HELP: Impossible to boot from installation CD

Hello,
We were given an iMac G5 at christmas. I had to reinstall OSX 10.3 a couple of days ago: that worked out just fine... except that all the user passwords were changed! So I tried booting on the installation CD again to change them back... except that even when I hold down the C key, my computer never boots on the CD: I always end up on the screen where you have to choose a user, and since none of the previous passwords work, I'm just stuck there.
Is there something wrong with the installation CD? Is there any other way?

Hi tarzanette,
first of all: WELCOME TO THE DISCUSSIONS!
Insert the Install CD 1 on reboot while holding down the option-key. This will bring up the startup manager where you can select the install CD as boot volume.

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Disk Utility broken while booted from Installation CDs??

Situation: I have a Macbook Pro with a 120 GB HDD. I had partitioned it into two partitions, and later desired that I should have only one partition on the drive. I booted the Mac OS X installation CDs and attempted the following three-step procedure:
1. Use Disk Utility to image my system partition into a file on an external USB drive
2. Verify the image and repartition ("Erase") my laptop's internal HDD
3. Restore the disk image from the external HDD to the laptop's HDD.
I made it to step 3 without issue. So currently I have one unbootable Macbook Pro, an 85 GB image of a system partition on a USB HDD, and a perfectly bootable Intel Mac Mini from which I'm writing this post.
Problem: Disk Utility doesn't seem to be able to restore images when booted from the Installation CDs. On the 'Restore' tab there are two fields you must fill in, a 'source' field and a 'destination' field. The source field has a button where you can summon a very helpful file-picker, and it pulls up my disk image from my USB drive just fine. However, the destination field can only be filled in by clicking and dragging a drive from the left panel in Disk Utility.
However, it seems impossible to do this while booted from the Installation CDs. When I attempt to click and drag a disk from the left panel list, all I end up accomplishing is selecting multiple items from the list. To make a visual illustration:
Instead of this, like I get when I try it on my mac mini booted normally:
http://upload.pbase.com/silentplummet/image/72221384.jpg
...I get this, which is a photo of my macbook pro booted from the installation CDs:
http://upload.pbase.com/silentplummet/image/72221397.jpg
There doesn't seem to be any way to actually select a destination drive. If I had to hypothesize, I would guess that the GUI is crippled when you boot from CD and click+drag is deactivated. But that appears to make it impossible to restore images since the only way to select destination drives is by clicking and dragging.
Now I am a college student; I'm not really losing revenue or anything over this, but this is an awful oversight on Apple's part and I am stuck on what to do about it. There is no documentation that says "Restore functionality is crippled in Disk Utility when booting from installation CDs." Here are the steps I have tried for an alternate solution:
-Commandline diskutil. Unfortunately Apple has crippled it and there appears to be no imaging functionality whatsoever.
-Mount the image manually and cp the files back over. Unfortunately I can't make it preserve permissions. I passed the right options to cp but it just won't do what it's supposed to. I tried copying it anyway and using Disk Utility to repair the permissions, but it still wouldn't boot.
-Call Applecare. The support rep was kind and helpful but couldn't offer a solution. The higher-ups fed me some BS about not supporting third party applications, well, I hardly think Disk Utility constitutes a third party application.
My next step is to boot the MBP in target disk mode and use my mac mini to restore the image to the MBP HDD, but I have to buy a firewire cable for that and I don't really want to.
Seeking: acknowledgement that Disk Utility is broken and Apple *****, or otherwise immediate solutions to restore the image to my HDD that do not constitute monetary expenditures on my part.
Macbook Pro 15" 2.0 GHz Mac mini 1.5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Others have (in the Mac Pro forum) noticed this bug in Disk Utility on the Intel version install disks. Your easiest fix would be to reinstall OSX on you Macbook disk, boot it, mount the disk image from the USB drive, and use the Migration Assistant to copy over all your accounts and data files.

Win 7 pro installed on hp touchsmart 320-1030, the machine cannot boot from installation DVD. Assist

I have installed Win 7 professional on hp touchsmart 320-1030 with an OEM DVD to overwrite Win 7 premium preinstalled from factory.
I want to reboot the machine with the same DVD after completing the installation, to test for possibility of reimage in case of crash. Although in bios, I specify cd\dvd as firts boot media, the machine cannot boot from installation DVD. I have 20 machines that behave this way. Can anyone assist?
Note: I had to delete all partitions on the PC before doing a fresh installation of Win 7 pro as Premium can not joing domain.

