XServe won't boot from any drive, but recognizes them in OS X Installer

I know I have another post here but this is a different issue, and I've already fixed that one thanks to Camelot .
I just received an 2 used xserves for work. One booted into OS X Server fine, so I scrubbed it and reinstalled without issue.
The second however never booted into an install. That is, I never found it on my network when I started it up and when I pushed the power button it would turn off immediately, suggesting that there was no OS on the disk or that the xserve couldn't find it. I didn't have a spare monitor to plug into it (surprisingly) so I just chalked it up to the fact that it was a new disk and hadn't had OS X Server installed on it.
Now I have a spare monitor, I've gone and installed OS X Server on the xserve. It boots from the DVD just fine, runs through the installer, then when it goes to restart, it won't boot from the hard drive that it just installed OS X Server on, it'll just boot back from the DVD unless I pop it out. If I let it boot up without the DVD in it, I'll get the standard Folder with a ?.
At first I thought it was the drive, so I installed OS X Server on another drive. Still wouldn't boot to that drive, so I booted from the DVD and repaired the disks in Disk Utility. Still nothing. I booted to DVD again and when I went to Startup Disk, it actually did show my disks with their respective OS X Server installs.
When I boot the machine holding alt/option, the system doesn't show my drives, only the DVD if it's in the slot.
I figured ok, this has to be the drives, so I swapped them with those of the identical xserve in the rack below, but my top xserve wouldn't boot from those drives either. Somewhat expectedly however, the bottom xserve would boot the drives that I took out of the first one.
Now I'm just stumped. Any ideas?
PS, drives are unlocked.

MrHoffman wrote:
The EFI firmware, the SMC and possibly the disk I/O path seem good potential candidates for culprit.
Load and run the hardware diagnostics.
Reset the SMC, and reset the LOM.
I'm running the EFI diagnostic tool now. Firmware and disk I/O path came to mind, let's just hope it's not a major hardware issue
beatle20359 wrote:
Hi Jeff,
Do you have the specs of the xserve and the version of OSX server you are trying to install? Does the Xserve have the RAID card installed in it and what size are the drive modules.
All the best
Beatle
2x 3GHz Dual-Core Xeon
8GB RAM
OS X Server v 10.6.3 (the version I'm trying to install, that is)
No RAID card. The system drive is 80GB and a second storage drive is 1TB.

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I've been studying this forum for the last several days, hoping to find something to help me solve the problem, but so far I'm still stuck.
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MEMORY:
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I just feel that it's a firmware/software issue that I'd be able to fix myself, I just need a little help with the missing link to the boot process.
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I just remembered something that I meant to mention. When I startup the G5 with the option key down and the installer dvd in the superdrive, the startup manager will allow me to run Apple Hardware Test and the computer runs normally (fans don't go wild).

MacBook Pro HD issues; won't boot to any drive; need to recover data

*Apologies in advance for the lengthy post. I just want to be sure I include as much detail as possible. Thanks in advance for reading all of this and offering any thoughts and suggestions.
I have a 13-inch late 2011 MacBook Pro running OS 10.7.
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Holy crap, I got it to work.
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G4 XServe won't boot from CD

Newbie to XServe here...
I bought a used G4 XServe DP with 4 installed HDs and "Pre-Installed" (No Disks or SNs provided) OS 10.2
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Now I can't get the system to boot from the 10.4 CD or DVD, it always seems to boot from the HD despite following the "Boot from CD" instructions doc I accessed here on Apple's site.
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First, a 10.4 serial number is not going to work with a 10.2 installation, so you're going to have to (re)install Mac OS X Server 10.4 to get this machine to work.
So the questions are:
What happens when you try to boot from CD?
Does it ignore it completely? eject it? try to boot from it and fail?
Have you checked the front panel enclosure lock is open?
(the XServe won't boot from CD/DVD if the enclosure is locked)
Does the OS recognize the drive once the system is booted (you should be able to log in via SSH or the console port while the system is waiting for Server Assistant to do it's thing).
The XServe G4 had an option for CD-RW or DVD drive. It's possible you have the CD drive in which case it won't read the DVD drive.

G5 gets grey screen with logo then goes black, won't boot from any disk

Won't boot from any disk, already changed VRAM battery, no success. tried hardware disk once and ran a full scan, said error with Video, but now won't boot at all with any disk. Screen is choppy also(have pic). Thinking video graphics card? Not sure. Need help!

Hi bribiel, and a warm welcome to the forums!
It certainly sounds like the Video card from the little info we have, & that can certainly cause it to fail to bootup.

