Can't boot to the desktop

JPigford

I'm awesome...seriously..
I accidently screwed up my startup disk option and when I restart I just get the little blue blinking globe. I've tried booting from my install CD by pressing "C" during startup as well as trying pressing "option" during startup and selecting the install disk. Both ways I end up getting a "You need to restart your computer. Hold down...." in 4 languages. So, what should be my next step? Is there a way to set the startup disk option without booting to the desktop?
 
Hmm, kernel panic (The dialog stating you need to restart your computer).

Yes, there actually is - if you can get it to start booting off of your startup disk. It's not too difficult after that.

You'll need to hold down option to select to boot from your startup disk. As soon as you hit the arrow to boot from that, start holding down command ( ⌘ ) S so that you boot into single user mode. You may be stuck doing this a few times - the timing is sometimes tricky.

Once you do that, you'll be hit down to the command line. First thing you should do is run fsck -fy - this will repair the drive (you could be getting the kernel panic because the drive needs to be repaired). Keep running that command until you get a message saying "The drive some_name appears to be OK" - if it tells you something was repaired, just run it again until you get the message telling you it's OK.

After that, type /sbin/mount -uw / to mount the startup disk as read/write. Then it's one simple command to tell the computer to boot from this drive:

bless -folder /System/Library/CoreServices -setBoot

You can test to see if it worked by doing bless -info. You should get output like this:

Code:
finderinfo[0]:   2536 => Blessed System Folder is /System/Library/CoreServices
finderinfo[1]:      0 => No Startup App folder (ignored anyway)
finderinfo[2]:      0 => Open-folder linked list empty
finderinfo[3]:      0 => No OS 9 + X blessed 9 folder
finderinfo[4]:      0 => Unused field unset
finderinfo[5]:   2536 => OS X blessed folder is /System/Library/CoreServices
64-bit VSDB volume id:  0x6C2DD3B80DB98386

It won't be exactly the same, but close.

Once you've got all of that done, type reboot - then cross your fingers and hope it boots up fine. ;)

If you still get the kernel panic after that, try holding down ⌘ V while you boot up again and see if there are any errors being displayed in the console.
 
the same thiung happens to me but when i hold down option, i get a screen with a lock and a place for a password! can anyone help please?
 
omegamaster said:
the same thiung happens to me but when i hold down option, i get a screen with a lock and a place for a password! can anyone help please?

...already answered in your other thread...
 
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