Won't boot, but need to boot!

My G4 iBook won't boot.... I know that other people are and have had this problem because of an over-full system hard-drive.
I have a number of installed applications that I really really need to leave on the system but I'm quite happy to nuke everything else.
I've got the system disc in the drive but it just won't boot it always seems to hang. I've no other Mac can anyone suggest a solution? as I have some important things that I need to do with it!
Cheers
Hvxuser.....
There are various sets of keys you can press during boot to force it to boot from the CD drive... would that help?

Hello,
*"There are various sets of keys you can press during boot to force it to boot from the CD drive... would that help?"*
Try booting while holding down the Option key first.
Startup Manager: How to select a startup volume
Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts
Carolyn

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Hi Justin, Putting in the flash drive before powering on results in repeating splash screens. I've tried hitting the Win key on the tablet (there's no access at all to the bluetooth keyboard) after pushing the power button, but it loops on the splash screen. I've tried holding the Win key and power buttons until the splash screen appears, and that gets me to the BIOS. Once there, even if I plug in the flash drive, it doesn't read the USB HDD type/model name. Moving the USB HDD to the first position works, but on reboot, I still get a "no bootable device" error (without the flash drive), or the splash screen loop (with the flash drive inserted). The BIOS shows HDD 000 as present, and with a serial number, etc., but it is not recognized as bootable. Thanks for hanging in there with me.eric

"Welcome to the Task Sequence Wizard" never shows on PXE boot, but does on Boot Media with prestart command

Hey guys, I have a fairly odd situation here. I have all OSD Task Sequence advertisements set to "PXE and Boot Media (hidden)" and all are optional
(not mandatory). I use a powershell form via prestart command to give the user a choice which limits what task sequences they choose. When everything is working, this process works. Unknown desktop-class systems see desktop task sequences,
and server-class systems see server task sequences.
Here's where it's different when I use different boot methods:
Boot Media
"Welcome to the Task Sequence Wizard" is presented. User hits or clicks Enter.
Powershell form is presented; user picks their task sequence
Confirmation screen is presented with the task sequence they selected (this is an OSD screen the same size as the "Welcome to the Task Sequence Wizard"
screen.
Dependency check screen is shown with a progress bar. If a package is missing from a DP, it will display an error here with the PackageID. This
looks the same as "Regular" OSD with standard non-hidden advertisements.
PXE Boot
"Welcome to the Task Sequence Wizard" is never displayed.
Powershell form is the first screen they see. They select it and it continues.
No confirmation screen is presented if the system is known; if it is an unknown system, a small dialog says there is a
*mandatory* task sequence about to be run and it will run in 180 seconds. Users can hit enter.
No dependency check screen is shown; and if a package was missing, instead of presenting an error, it simply reboots. However, if everything is there,
the process starts successfully.
While I have no problems with the first window never being displayed, not displaying the error dialog and simply rebooting is what is bothersome to me.
99% of our builds are from PXE boot.
Again, these task sequences are all 100% optional, NOT mandatory, and I've double checked this multiple times. Can anyone explain why we get different
behavior between boot media and PXE boot? Any way of getting PXE boot to "mimic" the Boot media behavior?
I followed the guide here:
http://www.mydreampage.net/2012/09/21/how-can-i-deploy-a-hidden-task-sequence-in-configuration-manager-2012-sp1/
If you see the image here:
http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/uploads/monthly_09_2012/post-1-0-29840100-1348236179.png
You'll see the "Retrieving policy for this computer..." dialog box - I never get that with PXE - just Boot Media.
Note that I am running 2012 R2, not 2012 SP1 - but I never got a chance to test this process with SP1.
Upon further experimentation, the "hidden" task sequence has nothing to do with this. If I change it to a normal, non-hidden advertisement, as
long as the "prestart" command in the boot image is used, we don't get those missing dialog boxes at all, with PXE.

