Problems with Snow Leopard and choosing startup disk.

I just installed Snow Leopard 10.6.3 on my external drive to test it out. Most things seem to work just fine, but I'm having problems selecting a start up disk from system preferences. When I bring up start up disk, I see the internal and external drives but they are greyed out and unselectable. How do I get back to starting up off of my internal drive? Is this a common problem?

Do try CT's suggestion first; that might be the most likely explanation.
In Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, do you see both drives?
You might be able to get back into the Internal by starting up from Startup Manager. Hold the Option (Alt) key down at the startup chime. When that finishes loading, you should be presented with icons for both drives. If that succeeds, and you can return to the Internal, you can then see if the options in Startup Disk are available.
In Disk Utility, I would also repair the External, if and when you are booted back from the Internal.
And once you are booted back normally, highlight the mounted External Volume and do a Get info (CMD-I). Make sure "Ignore Permissions on this Volume" is unchecked.
Edit: as CT suggested, you should also repair Permissions, but -- and this may have changed in 10.6, not sure -- you should generally repair Permissions booted from the Volume you are repairing. Before repairing Permissions, however, on any Volume, you should first Verify that Volume. Repairing Permissions on a Volume with problems will only make those problems worse.
Message was edited by: WZZZ

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Unfortunately I don't know what's going on, but we're having the same issue at work on two Mac Pro machines. We installed Snow and everything's been running as good as before or better - except for this issue. One machine had a clean install and one had an update install, and both are exhibiting behavior identical in every detail to what you describe.
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Hi,
I have Firefox but mainly use Safari
I was also getting a blank page when I tried to open a PDF.
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If you have Adobe Reader 10.0 on your Apps, try going to step 5 below
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2) Open Library/Application Support/ folder.
3) If there isn't an "Adobe" folder, create one now (go to File-->New Folder menu item) and name it "Adobe".
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If this works please let me know

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Same problem here, did you find a solution?

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I've had similar problems when using my cinema display. I am currently using it with my usb backup drive disconnected and , so far, have not had the problems. Here's hoping, although it is not a good permanent solution, it means I do not have Time Machine running or access to my other backup files. I suspect that it may be a problem (as reported by others on this forum) with SL mounting a sleeping drive. Time will tell.

Problem with Snow Leopard and FileVault after upgrading - how to solve it?

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you don't have to reinstall. just enable the root account and log in as root. you can access your backup from there. see this link on how to enable root.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1278
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Boot to safe mode by holding the Shift key on boot.
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Thanks for the feedback. Here's the second way.
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I have posted what worked for me in several posts that other people had started, but because I feel I might sound repetitive and annoying, I am just posting it in this one for everyone. I hope it can be helpful. Best wishes for the year 2010
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* I renamed the NAME of the printer to be sure I would recognise it... LOL
I hope this is useful for all of you.

If a device is an All-in-One and can therefore scan, you will find that when the printer is added, the pane on the right hand side for that device will have two headings - Print and Scan.
If the device is just a scanner, then there will be heading of Scanners in the list on the left side. Printers will typically be listed at the top of this list.
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This seems to be a common problem with Snow Leopard and the R2880 Epson printers, and it seems that most people are able to solve it by deleting the printer from the printer queue and resetting the printer queue. But that hasn’t solved my problem.
Here’s what I’ve done:
Manually deleted the Epson folder from the hard drive and trashed it, repaired disk permissions, uninstalled the Epson driver, updated software, downloaded and installed the Apple/Epson driver, deleted the printer from the print queue, and reset the printer queue. I’ve done all of these things several times over. And still I get the same error message every time I try to print from the driver with the print options. Does anyone have any other suggestions for a fix?

Some of the previous users had success when they restarted after deleting the /Library/Printers/EPSON and /Library/Caches/Epson folders. You might also try deleting the /Library/Cache folder. There is a solution posted from someone at Epson:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10909012#10909012
Substitute 2880 for RX580:
Make sure that you have completely removed the Stylus Photo RX580 driver, then install the new driver from System Update:
1. Power off the printer
2. Open System Pref. and Print/Fax
3. Highlight the RX580 printer
4. Click on the ""-"" sign
5. Close Print and Fax
6. Open your Mac's Hard Drive
7. Open the Library Folder
8. Open Printer and delete the EPSON Folder
9. Open the PPDs folder find the Epson Stylus Photo RX580.gz and delete the file
10. Close the PPD and the Printer folder
->11. In the Library folder, open the Caches Folder
->12. Delete the Epson folder
->13. Restart the Mac
14. Power on the printer
15. Click on the Apple Icon and System Update
16. Follow the directions to install the new driver
Hope this helps.

HT201250 My 10.7.3 Time Machine won't work with external disks. Worked fine with Snow Leopard, and even Lion 10.7.1

My 10.7.3 Time Machine won't work with external disks. Worked fine with Snow Leopard, and even Lion 10.7.1
I have tried everything, even buy new external disk from different manufacture.
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Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/TM-Disk/Backups.backupdb
9.56 GB required (including padding), 911.15 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
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I have a MacBook Pro 15" and my warranty just ran out! I partitioned my harddrive into two partitions, one with Snow Leopard and the other with microsoft.This morning I turned on my Macbook Pro and it will not boot into Snow Leopard.

Good Morning,
I have a MacBook Pro 15" and my warranty just ran out! I partitioned my harddrive into two partitions, one with Snow Leopard and the other with microsoft.This morning I turned on my Macbook Pro and it will not boot into Snow Leopard. I shut it off took out the battery, reinstalled the battery. Then I put in the Snow Leopard CD and booted up to disk utility and The Snow Leopard partion would not show up?? I do see the microsoft partion.
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thank you.

Have you restarted holding down the Opt key? That procedure should give you a gray screen with all of the partitions that exist. Then select the SL partition for boot. Also go to System Preferences and Startup Disk, unlock the lock and select the SL partition as the default boot partition, then relock.

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Thanks for the reply. I tried playing with detaching the audio in iMovie, but with 20+ hours of video to correct, it would take too long. After 28 hours, Corel/Roxio tech support replied that it is a known bitrate mismatch problem and they have no real fix. I strongly suggest not to buy this product.

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I recently faced problem with Snow Leopard 10.6.8, and my system started getting shut down before login screen appears. I contacted apple support,and they replaced my Logic board.
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Neither, bluetooth and internet port is working.
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Thanks for a super Quick response.
I have tried re-installing the MAC on top of the current installation 10.6.8 and, ( as system is so slow, it took around 5 hours for installation to complete ), yet the problem persisted.
Currently i formatted the Macintosh HD, and i am doing a fresh installation. Hope it does work .. ??
Else, i am not sure, what to go ahead with..
The person who replaced LB, had an external hard drive with 10.6.7 installed on it, when system was booted from that disc , the things starts working normally.
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Problems with Snow Leopard and choosing startup disk.

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