Hello,
So, you installed Window 7 Pro with a DVD, you boot with it to install the O.S, and now it does not work?
Have you tried to load the BIOS default values or even updating the BIOS?
If it had work before, cant understand why it does not work now...
Let me know.
Thanks,
I work for HP! Please remember to provide and if this helped click ON

G5 wont boot from installation disk?

Any suggestions for a G5 that wont boot from the installation CD? Regular starts fail at the grey screen with the apple logo. I've re-set PRAM and SMU, and replaced the battery. G5 passed the Disk Utility tests and the hardware test run over firewire from a PowerBook. I've tried booting from the CD while holding down the various keys. Runs fine in terminal mode so I've saved all my files. Not sure where to go from here. Any help would be appreciated.

Hi choriocapillaris, and a warm welcome to the forums!
Can we assume it booted from this Install Disc before, or could this be an Install Disc from another Mac?
If it is the right Disc, put it in the PB, boot the PB into Target mode...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583
Boot the G5 with the Option key held down & see if the Install Disc in the PB eventually shows up as a boot choice for the G5.

[nForce] K7N2G-L : Impossible to boot from new 200 GB hard drive !???

I've been trying to solve this problem for 10 days without success !
When I try to install XP on my new 200 GB Seagate hard drive, after the first reboot, I got a long "Verifying DMI pool data ..." and finally a "Boot Disk Failure ! Insert System Disk"
However, the drive appears to work fine as a storage drive, when I use my old 120 GB maxtor HD as boot drive.
I've already verified a lot of things, on my own, and with the Seagate customer service (who have concluded the issue is not due to the hard drive...) :
- The drive is correctly recognized by the BIOS (in standard CMOS features) as a 200 GB drive
- However, I've tried to set the HD access mode to "LBA" instead of "Auto", without any change to the problem...
- I've run the diagnostic tool provided by Seagate (called Seatools), and it reported no error on the drive
- The ATA cable I use are OK (I tried two other ones)
- I've run Memtest as well as an analog tool provided by Seagate : both reported no error with my RAM
- The problem appears when the HD is primary master as well as secondary master, on both IDE connectors of my motherboard
- I tried different PSU connectors to the HD
- I've just managed to install XP on my older 40 GB drive, which I connected where the 200 GB was, without the least problem
- I've built an integrated XP with Service Pack 1 bootable CD, but it doesn't solve the problem when I use it to install XP, instead of my original XP Pro CD-ROM
- While booting on my old XP system and having the new HD connected as secondary master, I could access it in windows XP and read / write files on it. I also ran Partition Magic 8 to verify the primary boot partition that had been created during the beginning on my new XP installation, and it reported no error
- During the "Verifying DMI pool data" message, I see the HD activity LED lighting very briefly (shouldn't it light more continuously if the system really tried to boot from the HD ??)
Well, all should work, but it doesn't !!
I'm really desperate !
What should I due with that new hard drive, if I can't boot on it ??
Your advised help would be very very appreciated...

Thanks for your replies!
Fredrik :
As I mentionned in my post, I tested several ATA cables. I always of course connect the blue end to the board and the HD to the other end (black) of the cable. I tried to jumper the drive on "cable select" as welle as "master", the problem remain in both cases.
The recognition is set to "Auto" as you say.
There are no other IDE units (my CDROM drive is a SCSI one), unless I try to connect that new HD as secondary master, while booting on my old mactor 120 GB as primary master. As I said, the big drive works fine as a storage drive, the problem is really to boot on it.
I had also removed my extra cards while attempting to solve the problem, but without success...
Osnavi :
Each time I try to install XP from the CDROM, I create a new partition (15 GB, NTFS, normal formating) at the beginning of the drive. There are also 2 other NTFS partitions to fill up the HD. But I always try the installation on the first partition.
In order to se if this would change something, I've also tried to create the partitions with Powerquest PArtition Magic 8, and I paid attention to seting the boot partition as active.
As for Fdisk, I thought it was only compatible with FAT partitions ?