Are both boot images the same for PXE and the boot media? Same package ID and all?
Boot media for us always shows the task sequence wizard first, while PXE always displays the pre-start command first.
Daniel Ratliff | http://www.PotentEngineer.com

MOVED: MSI MODEL PM8M-V {MS-7104}-SYSTEM WILL BOOT,BUT WILL NOT BOOT TO OPERATING SYSTE

This topic has been moved to Intel P4 & Celeron P4 based board.
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=106263.0

Quote from: bee743 on 04-March-07, 01:06:57
Hi-Thanks for the quick reply,and sorry for the all CAPS.I did what you suggested,and it worked!!You are the Man!!
On some of my other machines I always have the boot to cd-,as first and then h.d. as one of the last,but i've never had to go back in bios to change to h.d. as the first.Is there any reason for this?
One other thing,it seems that the boot process takes longer than i normally wait on,on other machines,is this anything to be concerned with?
Once again,thank you for your knowledge and help.
"One other thing,it seems that the boot process takes longer than i normally wait on,on other machines,is this anything to be concerned with?"
perhaps no, can be just slow initialisation(enable "quick boot", disable floppy drive seek to speedup boot time a bit.
"On some of my other machines I always have the boot to cd-,as first and then h.d. as one of the last,but i've never had to go back in bios to change to h.d. as the first.Is there any reason for this?"
well if the CD are blank or CD in drive is not bootable, boot process will continue with 2nd assigned boot device.(probably you don't have hdd configured as 2nd boot choice)(try to boot from other device should be enabled from BIOS as well). also if there is no respond(no user action taken due few seconds) at "press any key to boot from CD" boot from CD will be skipped automatically and boot process will be forwarded to second boot selection..
"Hi-Thanks for the quick reply,and sorry for the all CAPS.I did what you suggested,and it worked!!You are the Man!!
Once again,thank you for your knowledge and help."
you are welcome.

My old computer can detect my USB when booting, but can't boot Parted

I have an USB with the Parted Magic Linux environment on it made with Unetbootin, which I tried to boot from other computers and works perfectly.
However, I have an old computer that can detect the USB in the boot menu (not only in the setup, also in the "Boot from here" menu), but can't boot from it (it just fails as if there wasn't anything bootable in the USB).
Unfortunately I don't have many more details right now, but does anyone know what is happening?

Sounds like a hardware issue.
I just fought with an old "server" box, with two Xeon iii chips in it. I KNEW that I had good CD's, and I was pretty certain that everything worked, but simply could not get Arch to boot up.
Finally booted to a diagnostics CD (don't ask which one - it's sorta illegal) and figured out that the CD drive was half-dead, with a lot of IO errors. Swapped the CD drive, and booted straight into Arch, got it all installed, and on the web.
Like Gusar says, try a different USB stick, then try a different USB port, or even swap out which USB plug you're using inside the box. Old machines do some strange things when some odd bit of hardware starts going flaky.
Last edited by Runaway1956 (2011-12-19 19:10:21)

MSI MODEL PM8M-V {MS-7104}-SYSTEM WILL BOOT,BUT WILL NOT BOOT TO OPERATING SYSTE

HI-NEW HERE SO EXCUSE ANY REPEATS-I JUST BOUGHT A MSI MODEL PM8M-V{MS-7104} MOTHERBOARD SOCKET 478,USING A CELERON 2.60 GZH PROCESSOR
I'VE INSTALLED WINDOWS XP HOME TWICE,BUT EACH TIME SYSTEM HAS TO BE RESTARTED IT GOES THROUGH BOOT PROCESS-IT DETECTS THE HARD DRIVE AND THE PCI DEVICE LISTINGS,BUT AT THE LAST PART OF THE BOOT WHEN IT READS "VERIFING DMI POOL DATA"-IT THEN SHOWS BOOT FROM CD,BECAUSE WINDOWS IS INSTALLED THERE IS NO XP DISK IN CD-ROM DRIVE,SO WHEN "BOOT FROM CD" IS SHOWN I DO NOTHING BUT WAIT.IT THEN COMES BACK DISPLAYING-"DISK BOOT FAILURE,INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER"-SO AT THIS POINT I PUT IN THE WINDOWS XP DISK AND HIT ENTER-THEN AND ONLY THEN WILL IT TAKE ME TO THE WINDOWS DESKTOP.I'VE TRY TO LOOK FOR A NEWER BIOS SETTING BUT MSI SHOWS NONE.
THIS IS THE INFO. FROM START-UP W7104 VMS V3.4 022206
IF ANYONE HAS HAD THIS PROBLEM OR KNOWS OF ANYTHING TO TRY .PLEASE,PLEASE TRY TO HELP ME IN FIXING THIS
I WOULD SURELY APPRECIATE THIS
BEE743

