MP boots to OS X Utilities

My Mac Pro boots to Mac OS X Utilities, the Lion installer. I have my internal drive selected as startup disc, but can't get it to boot to that.

Zap PRAM
Un-select and reselect the drive volume you do want.
There may be an "EFI Boot" instead of the name when you hold down Option key on startup
X on startup will default to try to boot from Mac OS X volume.
Mac Pro can have 4 or more internal hard drives some of which could be boot drive - kept 10.6.8 on its own drive for one thing, or have a clone w/ 10.7.3 on one and 10.7.4 on another.
you may need to clone your drive. CCC can clone Lion Recovery partition.

Similar Messages

Trouble booting into 10.6 utilities

I have been trying to load bootcamp for a while without success, in the process I have tried to partition several times with no luck. The system tells me to boot from the OSX disk using the utilities function, format as journeled and reload from boot camp.
When I try to boot from snow leopard utilities the system hangs at the apple logo. been there about an hour now, does this process take a while or does this sound hungup? Any recommendations if it is hungup? This is my 3rd try with the same results
Really appreciate any council
Thanks Bg

What disk are you booting from? The gray disk that came with the computer? Or something else? Note that gray disks from a different machine won't work, and a retail copy of 10.6 won't work with a machine that shipped after that retail copy was made.
If the disk should be capable of booting your machine, then either it has been damaged somehow or you have a hardware problem with your computer.

After selecting "login as guest" MBP reboots and only boots in OS X Utilities mode

Yesterday, I started my mac. I wanted to use the guest account and my mac told me to reboot for that option. From that time, my mac only boots in OSX Utilities mode and there's no way to get there out.
When I used detailed login stats, it seems that it's unable to open the var/db/bootcache,.playlist (no such file or directory)
I'm running 10.8 - my disc is encrypted
Try to find some help on Google without any results

Hey!
Of all the things you tried you didn't try these things:
go to the recovery partition by hold CMD+R while booting.
Once there, go to the Disk Utility area and Verify and repair your disks and permissions
after doing that with successful results, go and reinstall Mountain lion.
This may or may not fix your issue.
if you don't want to do that just yet, you can see if it is an application that you have downloaded that may be the issue. simply go to system preferences and choose Users and Groups and create a new user.
Log in to the new user and see if your issue persists.
When is save mode go to system preferences Users and Groups and go to the Login items and uncheck all of them.
These are the steps I would have taken first. Try these ones and see if you don't fix your issue. If you figure out what app is making you constantly restart, please let us know what it is so others may be able to solve the issue faster.

Mac Pro Stuck at Grey Screen, then will only boot into OS X Utilities.

My Mac Pro is stuck at Gray Screen. When I reset PRAM, it loads the OSX Utilities screen, prompting me Restore from Time Machine, Reinstall OS X, Get Help, or Disk Utility. I ran Disk Repair and Repair Premissions, same thing.... stuck at grey screen.
What will happen to the data on my HD if I choose to Reinstall the OS X? IS that the best choice? Thanks.

Off hand I think your drive may be bad. But to find out you need to erase the drive, so you will need to have a recent, bootable backup.
Install or Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion from Scratch
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Erase the hard drive:
1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
2. After DU loads select your startup volume (usually Macintosh HD) from the
      left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Optionally, click on
        the Security button and set the Zero Data option to one-pass. Click on
      the Erase button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Install button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible
            because it is three times faster than wireless.
If this does not work, then you need to replace your hard drive.

Help! dead loop boot with Mac OS Utilities!!!

Need help! iMac late 2012 / Mac OS 10.8.3
Always run with Mac OS X utilities. Restart & restore from backup disk not help.
How disable that?
Thanks

Solved. Re-Install Mac OS X

Why is my mac always booting into Mac OSX Utilities?

Then I have to restart and then it boots normally.
thanks

I checked. Yes, Resume will cause Disk Utility to start upon restart under the condition I mention above. if you don't want windows open when shutting down to reopen upon restart, then uncheck the "Reopen windows when logging back in" box that appears after you chose to shut down.

MacBook Pro Boots to OSx Utilities

Hi,
My My 2012 Macbook unexpectedly booted up into OSX Utilities and now when I try to verify or repair the Macintosh HD it says it cannot be repaired and to please back up any data possible.