Can't create rescue disk nor boot from installation disk

I can't make a rescue disk. Get an error message. As instructed I booted from the Windows 7 install disc and it comes up with no mouse or keyboard support. What is displayed is the choice of languages. Can't get a command prompt. Am I missing
something?
System is a MSI 297-3 board running Windows 7 64 bit. 1 hardrive and 1 dvd.

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New HDD installed in PowerBook G3, won't boot from installation disk.

I just installed a new hard drive in my G3 Wallstreet and I can't get it to boot from the original Apple CD.
I've tried holding the C key as well as +⌥+⇧+⌫, but to no avail.
The CD tests fine in my old iMac G4, so maybe the culprit is the optical drive, but then again, I'm not so sure.
Is there a way to either boot my PowerBook or install OSX from my iMac G4?
Message was edited by: rick268 Also, I can boot into Open Firmware just fine.

Thanks for your help.
WeLoveMacs wanted $50, but I just scored an entire topcase on eBay for $15, shipped. We'll see what happens.
Allan Jones wrote:
I maintatined three Wallstreets for a friend for years. They stayed in regular service from new until he replaced them with MacBook Pros last summer!
In the years of keeping the old soldiers almost relavent, I ran into a "won't boot from a system disk" issue on two of them. In both cases, replacing a dead PRAM battery fixed the issue. Don't ask me why but that was the only thing that fixed them.
When I was supporting those, you could still get new Wallstreet batteries from Other World Computing. Today they no longer show them. I'm not sure where to steer your for a new one. USed batteries are like used chewing gum, IMHO.
You can try disconecting the wire from the PRAM battery to the logic board. That might help. Requires some take-down:
http://www.ifixit.com/Device/PowerBook_G3_Wallstreet

Mac Won't Boot From Installation Disk

After doing a software update, my Mac Pro got stuck on the gray screen after restart (seems like a very common problem recently). I am able to boot into safe mode by holding shift (only works like 10% of the time) and verified permissions. It says I need to repair my disk, but i can only do this by booting from my install disk.
However, I can not boot from my install disk. It gets stuck at the gray screen every single time.
I have done everything recommended in this post with no success: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3353
Am I screwed here? So irritated that this all happened because of Mac's own software update. I have wasted HOURS troubleshooting and it looks like my only option is to pay to have it serviced.
Any help is appreciated.

I don't have a cloned copy. How do I clone to an external disc?
A clone is a copy made from a functioning Mac using clone software like CCC or SuperDuper!. You say you can boot into safe mode#. This is a bit unconventional, but you could try the following; you will need a functioning external hard drive, formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with a GUID partition map. If these details are elusive or vague to you, research this yourself beforehand.
With a functioning external harddrive, see if you can download, and install the SuperDuper applicaton, in the Applications folder and use it to make a copy (ie a clone) of your HD onto the Ext. HD. When all finished restart and hold down the Option key to give you the chance to boot into the external hard drive clone*. If that is possible, then you can run its Disk Utility and perform a Repair Disk on the internal Macintosh HD, and hopefully correct whatever error exists.
#Being able to boot into safe mode suggest there may be some software being loaded in normal mode that is causing the problem, but is difficult to diagnose. What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?
*if at this point it does not boot, there is not much more to try.
Another variation, more straight forward would be to use Disk Warrior, although expensive, it is a good disk utility that may resurrect your boot process, but it is expensive, and it all depends on whether your Mac can boot into it as well. If it can't see it you would be facing the same problem.
What was the update you did that lead to this?
Message was edited by: roam

[SOLVED]Hanging after booting from installation media

Yesterday I booted from a rw-DVD got to the terminal and could execute commands, connect to the internet and use elink etc no problem. I didn't go through with installation as I wanted to read up more on partitioning my drives for dual booting before actually doing so.
Trying the same thing today, and it hangs soon after I boot, regardless of whether I do anything. Printing the following:
nouveau E[ DRM] failed to idle channel 0xcccc0000 [DRM]
pci_pm_runtime_suspend(): nouveau_pmops_runtime_suspend+0x0/0xf0 [nouveau] returns -16
INFO: rcu_preempt detected stalls on CPUs/tasks: { 6} (detected by 1, t=18002 jiffiess, g=974, c=973, q=604)
This is without me typing anything. If I try to execute a command quickly after booting it sometimes works, but after a couple of minutes it will complain of a soft lockup.
I've tried burning another disk, and using a USB installation media, but the same thing happens. Any thoughts?
Edit: Trying to run it on a laptop with i7-4700MQ, 16GB ram, and Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600 / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770M
Second Edit: Booted with nomodeset, which worked and allowed me to install. Just trying to sort out the sodding boot loaders now...
Last edited by glfharris (2014-07-11 22:42:31)