Intel Xserve won't boot from 3rd party drive in ADM

Right, I've got a Late 2006 Xserve Dual 2.66 with the normal non-RAID SAS/SATA board, which has been running fine for 2 years with a pair of non-Apple Seagate Barracuda ES 250GB drives (Bay 1 & 2), and an original 80GB ADM in Bay 3 as a spare boot disk.
Bay 1 & 2 are set up using SoftRAID and are partitioned into a boot volume (30GB) and a data volume (200GB), both RAID 1 mirrors. The boot volume is cloned nightly to Bay 3 (single volume, set up using Disk Utility). Data is backed up to a utility machine, so this is arrangement lets me handle any single drive failing.
This arrangement has worked fine for 2 years, and allows me to remotely boot off Bay 3 and run DiskWarrior or other disk maintenance software on the normal boot drive without having to drive across town with a firewire drive. I originally started with Mac OS X Server 10.4, but I'm now on Mac OS X Server 10.6.4.
Where things have come unravelled is, I need to upgrade the two 250GBs to something larger. I didn't realise that the Intel Xserve is pretty fussy with ADM sleds and the model of SATA drive they will work with. I didn't have any issues when I set up the Barracuda ES 250GB so wasn't expecting any problems this time.
I bought a pair of Seagate Constellation ES 500GB drives (well 3 actually, one to keep on the shelf as a spare).
I installed them in the sleds and inserted them in the Xserve. The green power LEDs came on but the drives weren't recognised in Disk Utility or System Profiler. I then added the jumper to set them to 1.5Gb/s and then they mounted. I went through my normal process of cloning the OS to them from a standard disk image I have of a known working OS install, ran Disk Utility to repair disk & repair permissions, Disk Warrior to check everything else (my standard paranoid procedures). Set the startup disk to the new install and rebooted. No joy, just the flashing question mark folder. Reboot with the option key, and the new volume doesn't appear in the list of available boot options.
I installed the drives in a firewire enclosure, and it booted without any problems, so it's not a corrupt install, it's something to do with the ADM sleds.
So to go back to basics, I tried initialising a single drive as a single volume and installed 10.6.4 server fresh from the DVD. Same result, no boot when in installed in ADM sled, boots fine in firewire case.
Erased drive, changed formatting to APM (rather then GPT), cloned OS, etc. Won't boot when in ADM sled, boots fine from firewire case. So that screws the theory that drives have to be GPT to boot on Intel hardware.
So I ordered a set of WD RE3 500GB drives (x 3) and repeated this whole process. Same deal, boots fine in firewire, won't boot when installed in ADM. GPT vs APM doesn't make any difference.
Try #3. Ordered desktop variants rather than server class drives. So armed with a pair of WD Caviar Black 500GB. Same deal, boot fine from firewire, will not boot when installed in ADM. Also required jumpers for 1.5GB/s and also the undocumented pins 7&8 (apparently this might be related to the new Advanced Format they are using)
Try #4
A pair of Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB. This is where it gets tricky. One of the Barracuda will boot the Xserve when installed in an ADM, and one will not. So 2 Barracuda 7200.12, both same model number (ST3500418AS), both same firmware (CC38), yet they behave differently.
Try #5
Barracuda ES.2 250GB (x 3). Won't boot in ADM, will boot firewire.
Try #6
WD Caviar SE16 250GB (WD2500KS)
Boots in ADM (Yay!!) and firewire
Try #7
WD Caviar SE16 500GB x 2 (WD5000AAKS)
Boots in ADM and firewire
I've managed to get access to G5 Xserve (2.3DP) so I've repeated all this testing on it as well. The G5 doesn't care about the model of drive and boots from any of them using a 10.5.6 install with APM formatted drives.
I've tried all these drives in 4 different models of ADM sled. One thing I have determined is that the model of sled determines if you need to use the 1.5GB/s jumper. I have 2 sleds from G5's, they require the jumper, a 80GB Intel ADM sled with separate data and power plugs requires the jumper, and an Intel 160GB ADM sled with the ribbon cable and combined data/power plug doesn't require the 1.5GB/s jumper. APM vs GPT formatting again makes no difference.
So on the Intel machine, the drives work in the sleds, appear as normal drives on desktop or in Disk Utility when logged in, and also appear as normal drives when connected via SSH if Auto Login is disabled. So to me they appear to be working drives.
It appears to me that something changed at a low level between the Barracuda ES and ES.2 generations of drives (for WD drives as well since the Caviar SE16 that boots is a similar age to the Barracuda ES)
So then why won't it boot from them? Is there some magic dance I've missed?
And how come one of the 7200.12 will boot, while another identical model won't?
Any tips or suggestions greatly appreciated.