Try using a data recovery product such as the ones listed here. Don't write anything else to the drive until the files are recovered or you choose not to recover them.
(113273)

MBP boots to utilities - will not restore

My MacBook Pro was shut down tonight and now will only boot to the disk utilities menu. I have attempted a restore form a Time Machine backup on a USB drive multiple times. While it appears the restore completed successfully, on the reboot it continues to go back to the disk utilities menu. Thank you

Hi baxtermcc,
If your MacBook Pro will only boot to the Disk Utilities menu, you may want to try forcing it to boot to the Startup Manager by holding down the Option key and see if it is listing any additional bootable volumes. You may find the following article helpful:
Startup Manager: How to select a startup volume
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1310
Regards,
- Brenden

How to install third-party SSD as boot disk in MacPro 5,1

I had so much trouble with this that I thought I'd post a recipe that others could follow.
The first thing you should know is that it's not possible to get a non-Apple SSD recognized in a sled slot of a MacPro 5,1. It just doesn't see them at all, even if (as some suggested) previously partitioned as a GUID partition (which works in a MacBook Pro, but not a MacPro 5,1). This is true even with the most up-to-date EFI firmware. You're going to have to use a PCIe adapter card.
The next thing you should know is that not all PCIe SATA3 SSD adapter cards are bootable on a MacPro 5,1. For instance, even though the Sonnet Tempo SSD is advertised as working for a boot drive in a Mac Pro, it actually works in any Mac Pro *except* the 5,1. In a 5,1 drives on the card do not work as boot drives, either with option boot or if you select it as the startup drive after booting from something else. Also, EFI boot is extended by about a minute -- not the end of the world, but an annoyance. The Tempo card does work well for add-on drives, its very fast. I am pretty sure the Tempo Pro variant of the card also does not work, as the Sonnet support guys told me that they have to use use rEFIt for booting 5,1 MacPros in their lab. I imagine if the Pro worked they would have pointed me at that instead. (Note that rEFIt has been superseded by rEFInd, http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/. I didn't try using rEFIt or rEFInd because I found a better way, but if you want to dual-boot to Linux those utilities are apparently Da Bomb.)
An Apricorn Velocity x2 Duo card *will* boot, and does not have a long EFI boot delay. That card is a little more expensive than the Tempo SSD (but not the Tempo Pro SSD) but it works properly. It's worth the extra money, especially since it's the only card I could find that explicitly claimed to work as a boot drive on a 5,1 MacPro. And it does.
One caveat: With the Tempo SSD the SSD drives were invisible until repartitioned in GUID format, which also happens if you try to use a third-party SSD inside a Macbook Pro. I found that I could repartition one drive, a Crucial MX500 960GB, using a run-of-the-mill USB SATA2 adapter. Unfortunately this solution did not work with a Samsung Evo 1TB drive, I had to use an external USB3 enclosure. Moreover, the enclosure supported both FireWire and USB3 but FireWire did not work. This FireWire issue might be due to the super-cheap enclosure I was using, so YMMV, but keep in mind that it's possible that you'll need either a USB3 expansion card in the MacPro, or a different Mac, to perform the initial repartition to GUID format.
It's possible that SSDs would be visible on the Velocity card even before repartitioning, I don't know as both of my drives had been repartitioned prior to trying the Velocity. So, it might work ... but you might need to partition externally.
I don't know if pre-partitioning is necessary with the Velocity card, as I only ever tried pre-partitioned drives with it. If you try the Velocity and the drive isn't seen, that's the problem and you'll have to use an external SATA adapter of some sort to repartition before installing on the Velocity card.
After partitioning the drive and installing on the Velocity card, it worked fine. Yosemite installed properly and with reboot it blazed.
Next up, TRIM support. For some reason known only to Apple, the Apple AHCI driver refuses to enable TRIM support for anything other than Apple drives. It's possible that there are or were bugs in some of the early SSDs and Apple is just playing it safe, although I would have preferred to have the option to enable TRIM or not if that's the case. Unfortunately there is no such option, you have to use a substitute AHCI driver.
Unfortunately if you're using Yosemite you cannot use a substitute driver without disabling kext extensions, because Apple will not sign anyone else's driver (at least not at the time of this writing). That's unfortunate, I would prefer to have signed extensions if I could, but realistically speaking you're no worse off in terms of security than you were with Mavericks so it's not the end of the world. With a little luck Apple will either start supporting TRIM on third-party drives or starts signing third-party drivers sometime in the future.
So: Before you can start TRIMming drives, you first need to run this command, or something like it:
sudo nvram boot-args=“kext-dev-mode=1”
I rather like seeing the boot process, rather than just the Apple logo, so I use this:
sudo nvram boot-args=“-v kext-dev-mode=1”
I tried both Trim Enabler (http://www.cindori.org/software/trimenabler/) and Chameleon SSD Optimizer (http://chameleon.alessandroboschini.com/). As of this writing the Chameleon driver is more up-to-date, and comes with some additional utilities that are pretty nice. Take your pick, though, both worked fine in my experiments.
With a TRIM-enabled AHCI driver, kext signing disabled, a Velocity card, and your favorite SSD you are in business.
The only weird thing after all of this is that non-boot SSDs on the Velocity card (or on the Tempo) are ejectable. As far as I can determine there’s no way to mark them as non-ejectable. That’s a minor annoyance compared to the performance you get out of the SSD, though.
Because, with this stuff in there, yowza is the MacPro 5,1 a fast machine. You Will Like It. Enjoy!