Quote from: bee743 on 04-March-07, 01:06:57
Hi-Thanks for the quick reply,and sorry for the all CAPS.I did what you suggested,and it worked!!You are the Man!!
On some of my other machines I always have the boot to cd-,as first and then h.d. as one of the last,but i've never had to go back in bios to change to h.d. as the first.Is there any reason for this?
One other thing,it seems that the boot process takes longer than i normally wait on,on other machines,is this anything to be concerned with?
Once again,thank you for your knowledge and help.
"One other thing,it seems that the boot process takes longer than i normally wait on,on other machines,is this anything to be concerned with?"
perhaps no, can be just slow initialisation(enable "quick boot", disable floppy drive seek to speedup boot time a bit.
"On some of my other machines I always have the boot to cd-,as first and then h.d. as one of the last,but i've never had to go back in bios to change to h.d. as the first.Is there any reason for this?"
well if the CD are blank or CD in drive is not bootable, boot process will continue with 2nd assigned boot device.(probably you don't have hdd configured as 2nd boot choice)(try to boot from other device should be enabled from BIOS as well). also if there is no respond(no user action taken due few seconds) at "press any key to boot from CD" boot from CD will be skipped automatically and boot process will be forwarded to second boot selection..
"Hi-Thanks for the quick reply,and sorry for the all CAPS.I did what you suggested,and it worked!!You are the Man!!
Once again,thank you for your knowledge and help."
you are welcome.

Slow boot but only when booting from main hard drive

Hi... For some time now I've noticed that my MacBook Pro is seemingly taking an inordinate amount of time to boot up... I timed it today and it takes 105-120 seconds to fully boot up... I also have an external firewire hard drive that I use as one way to back up my Mac by using Super Duper to clone the MacBook Pro drive onto this external drive. Today I decided to set the external drive as the startup drive so I could do some tests on that system. Twas my intention to shut off some startup items and see what impact, if any, those might have on boot time... But before I made any changes to this cloned system, I noticed that, with no changes made at all, it was clearly twice as fast on booting as was the boot time when I was running off the main hard drive... I was surprised by this and tested the boot times several times and it was fairly consistent... It takes about one minute to fully boot when running off my recently cloned external firewire drive and closer to two minutes when booting off the main Macintosh HD on the MacBook Pro... Anyone have any ideas why this might be the case???? Any input would be much appreciated.... thanks... bob..

Boot from the external drive, erase the internal drive, then restore the clone to the internal drive.

I can boot but not re-boot.....

Ok so here is my problem. I reinstalled windows XP tonight after erasing all of the data on the previous partition by mistake (dont ask - but if you must read here)....
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1796486&tstart=0
So i did a full uninstall via bootcamp and started again. However i have a problem that was there before but i never thought much of it and thought by doing a reinstall it would get rid of it. So basically, when i was installing Windows XP and going through set up etc, it kept restarting my computer (in line with the guidance in the bootcamp manual). However, it switched off, then on again went to a bright screen then a dark screen and would stop. It wouldnt load windows or continue what it was doing (installing) previously. After leaving the machine for 10 mins, i came back and it was still the dark screen, so i switched it off manually (via holding the button down). Then waited 30 secs and switched it on again. It then carried on the installation from the previous stage. I had to do this for all three of four of the restarts during this process. This is the second time i have installed Windows XP via bootcamp and the first time it did exactly the same.
Anyway, so i got it to install by doing the above and it now works when i start the computer in windows. Although i have to do this by turning the computer on and holding down "alt" key and selecting the windows drive. It does not work if i select "restart in windows" from the mac OSX. So everytime i want to work in windows i have to shut down the machine, then wait 30secs and switch it on. I cant restart it in windows because it gets stuck on a blank screen. I can restart Mac OSX from Mac OSX though if that makes sense (ie. by clicking the apple icon in the top left and selecting restart). It then starts fine in Mac OSX. So i dont think this is a problem with the restart facility on the machine itself, just connected to windows somehow.....
Any ideas for things i could try to solve this as i worry that it will damage my machine constantly turning it on and off again like that?
The windows I used is 100% legal and the partition is 32GB FAT.
Thanks in advance

