you boot from RAID drives? RAID and SATA confuse me a little. Anyone care to help?

I'm using the MSI 865PE Neo2 board and I'm having this problem. It probably has an easy solution, but this is my first build, so I'm not sure exactly what to do.
MSI 865PE Neo 2 Mobo
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Seagate SATA 80GB HDD
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It took me a little bit of experimenting, but I got the BIOS to recogonize the DVD & HDD. It seems every time I got it to recognize one, the other disappeared. Anyway, like I said, BIOS recognizes all 3 now.
I go to install XP and it says I need to install the drivers from a floppy (after I had previously hit F6). Well, where do I get the drivers? I have a CDROM that came with the mobo but I don't know where to find the drivers for the SATA controller on it. ???
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How can I boot from USB 3.0 disc on a Mac Pro 2013

I am just setting up a 2013 Mac Pro with a 4TB USB 3.0 external drive. I have cloned my boot disc over to it but have problems being able to boot from the USB drive.
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So it appears I can not boot from a USB disc on my new Mac Pro, is there a solution to this problem?

The warranty entitles you to complimentary phone support for the first 90 days of ownership.
If you bought the product in the U.S. directly from Apple (not from a reseller), you have 14 days from the date of delivery in which to exchange or return it for a refund. In other countries, the return policy may be different. If you bought from a reseller, its return policy applies.

Can I boot from an external drive with a "Virtual CD"

I just purchased a Hitachi LifeStudio external hard drive for use as my Time Machine backup. When I plugged it in to my MacBook running 10.6.4, I realized that it had one of those "Virtual CDs" that contained the manufacturers crapware, similar to Western Digital's MyWare or whatever its called. It shows up in disk utility as an actual separate disk and not just another partition that can be wiped.
I reformatted the drive using GUID and and created 3 HFS+ Journaled partitions. One was going to be for the 10.6 installer, one for the 10.6 boot, and one for my time machine backup. I restored a 10.6 install dvd disk image I created using disk utility to the 10.6 installer partition (with erase destination checked) then option booted my mac and the partitions did not show up. The only thing I could see was my internal hard drive.
I have done this many times before and it has always worked so Im trying to figure out what Im doing wrong. The only thing I can think of is that the "Virtual CD" that Hitachi put on this external drive is stopping the Mac from seeing the bootable partitions I created. I even went into system preferences>startup disk and blessed the 10.6 install partition. That didn't work either, the computer just booted to my internal drive.
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Thanks in advance.

Yes, it's a known issue. You've already referred to the issue with WD systems. WD has a long list of products that are either not compatible with Macs or won't boot a Mac.
There are practically no problems with bare drives, but once installed in an enclosure there is no guarantee that the package will function as a bootable device. This is especially the case if the manufacturer uses some sort of "virtual" scheme intended for using the device as a sort of one button backup device.
External drives don't have to specifically say anything about being Mac bootable or compatible. It's up to the consumer to verify compatibility and usability.

Imac 21" mid 2011 can not boot from USB device?

Hi,
hope someone can help me.
Bought the new imac 21" and replaced the superdrive with a ssd drive.
Works great but it seems that the imac is not able to boot from any usb device.
I put my osx install disk in my external dvd drive and powered my mac.
While booting up (pressing cmd) the mac does not recognize my external dvd drive. This works great with my MBP late 2008. But the imac can not boot from the dvd drive. Also pressing "c" while booting does not work. Doing that a grey screen appears and after some time mac boots from hdd.
So i installed mac os via target mode over firewire withbmy old imac. This works.
But now i want to install windows on a bootcamp partition.
I can't boot from the windows 7 professional dvd, too. So i tried to create a bootable win 7 thumbdrive. Mac can't boot from this too. Reading many threads in some forum i tried with rEEfit. Reefit shows the usb thumbdrive whike booting, but using this will end in a black screen error from bios: "no bootable device....". Tried a knoppix on the usb thukbdrive, too.... No bootable device....
It seems that there is no way to boot from ANY external usb device like dvd drives or thumbdrives......
What more can i do? I tried for 2 evenings now, but nothing worked out for me......
Currently i don't see any any to install win 7 without an internal superdrive, but can this be??
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Kwicks

Internal is definitely the easiest but you can boot from external HD or external optical drive, the mac is just very picky on what works and what doesn't.
For an external drive or usb stick it has to be GUID partition table and have 10.4.5 or better installed on it, for more info check this link out ( http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1948 )
Hope this helps,
Joe

How to reset password if you can't boot from DVD?

I just bought a second external disk drive and installed Leopard on it. When it asked me if I wanted to import my information from my internal drive, I said OK, not realizing that since I had a blank password on this drive (running 10.2.8), that would not work with Leopard. One of the reasons why I bought the second disk drive is that my internal superdrive failed, and I had added on an external Lacie superdrive which does not function as a boot drive, and I wanted to run the new OS on another drive so if one drive failed, the other would work as a boot drive. However I can't boot from the DVD to reset the password on my external drive to an actual password. I disconnected the external drive and am working on my internal drive with 10.2.8. (So something I planned for worked)
I suppose one solution would be to erase the new external drive and start the whole install process all over again, making sure to add a password on this drive first. But that took about five hours and I'd really rather not. Is there some way to reset the password remotely using the OS from my internal drive to look at the external drive? Or is the non-boot from an external USB superdrive a problem unique to 10.2.8 but if I set the external drive to be the boot drive, the Leopard DVD would boot the external drive?
Thanks.