Then you should read these.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1804704&highlight=sonnet+tempo+pro
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1721573&highlight=sonnet+tempo+pro
This was strange but has to do with how startup disk and nvram interact
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1795765
I think your problems were solvable and not that the Sonnet card and 5,1 is not bootable, in fact the 5,1 is easier, there are more supported cards.
I have the 1,1 where the Sonnet Pro is recommended but for data only and are not bootable because of the 32-bit EFI firmware. NOT the 4,1 and 5,1. The 2008's are problem child and have a mix of PCIe 1.1 slots, first implementation of EFI64 that also has problems. Also the 4,1 has two PCIe 2.x slots 3 and 4 that share a controller but that simply limits bandwidth.
I would have left the TRIM support and NVRAM changes in Yosemite to a separate thread if you wanted to focus on the Sonnet Tempo Pro support in Mac Pro 2010-12 5,1s.
Also the make of SSD can vary and they also have their own firmware as do bootable controllers along with the EFI of the Mac, all of which have to work together. Meaning it might be that Samsung 840 va 840 EVO vs 840 Pro will all be slightly different but my experience is Samsungs work well (as do others like Crucial with the proper firmware - and there was/is an issue with the firmware of the Samsung 840 but not with booting).
The PCIe card gets seen and treated as external and therefore 'eject' but of course you can't when it is the system boot drive.
One thing I found last week and meant to mention: After installing or changing PCIe cards, RESET SMC made all the difference in the world with the long boot delay. Some PCIe cards will add a few seconds, system has to search the device tree which now shows another controller with multiple devices - and sometimes NVRAM and SMC are what I will call "dirty" and need to be rebuilt and reset.