I don't have an answer for you, but you deserve thanks for all the useful hardware information you posted from your trial-and-error testing.
My impression has that the XServes need specific kinds of firmware and hardware monitors on their drives in order for everything to function smoothly. My own efforts swapping drives in ADMs has produced "mixed results" to put it mildly. It would be so much easier if we knew what kinds of drives worked properly in what kinds of ADMs and on which Macs/XServes.

My PB G4 won't boot from any hard drive..stucked in apple icon..

At first, it didn't boot from the internal hard drive...
I could see the apple icon with grey background, but the little runing icon under apple icon didn't appear. There is no sound from the hard drive either...
I tried removing and replacing the RAM, didn't work either...
I have the powerbook CD with apple hardware test, I ran it. It went though a detail test and showed no errors or problems....
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Have you added any hardware or new software recently?
Have you tried a safe boot? Hold the shift key while you boot - this does some disk maintenance and doesn't load login items. If this works, try booting normally.
If you can't run Disk Utility verify permissions from the OS X CD did you also try to verify or repair the disk? If this won't work due to errors, you may want to consider a program like Disk Warrior to attempt to repair the hard drive. You can find it at http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

Imac g5 won't boot from any Cd/DVD

Hey,
New member here.
I have an Imac 20" 1.8 Ghz PowerPC G5, running Mac OS X 10.4.9.
My problem is my computer won't boot from from any DVD or Cd, not the original system disc (10.3.5), not from a newer Imac system disc (10.4.7), not from a Disc Warrior 3.03 disc.
What I get from the Disc Warrior disc is a gray screen with white letters backed in black, saying
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When I try to boot from the original 10.3.5 DVD, it does boot up but doesn't work after that - it gets to the language to choose and stops.
When I try to boot from the 10.4.7 DVD, I get the gray screen, same results as the Disc Warrior cd.
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Rufmanj

To Apple Discussions.
Please check out the following thread which the original posted had the same error you had.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=4459207#4459207
You may find some helpful troubleshooting solutions in the above thread.
Make absolutly sure you are using the "DVDs" that originally came with the computer.
Also, see Knowledge Base Article; http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106805 Mac OS X: "Broken folder" icon, prohibitory sign, or kernel panic when computer starts

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I disassembled the laptop, got the HD out, tried installing straight into it via USB, and was not able to access it using an external HD case, the power light comes on, and right back off.
PRAM and SMC have been Reset.
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When I removed it, it was to install mavericks into it, via usb, with the other macbook, through disk utility, but disk utility was unable to read it then.
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IMac G5 won't boot from CD drive, Please Help

My iMac G5 won't boot from the CD drive. There is no operating system on the hard drive so I want to install a fresh copy of Leopard. I have tried a couple different methods, but I keep getting the same end result. The first method I tried was booting from the CD drive by holding the C key during start up. The Leopard disc was automatically ejected after about 20-30 seconds. The second method I tried was booting the iMac to the "question mark file screen," which is when I inserted the Leopard disc. Usually on other Mac computers, this is when the computer will show the Apple logo and prompt you with the installation process. Not this iMac, it just ejects the disc shortly after I insert it. I'm not sure if it's the CD drive that is having the issue, the hard drive, or something else.
If you have any ideas, they would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you,
Chris

Where did you get the CD from?
If it is from another Mac, it is probably specific to the hardware in that Mac and is not capable of boot your iMac.
Allan

MS-6728 won't boot from DVD drive?

I have a MS-6728 motherboard with bios v2.5 that won't boot from a bootable DVD disk. Here's what I've tried so far:
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- Booted the DVD from three other machines to confirm it's not the DVD disk. It worked fine on all of them.
- Put the DVD drive from one of the machines that booted it correctly into the MS-6728 machine. That didn't fix the problem.
- Removed all drives except the PATA DVD drive and one SATA hard drive. No luck.
- Booted the MS-6728 machine from a bootable CD. That worked it was a Windows XP Pro install CD.
The DVD is a Debian install DVD BTW. Also I tried it each time by doing the F11 (select boot device) and just letting the BIOS auto detect everything. Each time I see a quick flash of "boot record not found" but I know the DVD is bootable since it worked with three other machines. The DVD was made from a ISO image downloaded from the net. I have booted the machine several times before from CDs.
I'm wondering if the BIOS only supports bootable CDs and not bootable DVDs?
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

How many IDE controllers does you board have? If it has more than 2, make sure that the DVD drive is connected to Intel controller and not Promise Controller.

