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System will not boot ANY OSX install.


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Okay, so this system has me scratching my head like no other, it *should* work fine. I have spent all day going mad trying to fix it, and have business commitments riding on it working on Tuesday.

 

 

Specs are as follows:

i7-3930k @ stock

x79-UP4

8GB RAM (2x4GB)

GTX 560ti

 

4Drives as follows:

1xOCZ Agility 3

2x 1TB drives (one is Windows 7 one is 2 partitions with the first one carrying a vanilla ML for restore and Chimera for all systems)

1x3TB data drive with 1TB Time Machine

 

So I wake up one morning from leaving Win7 on all night to see the system had apparently restarted and Chimera had failed to load, saying:

 

Memory Allocation Error 0xdeadbeef 0x0 etc etc

 

I think, oh well, and go and get my Chimera backup DVD, booting with: -v -f PCIRootUID=0 cpus=1 USBBusFix=Yes npci=0x3000 as usual.

Hard reset as soon as it leaves Chimera.

 

So I put in the ML USB and try to boot that. Same result. Memtest checks out but just in case I take out one RAM card to see if it's a 4GB bug. Doesn't help.

 

What else I have tried:

Remove all USB items

disable LAN and USB3

Disconnect all HDDs but the SSD

Disconnect all HDDs and the SSD (leaving just the ML USB incase it was trying to load corrupt kexts from the SSD)

Remove front panel connectors and switch SATA ports.

Reformat USB and install MyHack and Vanilla OSX 10.8.2 from a Mac Mini

Reset BIOS and disable C1 C3/C6, Intel VT/VT-d, set AHCI and so on all over again.

Take SSD over to Mac and run Disk repair and permissions repair over them (0 errors on both).

 

 

All of them resulted in a hard reset as soon as I had finished entering instructions to Darwin, the only exception is the one time I got it to verbose load early on and it then hard reset at the end of verbose before the black screen and mouse would usually come up.

 

Its a fairly clean install kext wise. Used myhack for the original, then used ##### and added LAN (Intel), Audio (ALC 892 which still didn't work), NullCPU Pwr Mgmt kext and Voodoo TSC Sync for multicore support. SMBIOS is Mac 4,1 I think.

 

 

Pulling my hair out as to why it won't even boot the myHack installer... and I thought I was pretty OSX experienced. The original system ran great and no changes have been made really.

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Hello RampageDev. :help:

 

I was wondering if you had any insight as to what isn't working and why it isn't working, seeing as you have done so many DSDTs. It was working fine on Friday and I am slightly hesitant to apply a DSDT to an installer USB seeing as that shouldn't be a problem, not hesitant enough not to do it mind you. Just would like some insight. :wink2:

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Hello RampageDev. :help:

 

I was wondering if you had any insight as to what isn't working and why it isn't working, seeing as you have done so many DSDTs. It was working fine on Friday and I am slightly hesitant to apply a DSDT to an installer USB seeing as that shouldn't be a problem, not hesitant enough not to do it mind you. Just would like some insight. :wink2:

 

Just follow the install instructions for install and post install... its all there...

 

http://rampagedev.wordpress.com/dsdt-downloads/how-to-install-dsdt/

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Okay, I know the above post is a bit long, and I only have one post so it's generally assumed that I am a noob, but please bear with me on this. Are you telling me to apply DSDT on my installation USB drive too?

 

As i mentioned before, I cannot get past the bootloader into any OSX install, the system instantly restarts as I select the OSX option in the menu even with the right install strings (that I've used to install ML successfully a few times). This goes for the Install USB and the previously working partitions.

 

I had this system fully functional on Friday and now when booting I get to the point where Chimera scans for kext files (no cache) and then as soon as it should switch to Apple logo (or verbose log) the system restarts. I've tried loding the DSDT on the existing partition and the same happens.

 

Should I be putting DSDT in the Install USB's Extra folder then and loading it on the ML installer?

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The situation's changed.

 

I turned off Turbo/Speedstep in BIOS and changed the RAM slot and now I can boot to USB installer, whilst no other SATA device is connected. If I try with any other HDD connected, I get:

 

Memory Allocation Error 0x0 0xdeadbeef hfs.c line 732

 

straight after selecting the boot partition. This happens on both the SSD's copy of Chimera and the Chameleon on the Install USB.

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Remake the USB installer. FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS.

 

Thank you for your polite helpfulness, it was absolutely useless. (that's sarcasm by the way) I'll remember that when I ask for support here again. I know how to make an installer thank you. You moved my thread from the correct section to the wrong one then chastised me like a noob despite me stating I have been doing this since this was called osx86.org and we were all using Tiger.

 

FYI the problem was down to OSX corrupting the partitions on my 3TB hard drive. When Chameleon boots, it crashes whilst trying to mount them, giving me that line above. I know this because I could boot the USB installer only if none of the drives were inserted, I was then able to run fsck then reinstall on the SSD by inserting it once the OSX installer had loaded up.

 

Interestingly this is showing another problem, one you can hopefully be a bit more constructive with. OSX seems to be improperly unmounting drives on shutdown. That's what caused this problem and it happened again today. I managed to recover the exFAT partition on the same drive using Testdisk and it showed that the superblock had been modified by OSX. Is there any other shutdown/startup kexts out there besides EvOReboot that will work for a socket 2011 system?

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Thank you for your polite helpfulness, it was absolutely useless. (that's sarcasm by the way) I'll remember that when I ask for support here again. I know how to make an installer thank you. You moved my thread from the correct section to the wrong one then chastised me like a noob despite me stating I have been doing this since this was called osx86.org and we were all using Tiger.