Boot camp Windows 8.1 new rMBP / Mavericks

So, my shiny new 13" retina MBP (first Mac product) arrived Thursday and I decided yesterday would be the day I'd Bootcamp Windows 8.1.
I had a plethora of issues, some of which I got through by mining the interweb for info, but one stumped me altogether. I thought I'd share the experience/story to a) hopefully help out other users and b) see if anyone can help me complete the process (What follows is something of an unsuccinct summary of 3 hours of my life. Should you be busy or have anything else to do, feel free not to get bored reading it and then lambast me in the comments for wasting so much of your time):
Ingredients:
1off 13" retina MBP running OSX 10.9, which I've affectionately named "Tom" (Maverick -> Top Gun -> Tom Cruise) ... anyway
1off MSDN 64bit Windows 8.1 Enterprise Edition .iso
1off 8gb USB stick
Method:
- Loaded Boot Camp Assistant in Utilities
- Tried tried to load my .iso unto the memory stick
1st issue encountered:
     - Error: "Boot Camp only supports 64-bit Windows installation on this platform. Please use a ISO file for 64-bit Windows installation"
1st issue resolution:
     - Frustrated but undettered I repeatedly re-tried and even re-downlaoded the 64-bit .iso from MSDN. No joy. Some research on the net revealed that for Boot      Camp 5, native to Mavericks, will not support x32-bit Windows installs. For whatever reason, Bootcamp thinks my iso is 32-bit. Why? Christ knows. Solution?      Amend the info.plist file within Boot Camp Assistant as advised here. Now this spawned a      fang-toothed mini-issue of its own, as on changing the      info.plist file exactly as instructed, Boot Camp Assistant would now no longer work. Rather, it would tell me it has crashed and sent an error message back to      Apple ... grass.
     More research and a new solution: Get an older version of Boot Camp Assistant.
Tip - There is a difference between Bootcamp Support Software (Windows drivers etc) and a Boot Camp Assistant version. It took a couple of support software downloads before I discovered this.
     - Got hold of a version of Boot Camp 4, which seemed less princessy about whether my Windows iso seemed to be 32 or 64-bit, and started creating the      install on my USB stick.
2nd issue encountered:
     - Error: "Windows Support Software Not Available for Download"
2nd issue resolution:
     - Frustrated but undettered I tried a couple more times thinking perhaps the Apple server from which I was trying to download support software was having      some issues. Some more research revealed you can download the Support Software Packages yourself. At this point a penny dropped somewhere behind      my eyes. In my downloads folder was a Bootcamp 5.0.5 software package I'd previously downloaded mistakenly thinking it was a different version of Boot      Camp Assistant. Copied it onto a separate USB stick (having torn the house apart to find one). Deselected the middle option in Bootcamp 4 to download the      Support Software (drivers) and continued about my business.
- My new, amenable, version of BootCamp Assistant guided me through the setup process (partitioning the disc etc.) and after a reboot I eventually found myself looking at a Windows 8.1 setup screen. Success!! No... not yet...
- With Windows 8.1 installed I copied the Bootcamp 5 support folder (drivers) onto my Windows desktop and double-clicked the install.exe with a confidence that turned out to be entirely unwarranted as it provoked the following error...
3rd issue encountered:
     - Error: "Boot Camp x64 is unsupported on this computer model"
3rd issue resolution:
     - Frustrated, I gently put my new Macbook down and went to get a whiskey (note: this is not advised). Having calmed my nerves I did some more research. I      tried Troubleshoot Compatibility and running as Admin solutions to no avail.
Tip - Transversing a Windows OS with no Mac keyboard/touchpad drivers is a challenge in itself. Shift F10 also functions as right-click, alternatively, have a USB mouse on hand.
     What did work, was navigating via a Command Prompt to the Bootcamp folder I'd copied to the desktop (various youtube videos exist on how to move around      folders in cmd if you don't know how) C:\...\BootCamp\Drivers\Apple\BootCamp.msi
     My drivers started installing. Success?!?! ...nearly
4th issue encountered:
     No wireless adapter detected
4th issue resolution:
     - Frustrated and now dehydrated, thanks to a Scottish single malt, I did some more internet mining and discovered this also was not a unique problem. I      managed to obtain a Windows 7 Broadcom driver for a different Mac network adapter (I couldn't at this point identify what type of network adapter was living      in unused hibernation under my keyboard somewhere, but for some reason the driver within the Bootcamp Support Software wasn't working). But sadly this      didn't work.
At this point I'd lost most of my evening and half of Strictly Come Dancing, and so decided to knock it on the head.
I hope that some of the above may prove useful for people struggling with one or two of the same problems; at the very least it's encouraging to know you're not the only one.
Regarding my situation, if there's a root cause to my problems (likely circulating around my own naivety or stupidity) I'd be very grateful for any help in identifying it, but please be patient; I'm not a tech guru, I'm literally just a guy with a new macbook and little computing experience.
Specifically I'd love some feedback or assistance as to how I might enable the Network Adapter in Windows - perhaps where I might find the driver specific to my machine?
In all, considering how many posts and articles there are from people struggling with Boot Camp, it doesn't seem like it fits the user friendly experience Apple markets itself on.
Thanks in advance.

In Thehatters defence, this was initially posted in the MacbookPro forum and then moved to Boot Camp,
If you have any joy solving your trackpad device driver issue, feel free to post here (there might be a similar fix for my wireless adapter device)
Thanks

Help!! Managed to erase a new second hard drive I added and now the system won't boot up

I can't believe it!! Having un-successfully tried to add a 2nd 2Tb HD, which wouldn't identify itself properly or erase. I took a HD out of one of my PCs and tried again. This time the hard drive was identified correctly and using disk utility I erased it and formatted it successfully. I then shut down, restarted and all I got was an initial white screen and then a black one with a flashing cursor. What have I done wrong...? How can i get the OS to start properly?

Hold down the Alt/Option key while you restart.
This invokes the All-in-ROM Startup Manager, which very slowly inspects each drive and draws an Icon for each potentially-bootable Volume.
If it finds one, select it and click proceed arrow.
If not you will need to boot fron your Installer/Utilities DVD and use Disk Utility from there to look around.
¿Is there a possibility a new drive is messing up the SATA Bus and precluding booting?