Erase it with Windows itself, or remove the partition iwth BCA, but if you erase FAT or even NTFS partition with Disk Utility, you lose the ability to remove it later on. And yes, NTFS write ability is possible with NTFS driver from Paragon.
Look for how to do a Windows Clean Install, or just when you boot from CD/DVD reformat the partition.

Graphics Card works in Safe Boot but not Normal Boot

Specifics
350 G4 PCI Graphics Card Rage ATI 128
Envision 17" Monitor
Here's the deal
I use the machine as a Network Backup it has 4 250GB Hard drives in it.
Symptoms
No matter what PCI slot I use if I do a normal boot I get a dialog box that says "Input Not Supported"
If I boot in safe boot no problems!
The machine does Boot and it shows up on the network, just no video
Attempts
I have swapped the card to another machine (card works no problem)
Removed all other PCI cards from machine (no difference)
Created new user "troubleshooting" tried to boot in to troubleshooting's user account (Same message on screen "Input Not Supported")
Zapped P & V RAM
Replaced 3.6V Battery on mother board
Swapped Monitors (Same message on screen "Input Not Supported")
OK Any Suggestions?
Thanks in advance
Joseph
A Bunch Mac OS X (10.4.6) Photographer Made my own iTablet

So I got a clue and did a clean install, that did the trick!
I still have the question as to the how's and why's of what went wrong.
I imagine a corrupt file, but I would have guessed that making a new user, or an Archive and Install would have cleared that up.
Go figure
But yes it is working now!
And I say Thank God I was looseing a lot of time trying to figure it out!

My BOOTCAMP partition can't be mounted and can boot but will fail boot, doesn't show in shartup disks what do I do?

Hi everybody.
After Updating the new 2.9EFI update for the 2012 MacBook Pro, I restarted the computer which was set to boot into windows. The windows booted and show the BSOD for a brief moment then closing. After I booted into Windows again to see "BOOT FAILED!" I switched into Mac OSX to see that the the BOOTCAMP partition was also gone in finder so I opened Disk Utility to see that the drive was unmountable so I did disk repair and said everything was fine. I booted windows again and now it says a different message, something on the lines of NO OS. I don't know whats happening and everything was working fine until this EFI 2.9 UPDATE and I want to keep my OS and don't want to get rid of windows. I also wan't to keep my documents on Windows. BOOTCAMP still says I have windows installed. Nothing else recognises windows is there exept DISK UTILITY. I did not tamper with windows. I also can't delete partition... MAC OS is working fine.

Hi everybody.
After Updating the new 2.9EFI update for the 2012 MacBook Pro, I restarted the computer which was set to boot into windows. The windows booted and show the BSOD for a brief moment then closing. After I booted into Windows again to see "BOOT FAILED!" I switched into Mac OSX to see that the the BOOTCAMP partition was also gone in finder so I opened Disk Utility to see that the drive was unmountable so I did disk repair and said everything was fine. I booted windows again and now it says a different message, something on the lines of NO OS. I don't know whats happening and everything was working fine until this EFI 2.9 UPDATE and I want to keep my OS and don't want to get rid of windows. I also wan't to keep my documents on Windows. BOOTCAMP still says I have windows installed. Nothing else recognises windows is there exept DISK UTILITY. I did not tamper with windows. I also can't delete partition... MAC OS is working fine.