K9A2 Platinum-Won't boot from optical drives

My problem is that I can't get my computer to boot from either optical drive.Both drives work; I can read and write from either drive in windows xp. In the boot order menu neither drive is shown as a boot from device.The boot sequence menu shows all hdd and usb devices but no optical drives.Both drives are recognized in the bios.I wanted to dual boot vista x64 but can't because it won't boot from drive.Any ideas?
QuadCore AMD Phenom Black Edition 9850, 2500 MHz (12.5 x 200) MSI K9A2 Platinum (MS-7376) OCZ Reaper HPC OCZ2RPR10662G 2 GB DDR2-800 DDR2 SDRAM ATI Radeon X1800 GTO (256 MB) WDC WD2500KS-00MJB0 (232 GB, IDE)WDC WD5000AAKS-00A7B0 (465 GB, IDE) Microsoft Windows xp SP 3 Cooler Master 650W+3.3V@28A,+5V@30A,+12V1@18A,+12V2@18A,[email protected], [email protected]

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Satellite A300 won't boot from any device

I've got an A300 that won't seem to boot from any device.
When I start it I see the splash screen and can enter the BIOS or Boot select.
I've tried setting boot priority to HDD & CD, and also chosen to boot from both with the Product Recovery CD in the drive.
However as soon as it gets past the splash screen I am just presented with a plain black screen.
I hear a bit of CD activity and the light flashes a couple of times but then nothing.
Normally I would expect a prompt to press a key to boot from CD.
I have tried pressing the key anyway but this just seems to result in a default beep.
Could it be the graphics card on the system board?

Hi
> Could it be the graphics card on the system board?
I think this is no matter if the issue would be related to mobo or GPU in both cases the motherboard needs to be replaced. But if you area able to access the BIOS then the mobo could be ok.
But generally speaking it sounds like serious hardware problem and I think its time for an notebook technician.
Anyway, did you try to boot from different CDs? I mean Linux Live CD or Windows PartBE?
Please check this both disks can be downloaded for free

G4 won't boot from any Linux disc I put in it and c key no longer boots cd

I have a G4 Powermac (sawtooth, DVD drive, 512 MB RAM, 30 GB HDD) which has started refusing to boot from any Ububtu discs I have all of a sudden.
I'll be more specific. I've previously been able to boot from Ubuntu 6 cds (originals from shipit, not burnt) as well as Ubuntu 7 (burnt disc). I haven't made any changes to the system that should stop it booting from them. Currently installed on the hard disc is System 9 and Puma. It is still booting ok from my System 9, Puma, Panther and Tiger discs; but when trying to boot from my ubuntu discs (I've tried all of them to eliminate the possibility of a stuffed disc) the screen goes black for a second as if it is starting to boot, but then it kicks me to the flashing folder screen you get when it can't find a startup disc. Oddly enough the background colour of this screen isn't grey like usual. It's orange. I've never seen that before. If I leave it sitting at this screen after about 30 seconds or so it starts up from the hard disc on its own.
Another odd thing: the c key no longer forces the machine to boot from the cd when held on power up. This is extremely odd, as holding down option brings up the startup disc selector, and cmdopt+shiftdel also works. I've tried everything I can think of. Used a different keyboard, reset the NVRAM (by cmdopt+pr and my manually going into open firmware and doing a "reset-nvram" and "reset-all"). I've tried the PMU reset switch on the logic board. I've tried using different drives. In all cases it still refuses to boot from cd when holding c.
I don't think that the mac refusing to boot while holding the c key is coincidental. I believe that whatever the issue is that's causing this issue is what is also causing the mac from not booting any Ubuntu discs. It's a very strange problem and upon searching around, it seems this doesn't seem to have happened to anyone else before. Any advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Hi, yoshi -
I just have to be rush to get the cd in the drive and then to hit cmdshift+optdelete before it's too late...
You should also be able to use Startup Manager to choose the CD as the boot volume -
Article #HT1310 - Startup Manager: How to Select a Startup Volume
A feature not discussed in that article -
Once Startup Manager has loaded, if the CD is not in the drive you can press Command-. (Command-periodkey) to open the drive - this should work even if another disk is already in the drive. Insert the disk you want to use, close the tray, wait a few seconds for the disk to spin up and get recognized, then click the circular arrow icon on the left - this forces a rescan of the available drives, which should result in an icon of the new disk appearing in the array. Click it to select it and then click the straight arrow icon on the right (or press Return).

XServe won't boot from any drive, but recognizes them in OS X Installer

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