Mac Book startup disk won't boot, HD appears fine

KdawgX · #1 August 30th, 2009, 10:31 PM

In preparing my MacBook currently running Tiger for upgrade to snow leopard I've somehow pooched it.

The booting sound plays but then I get the flashing folder with a question mark.

It won't boot in safe mode. It will boot in single user mode
but only from the install disc.

The weird thing is that from the install disk's disk utility, everything appears normal. The drive appears and both repair and repair permissions run without incident.

Here's what i did to cause this mess:

I attempted to mount and boot from a disk image I'd just created on an external western digital FireWire drive.

I unpacked and mounted the drive using the disk utiltiy on the install cd.
Then I used the startup disk utility to select the second of two identi al 'osx10.xx on Mac' options (the other options being network and the install disk).

It rebooted normally, but seemingly from the internal, not external hard drive.

I believe at that point I went back into the utility and selected boot from network.

Since then, no matter what I've tried the only thing I can boot from is the install disk.

Any idea what is wrong and how to fix it short of wiping the drive?

Any help is grealty appreciated.

stilbite · #2 August 31st, 2009, 03:43 AM

It seems like you have messed up the OS on you Mac.
Snow Leopard requires Leopard already installed if your upgrading if you have the full retail version then you can upgrade from Tiger. I upgraded my Leopard to Snow Leopard and it does not re-boot to a fresh install it just loads and does not require a re-boot afterwards.
I think your best course of action is to try and Archive and Install from your original Tiger disc.. this will hopefully get your OS recognized again and access to your files etc.

KdawgX · #3 August 31st, 2009, 06:39 AM

Just to be clear: this was all done with tiger. I have not yet installed snow leopard.

Any other ideas?

Doctor X · #4 August 31st, 2009, 06:44 AM

You somehow frelled your volume. So you either try to repair it with a repair program such as Disk Warrior or TechTools, try the Archive and Install as suggested, or start over reloading your Tiger.

--J.D.

KdawgX · #5 August 31st, 2009, 09:25 AM

Alas archive and install requires at least 5 gigs of disk space.
I only have about 1.4 gigs because there is a giant folder of material I backed up sitting on the desktop. It's redundant because it's been copied to the external drive.

Any way through either the install cd or
command line ( I can boot to single user but end up on the install DVD diectory) to navigate to the desktop and delete this folder?

Doctor X · #6 August 31st, 2009, 10:20 PM

Boot up from the external drive, go to your internal, find the file, delete it. Granted, if everything is password protected, you may not "see" it. It works with my "cloned" Ex-Drive which I access with the same password.

--J.D.

KdawgX · #7 August 31st, 2009, 10:53 PM

Unfortunately I can't boot from an external drive. Only the install DVD works. I
going to try reformatting and reloading the disk image.

Thanks for advice.

KdawgX · #8 September 1st, 2009, 02:04 AM

Doctor X

thank you for your patience and help. I've bailed and decided to try and wipe the hard drive and restore the dmg image. Unfortunately this is easier said than done. Seems to require some combination of checksuming and validation etc. Do you or anyone else have a link to step by step instructions on how to this? Google has thus fair failed me.