Thanks. Thankfully, when I thought about it, I realized that the computer had booted from the external superdrive to install Leopard, so I figured I'd give it a shot by selecting the install disk as the startup disk and restarting, crossing my fingers and hoping. It worked, so I was able to simply reset the password using the reset password function. Perhaps the issue with the external superdrive is that if it's not already mounted with a system disk before you restart, it won't do it after it starts up in event of failure.
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13" late 2011 MacBook Pro has frozen after Yosemite installation. I can, however, boot from a clone of my MacBook Air that is on an external drive. Despite the fact that I can boot from the external, could it be the RAM that's the prob

My daughter's 13" late 2011 MacBook Pro has frozen (null sign displays) after Yosemite installation. I can, however, boot from a clone of my MacBook Air that is on an external drive. I reinstalled Yosemite on the MBP HD, but it still hangs in mid install. Despite the fact that I can boot from the external, could it be the RAM that's the problem? I'd happily put 8 GB in if it seems probable that would solve the problem. I've tried all the suggested procedures that I've seen posted here. Disk Utility, and my older version of DiskWarrior indicate the HD is OK. I have DiskWarrior 5 on order.

Boot the MBP with the OPTION key down. If successful, you should see two HDD icons, Select the recovery partition (on the right).
From the 4 option menu select Disk Utility.
Run Disk Utility>First Aid, Verify and Repair.
If the disk cannot be repaired, it will have to be replaced.
Ciao.

Can't boot from hard disk or from windows 7 recovery dvd

I have a 970A-G46 motherboard.
I can't boot from hard disk or from a windows 7 recovery dvd.
If I move the hard drive to another PC, it boots fine.
If I put the DVD in another PC's dvd drive, it can be accessed.
This machine will boot from an Ubuntu dvd and I can then access the HD directories and the recovery dvd.
What do I need to do?
Help and thanks

"I can't boot from hard disk or from a windows 7 recovery dvd."
What is that DVD from? Is it from a previous computer of some kind? Same question for HDD and the OS on it.

Weird screen pattern freezes iMac, can't boot from HD or DVD

I woke up today to find the screen of my iMac black with a sparse pattern of bright pixels on it. I wasn't able to power down holding the Power buton so I unplugged it and left it for a bit before plugging back in. I was then able reboot without any problems. Then a few hours latter a weird pattern appeared across my screen, kind of rolling, animated in spots as seen here:
I powered down, started it up and the screen had this pattern on it:
It froze during startup at the point shown in the photo with the Apple logo. I powered down, unplugged, plugged back in and then tried booting up from my Snow Leopard install disc. It also froze on the logo screen. Another attempt brought up the "You need to restart your computer…" message in different languages shown here:
I figured it was having a kernel panic so I did some searching around and followed instructions on The X Lab - Resolving Kernel Panics page and Apple's Kernel Panic Troubleshooting page. I unplugged everything but my mouse (wireless keyboard) and tried booting into Safe Mode. The screen still had the same pattern but it froze again during startup, the grey progress bar having disappeared.
I can't boot from my hard drive or from a DVD and the pattern is always on screen when I turn the iMac back on. I can't run Apple Hardware Test. I'm stuck but I'm wondering if anyone knows what the cause might be or has any suggestions on how to fix it or even get it to boot up somehow.
I have TechTool Pro and a large flash drive. I'm going to try creating a bootable USB drive with Snow Leopard on it from this backup computer and try to get TechTool Pro on it as well. I'll report back but I'd really appreciate any feedback on this problem.

Some things to report. First, the night before any of this happened, I noticed the fan was running when there wasn't really any reason for it. The computer was idle, no major tasks running. I'm wondering if perhaps the videocard overheated and is causing problems. Perhaps the temperature sensors are screwed up?
Today I got a USB keyboard hooked up and reset the PRAM. Still unable to boot but the pattern on the screen did change from the mess of b&w squigglies above to vertical bars as shown here:
Trying to boot normally or in Safe Mode both result in the spinning wheel freezing and halting startup.
I found powering down then gets weird. It's like it tries to turn on again but can't after a second. Or sometimes it will and the mouse lights up, I can hear the optical drive but the screen stays dark. At that point I need to unplug and try again.
I tried booting from Snow Leopard install DVD during one of these weird cycles and could hear it trying to access the optical drive but I don't believe it even got to the chime stage.
I attempted booting from the install DVD again after unplugging. No luck there but instead of a frozen spinning wheel, it brings up the "You need to restart message…". Other methods don't do this.
Still at a loss to find a reason for this but it appears to be a hardware problem, no doubt the video card based on the screen issues. Does any of this shed any light on what the problem is or (even better) how to fix it?

Can't boot from cd

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