Welcome to the forum.
First of all, you should get in the habit of using [ code ] tags when posting code, not [ quote ] tags (well, unless you want to apply some styling to it, like bold, italic, etc).
This is wrong:
# umount /dev/sdc
This is correct:
# umount /dev/sdc1
You were trying to unmount the drive as a whole, which obviously isn't mounted, instead of the first (and probably only) partition. Had you followed the advice from the note to use blkid and check if it's mounted, this wouldn't have happened. But the fact that a DVD produced that error puzzles me... I have no experience with UEFI, but I think you need to press F10, F11, or something like that, to able able to get to a UEFI boot menu, and choose the optical unit as source.
I hope you used a BitTorrent client when downloading the ISO, and not some direct link (which are prone to CRC errors). If you used a direct link, then check the MD5 and make sure that it matches the one from the Download page. For future reference, torrents are checked while they're being downloaded.

Won't boot from installation disc

I'd like to reinstall Tiger. The installation disc mounts on the desktop and opens. I click on the install icon to restart the computer and boot from the disc and the computer crashes. I have two Tiger installation discs, crashes using either one. I tried it with a Panther installation disc but same thing--crashes. I've tried booting by holding down the C key--crashes. The drive burns successfully and reads successfully. There was no hint of a problem before this.
thoughts anyone
mark

Hi-
If the proper version of the OS software, have you disconnected any third party peripherals, especially USB devices?
Could also try a Single user boot (command + s on startup) , and run fsck to see if there is something amiss on the harddrive.
One other thought, from Safe Mode boot (hold "Shift" on startup), try the OS X install disc.
Yet, one more thought, a simple PRAM reset may be all that's needed.

Portege 3480: is it impossible to boot from a USB-cd-drive?

I would like to install win 2000 on my portege 3480. However, I have a very difficult time getting it to boot from external cd drives. I have tried with both a iomega Cd-drive and a LiteOn DVD-drive. Neither of them works. Both drives are connected via USB port. I have read somewhere that it's only possible to boot via pcmcia cd drives on the 3480 - can that really be true??
Hope somebody can help me out.
Thanks,
Steffen - Denmark

Yes, this is true
Generally its not possible to boot up from the external USB CD/DVD drive.
You need a supported and compatible PCMCIA drive.
Please check other forum postings in this category:
http://forums.computers.toshiba-europe.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=18540
http://forums.computers.toshiba-europe.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=18417

Help evaluating complex boot camp installation

I need to do a bit tricky boot camp installation, and would appreciate if somebody could evaluate before hands whether the plan outlined below should work, or if i should try some different approach:
Current setup is Tiger with two OS X partitions (16gb root, rest mounted under /Users)
Desired setup is Tiger with two OS X partitions, AND a Windows Vista partition.
Plan is:
- Make disk image of the current (Tiger) root partition, and backup of /Users
- Boot from install DVD, re-partition the internal disk to single partition, restore the disk image to the single partition
- Upgrade to Leopard
- Install Boot Camp and Windows Vista
- Use 'diskutility resizeVolume' to split the Leopard partition to two
- Overwrite the first partition with the original Tiger disk image
- Restore Data to the second partition
How about? Will Boot Camp continue to operate when i overwrite Leopard system with the Tiger disk image, and when i split the single partition to two pieces? Or is there some other recommended way for doing this?
Thanks,
Henri Karapuu

'diskutility resizeVolume' should had naturally been 'disktool'. Also sorry about the layout, for some reason single dashes in front of each line got eaten.