Need to boot my PowerMac G5 from a CD - but It won't

Hi need to boot a PowerMac G5 2 GHz Dual Core from a CD/DVD so I can create a RAID Mirror set. I do not have my original CDs since I lost them, not I have an external drive to boot from.
So far I tried:
Booting from my MacPro DVD - got a kernel panic
Booting from my PowerMac 2x2GHz DVD - got a kernel panic
Booting from my PowerMac 2x2GHz DVD Apple Hardware test - got a message AHD do not support this system or something along those lines.
Booting from my PowerMac 2x2GHz DVD while holding option at startup got a circle with a line across.
Is there a way to get replacement DVDs? What Apple Original Install DVDs will boot my Mac?
Thanks in advance
Message was edited by: A.Tzekin

Hi-
Using OS disc's that shipped with models other than your model of G5 will not work (as you have found out).
Contact Apple about replacements, or, buy a Retail version of Tiger.

Cannot get MacPro to allow me to boot to an alternative boot disk. Can choose in control panel but will not use the disk to boot. Also won't boot using disk selected using option key

My primary boot disk is encrypted as is a secondary boot disk (backup) but I cannot boot using any other disk. System 10.8.5, MacPro 4.1.
All disks mount using primary boot disk. All disks check out as OK and I have repaired permissions.
When I choose in the control panel the Mac boots but will always use my original boot disk.
When I select the disk using the option key at startup, the boot process stalls with a grey screen and a spinning cursor.
Thanks,
Dave

Still trying to figure this out. I erased the drive, did a format using disk util and then re-installed the system but I still cannot get the disk used as a startup drive. I also tried an external firewire drive and it won't allow me to boot from it either.
I can choose it starting up with the option key but it just gives me a blue screen and the spinning cursor.
If I select it in the startup pref pane it boots into my other startup drive only.
DaveLon

I bought mountain lion for my macbook pro and I'm trying to install it and it says there was an error and I need to boot up but I don't have any other start up disks to boot up with. Are there any suggestions of how I could get my computer started?

I bought mountain lion for my macbook pro and I'm trying to install it and it says there was an error and I need to boot up but I don't have any other start up disks to boot up with. Are there any suggestions of how I could get my computer started?

Hold the Option key down and restart. Select one of the drives that comes up and hit the Return key.

Need to erase hard drive and reinstall system on iMac but have misplaced original install disks. Tried to use a my copy of Snow lepord 10.6 from my Mac pro but will not boot. Can original install disks be replaced. Thanks

Need to erase hard drive and reinstall system on iMac but have misplaced original install disks. Tried to use a my copy of Snow lepord 10.6 from my Mac Pro but will not boot. Can original install disks be replaced. Thanks

Yes the original Install Discs can be replaced for a nominal fee. Call AppleCare, you will need a credit card and the serial number of the machine. You can use the AppleCare Contact Info for the phone number on your part of the planet.

I reinstalled osx 10.8.2 from recovery disk, now verify disk says my hard drive is there but wont boot into it regardless which partition i select to boot into , everytime it boots me into the recovery, i need help!

Mb pro running like garbage with 10.8.2 tried a reinstall of osx from recovery utility now the utility says my hard drive is ok but wont boot into it keeps booting me back into recovery tried restart option to select disk tried using the select startup disk from recovery, gives a message asking if i really want to boot to it and in that message is the only rime it shows a question mark on the drive dont know what to do cant find similar issue

Your rushing and not making much sense.
Your machine was running like garbage, so you tried to reinstall 10.8---did you do this or not?
Disk Utility says your drive is ok, that's good.
But when you boot it keeps booting Recovery HD, so perhaps the firmware has made a mistake, it can forget.
You held the option key down to boot into Startup Manager, why didn't you select OS X for the boot volume?
When you get into OS X you change the Startup Disk in System Preferences, that should take care of the Flashing Question mark issue.
attemtping to ireinstall osx from recovery partition bar is full on install screen, but im now at -6hours remaining
So now your reinstalling OS X like you set out to do before, it does take some time as it has to download from Apple's servers.
If your Internet connection is slow and/or Wifi is slow then it will take awhile.
So you should have the Flashing Question Mark and Reinstall Only OS X covered.
You should be able to boot the machine, but your performance issues may be something else and still remain.
Why is my computer slow?
Step by Step to fix your Mac
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents#/?p er_page=50

Won't boot, but need to boot!

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