G4 Mac Server Booting Problems (?)

Computer: PowerMac G4 AGP PowerPC G4 400 MHz, 768 MB Ram, OS 9.04, Server software AppleShare IP 6.3.1.
The server froze when I ran Retrospect mirror backup copying the server drive to an external Firewire drive.
Now almost every time that I reboot, the server freezes with (at) an arrow mouse icon in the upper left screen. The server will fully reboot about once for every ten reboots.
The computer will boot (randomly) from a boot CD with Norton Utilities. Norton says there are no problems.
I ran Disk First Aid and I get a couple of error messages: "MountCheck found minor errors" and "Volume Bit Map needs minor repair".
I ran Repair (Disk First Aid) and it said Problems Fixed.
The problem is, the computer still freezes (randomly) when booting at the arrow mouse icon in the upper left screen.
I have done all the usual fix routines (reset PRAM, rebuild desktop, reset CUDA, etc.); nothing helped.
What is the problem??? How do I fix it? Thanks.
PowerMac G4 AGP PowerPC G4 - SERVER Mac OS 9.0.x 400 MHz, 768 MB Ram, OS 9.04, Server software AppleShare IP 6.3.1.

So here's what I've done so far:
I copied a backup System folder from June this year to the second hard drive on the server. I set the boot disk control panel to Drive2 and re-booted. Froze.
I put a boot CD in the tray and re-booted while holding down the "C" key. The computer booted to Drive2 (what I had previously set it to). I did a re-boot to test (ejecting the CD) and the computer froze.
I rebooted again this time hitting the keyboard's Return key and moving the mouse - reboot ok.
Leaving the computer up (running the June System on Drive2) I tested some functions. The printer still does not work (connected to Apple Share IP print server). The server still does not show up in the Chooser of the users, but they can connect if they have an alias already set up.
I noticed that the Extensions Manager freezes the computer when I click on it. And sometimes I'm getting an Open Transport error message.
So..... We're looking at a SCSI problem or clock battery problem?

MacBook Pro won't boot from Superdrive

I have a MacBook Pro which is around 7 Months old, I wanted to run Disk Warrior on it but the Macbook Pro wouldn't boot from the disk, tried the MAC install disk same issue.
Holding down the C key at boot time causes the drive to spin up it gets as far as the grey screen with the apple logo then the drive stops. Tried also holding down the alt key, I can see the hard disk and DVD icons but selecting the DVD same thing happens as above.
The superdrive seams to work fine when the machine is running just refuses to boot from it.
Any help would be much appreciated
rgs
Colin

Colin: Are you trying to boot from the Install/Restore DVD that was shipped with your MacBook Pro? If not, do. Your DiskWarrior DVD may not be able to boot your MBP model, and an older Snow Leopard installer DVD can't either.
The best setup for using DiskWarrior or any other Disk utility on your MBP's internal drive is to have a bootable clone of that drive as a backup, with all your utility software installed on it just as it is on the internal drive. Then whenever you have a problem, you can boot from the other drive to repair the troubled one. No need then to boot or run the utilities from a DVD, which is tediously slow at best, even when it works perfectly.

Software Update went to sleep during install - wont boot!

Hi,
My friend has a white macbook that she was updating to 10.5.2 just as normal using Software Update. While the update was installing she closed the lid and thus putting the computer to sleep.
When she opened it the next day it said the install was done and that a restart is required - when she restarted it the computer wouldn't startup!!
It gets to the grey screen with the apple logo and the progress indicator but nothing ever happens!
I have used the Leopard disk to repair the system but nothing helped!
She really doesn't want to have to archive install, are there any other options?

Captainhams wrote:
When I select the hard drive in the installer it says: "You can't install on this volume becuase it doesn't meet the System Requirements"!!
*what now!?*
I would boot into the Leopard DVD (hold down "C" when booting) and in the Utilities folder run DU and do a disk repair and permissions repair. That should take care of any file corruption that occurred.
Then see if the system boots. If not, try the Safe mode (boot holding down the spacebar) and then let us know what happens.
Don't give up and reinstall unless we have eliminated the impossible and the most highly unlikely