Impossible to Boot from CD for satellite 220CS

Hello,
I have a toshiba satellite 220CS/1.4GB model no. PA1240EYV-NLDI
It has a removable diskette station.
Later I get a separate 6x cd drive model no. XM-1402B, Ver. No. 002, ROM Ver. KF60118.
This drive has is own case and I can connect it aside to the laptop
I can remove the drive out his case, but it is not possible to change the cd drive with the diskette station.
This cd drive dont fits into the space of the diskette station.
When I connect the drive with his little cable to the laptop, and I tell the BIOS to boot from CD then I hear the cd spinning an I see the LED burn for a short while.
But he doesnt boot.
I tried to use the thing as a non boot device.
The OS on the laptop is Win95 (I want to change that)
I modified config.sys and also autoexec.bat.
I used for this the original drivers for the cd drive (downloaded from the internet).
But the system dont sees the cd drive.
The BIOS said that it is possible to boot from CD, but why not my system?
Who can help me with this problem
Thanks,
Bartje
sat

Hi all
checking my memory, which can be wrong here, it should be possible to take out the FDD from the 220CS and put a CD there instead.
The CD works fine INSIDE the computer but will not work in the case. The case is intended only for a FDD. The case can also be used as a 'parking space' for the CD when not in use.
You can remove the FDD/CD from the 220 by;
- turning the machine upside down
- unlocking the bay-lock with the small switch.
- ejecting the device by gently pulling/lifting the eject-lever.
When installing another device don't forget to lock the bay-lock again.
Good luck.
Tom

Booting from Installer Disk

I have an issue with a 12" 867Mhz Powerbook G4.
It was showing the file/question mark icon on boot. Booting from a 10.4 retail DVD and running disk utility confirmed that the hard drive had died. I replaced the hard drive with a new 80GB IDE drive.
Next step is to install 10.4, but it will no longer boot from the disk. I turn it on holding alt and get the option to boot from the disk - the machine recognises that it is a Tiger install disk. When I select it I'm taken to the grey screen with the Apple logo and then it seems to hang. The DVD spins for a while and seems to be in use but then it stops.
Does anyone have any ideas what could be causing this and what I can do to resolve it? I have checked the disk in another mac and it is working correctly.

Yes, it sounds like you didn't connect the new drive correctly, or tripped over the optical drive upon doing so. One thing you can try is the startup manager, instead of the 'C' key, as the 'C' key doesn't always work. The startup manager is used among other things to boot the Hardware test volume, but you can also use it to force boot up the installer:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA27043?viewlocale=en_US
256 MB of RAM is hardly enough, even though it is the required minimum. And what can happen if you don't have enough RAM, some may be of sufficiently low quality, that it can't get everything it needs into memory. If after upgrading the RAM following specs*:
http://www.macmaps.com/badram.html
you still can't boot the disc with the startup manager, have an authorized service technician determine how badly you might have munged the hard drive installation.
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

[Solved] Getting a rolling screen while booting from installer

So, this problem is one that originally existed for me with the latest Ubuntu stable live CD. It did not happen with an old Live CD I had from 2007. I ended up trying the netboot install CD for Arch because I've been thinking of switching to this distro anyway, and when I saw the same problem happening I thought I'd come here. I gave this preamble because it might help point to where the issue is (something in more recent versions of the kernal maybe?)
So here's what happens. I boot from the 64 bit netinstall CD. It goes along the boot process fine until I get to:
Waiting for udev events to be processed
Note, I'm only pretty sure that's what it says, as I have to write it down from my own memory as the screen is unreadable after that point.
A bit after that the screen starts scrolling rapidly, like it's out of sync or something. I can't really read anything on the screen because it's scrolling so fast.
In terms of hardware I have an older 64 bit system, with a video card going to an analog TV (old style, not HD). I think I can get more hardware info from the install CD from the menu before it actually gets to booting up the system, if there is some sort of specific information that would help.
Thanks in advance for all your help.
Last edited by zenten (2012-04-17 12:12:57)

It booted fine fully installed with an older version of Ubuntu that I ended up breaking in a totally unrelated issue. Rather than trying to restore what was left I thought I'd just install from scratch. And I haven't tried a monitor hooked up, because that would require a lot of lugging things around and whatnot.
I'm going to try http://schlunix.org/archlinux/iso/2009. … so.torrent and see if that works, and if so setting up that framebuffer console.

HELP: Impossible to boot from installation CD

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