Cannot boot Snow Leopard from external FireWire drive

I use a Western Digital My Passport Studio 500 GB external drive to back up my MacBook Pro with Time Machine. I had created a 30 GB Leopard boot partition with various utilities and tools; since the small drive goes wherever the laptop goes, I figured it might come in handy to be able to boot the computer in the event something went wrong with its internal 250 GB drive.
Over the weekend, I upgraded the external drive to Snow Leopard, and now it can no longer be used to boot the laptop. The symptoms are truly weird. Holding down the Option key while rebooting does not show the external drive unless I disconnect and reconnect the FireWire cable. The drive then shows up. I select it, and it appears to begin to boot, then it just sits on the gray screen with the little round thingie turning for a long time (five to ten minutes). Eventually, the system boots from its internal drive. This happens regardless of whether I'm connected by means of FireWire 400 or 800.
After spending a lot of time looking at the usual suspects (cables, permissions, PRAM, etc.) I reinstalled Sand Leopard (OK, 10.5) and lo and behold, the drive boots again (though for some reason I still have to go through the disconnect/reconnect routine). Clearly, something in the OS has changed with respect to the way booting from external drives is handled.
On the positive side, I have none of the symptoms described in other threads: Time Machine works flawlessly, and both the boot partition and the Time Machine partition appear on the Snow Leopard desktop every time I connect the drive.
Does anyone have the same issues? Does anyone know of a workaround?
Thanks,
Daniel

Hi,
Working from a MacBook Pro 2.4 (Santa Rosa) with 4gb ram, running OS 10.5.7-
(All external HDs are 7200 rpm)
Shortly after our fresh install of Snow Leopard onto a new but already tested External 1.5 Seagate Barracuda (with the most current firmware), in an OWC Mercury Elite enclosure-
We installed Snow Leopard smoothly to that external HD without any issues, and it booted up from that 1.5T external HD, and worked fine.
Then, still working from the MacBook Pro, I turned on and booted another external HD (a Newertech Guardian Maximus RAID running 10.4.11 via FW800, daisy chained to the 1.5T External with Snow Leopard newly installed.
Again that's MacBook Pro <FW800> Snowy external HD <FW800> 10.4.11 RAID (booted & working from the RAID).
But when I tried to bootup up Snow Leopard, after doing the work on the 10.4.11 RAID-
It would not boot up.
Though Snowy would appear as an available Start Up disk, each time it was selected as the Boot drive,
the Internal HD OS 10.5.7 booted instead.
I changed around the cables and tried repeatedly.
Same result, no Snowy boot.
Even after the OS 10.4.11 external RAID was power down, and disconnected.
After some looking around, I found this forum:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2136208&tstart=0
Got me thinking.
I tried the USB, and it booted !
I tried the FW400, and it booted !
And mysteriously, at this point- I tried the FW800, and it booted !
And then, the MBP boots seemed to reliably boot from that external, via FW800.
Bizarre.
Snow Cat needs to be taught originally how to find FW800 from the bottom up ?
Turns out, Snow Leopard doesn't like booting,
if the preceding boot was on the 10.4.11 RAID, and work was done with programs there.
So, once again, I repeated this process:
After working with programs on the 10.4.11 external HD,
the MBP would not boot the Snow Leopard external HD,
it defaulted to booting from the MBP internal HD OS 10.5 via FW800.
even though Snowy was selected for Start Up.
This was the case repeatedly.
(It would also boot from the 10.4.11 external RAID, if it were selected for Start Up.)
(In each of these tests below, I only rebooted the computer at each test. I did no work with programs on the various HDs.)
SO, once again, at this point of the process:
I plugged in that Snowy external HD via FW400,
and it booted up fine !
Then I booted up from the Internal 10.5, and tried to boot Snowy via FW800 again.
It worked !
Then I turned on the 10.4.11 RAID external HD, and tried to reboot from the Snowy external HD.
It worked too !
Then I booted from the 10.4.11 RAID, it came up fine.
Then booted from the Snowy, it came up fine.
Then booted from the Internal HD 10.5, it came up fine.
Then booted from Snowy again, it came up fine.
Then I turned off the 10.4.11 HD, booted from Snowy, it came up fine.
Then booted from the Internal, it came up fine.
Then tried Snowy one last time, it came up fine.
Anyway, the issue is:
It works fine-
Except when I do work within the programs on the 10.4.11 external RAID.
Then I have to use FW400 or USB to get it to boot once again . . .
Regardless of whether the other external HD is removed from the system.
It's some sort of flaw, and totally repeatable in testing.
Hopefully, it will be fixed soon.
Howard

MP boots to OS X Utilities

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