 

FYI the problem was down to OSX corrupting the partitions on my 3TB hard drive. When Chameleon boots, it crashes whilst trying to mount them, giving me that line above. I know this because I could boot the USB installer only if none of the drives were inserted, I was then able to run fsck then reinstall on the SSD by inserting it once the OSX installer had loaded up.

 

Interestingly this is showing another problem, one you can hopefully be a bit more constructive with. OSX seems to be improperly unmounting drives on shutdown. That's what caused this problem and it happened again today. I managed to recover the exFAT partition on the same drive using Testdisk and it showed that the superblock had been modified by OSX. Is there any other shutdown/startup kexts out there besides EvOReboot that will work for a socket 2011 system?

 

If you make a partition on the drive that is 2TB or small there will be no more issues with it mounting. Are you booting off the USB.

 

For shutdown you do not need any kext. Shutdown works fine on x79 systems.

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If you make a partition on the drive that is 2TB or small there will be no more issues with it mounting. Are you booting off the USB.

 

For shutdown you do not need any kext. Shutdown works fine on x79 systems.

 

All partitions are 1TB or below. I have three 1TB partitions on that brand new 3TB HDD arranged as follows:

 

1: HFS+ named Time Machine (self explanatory) corrupted itself on Friday and was why Chameleon wouldn't boot.

2: exFAT named Data was corrupted yesterday, and using testdisk resulted in me fixing this one at the expense of 1 (no problem becasue the rest of my system was stable so I could just reformat 1 and rebackup)

3.HFS+ named Libraries has been fine.

 

 

Shutdown 'did' work fine. Now it does not. Note that this is a fresh reinstall and the same problem took out the old install. If I am experiencing problems, where should I look for issues?

 

And please for the love of god don't tell me to reinstall OS X. Right now the depth of knowledge shared by you barely fills a teacup. I'm looking for information about how shutdown is conducted so I can nail down problem kexts and possible incompatibility with hardware I am using (that has it's own drivers) etc etc.

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What model 3tb disk do you have? Could be a firmware issue with Mac as WD Greens are know for this.

 

Does shutdown take a long time or just does not shutdown? If you did a retail install then it should be fine. Could be hanging on unmounting the HDD. Try shutdown with only the Mac Boot drive connected. Not even a DVD drive connected.

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Bang on the money, it's a WD Caviar Green 3TB :(

 

Shutdown works fine, even faster than on my Windows partition, although occasionally I get the terminal style text over the grey shutting down screen for a few seconds, I chalk that up to the fact that I usually have 6 devices on the SATA of this machine.

 

I just know it's a shutdown problem because it's not happening consistently on every startup of OSX. (Which has actually meant I've used Windows unless I've absolutely HAD to this week).

 

Whenever I startup now, the exFAT partition fails to mount and refuses to repair. So did the Time Machine partition even after I formatted it (it doesn't now as I have stopped running backups on it full stop and it never gets written to). I can fix the partition by running Testdisk and restoring the superblock from Backup, but that means the main partition boot block for the exFAT drive is consistently getting corrupted every startup. I've checked and nothing else on the drive is damaged, all changes I've made whilst running OSX before the shutdown are unaffected etc.

 

So how does one go about fixing the firmware, is there an update that will fix compatibility? I've even gone as far as trying to learn some unix shellscript to unmount the drives and eject them before OS X starts shutdown procedures.

 

 

EDIT: Thanks for the heads up. Is this the issue and fix for what you were talking about? http://news.softpedia.com/news/WD-Caviar-Green-HDDs-Suffer-From-a-Critical-Design-Flaw-196159.shtml

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Interestingly enough I have been using exFAT on two other 1TB hard drives hooked up to my Mac mini for the better part of 2 years with no problems. I'll switch one to NTFS and just use it read-only if need be... I'd rather it be accessible in some capacity on both sides than use HFS+

 

Thanks for the heads up about the drive. Carried out the instructions under that link anyway, park head was still set to sleep every 8s... despite the drive having come out two years after that article. Worse than that I've had the drive no longer than a month and I have 17 bad sectors and counting, SMART says the drive is failing... and it took me a week to move all my important stuff spanning several drives to it. :wallbash:

 

Doesn't really tell me why my SSD corrupted but I guess I'll have to cross that bridge when I get to it.

 

Ah well, thanks for the help either way RD.

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Bang on the money, it's a WD Caviar Green 3TB :(

 

Shutdown works fine, even faster than on my Windows partition, although occasionally I get the terminal style text over the grey shutting down screen for a few seconds, I chalk that up to the fact that I usually have 6 devices on the SATA of this machine.

 

I just know it's a shutdown problem because it's not happening consistently on every startup of OSX. (Which has actually meant I've used Windows unless I've absolutely HAD to this week).

 

Whenever I startup now, the exFAT partition fails to mount and refuses to repair. So did the Time Machine partition even after I formatted it (it doesn't now as I have stopped running backups on it full stop and it never gets written to). I can fix the partition by running Testdisk and restoring the superblock from Backup, but that means the main partition boot block for the exFAT drive is consistently getting corrupted every startup. I've checked and nothing else on the drive is damaged, all changes I've made whilst running OSX before the shutdown are unaffected etc.

 

So how does one go about fixing the firmware, is there an update that will fix compatibility? I've even gone as far as trying to learn some unix shellscript to unmount the drives and eject them before OS X starts shutdown procedures.

 

 

EDIT: Thanks for the heads up. Is this the issue and fix for what you were talking about? http://news.softpedia.com/news/WD-Caviar-Green-HDDs-Suffer-From-a-Critical-Design-Flaw-196159.shtml

 

i have ran the tool to put at 300 on my green 1TB that is windows and linux .. not osx which is wd 80 gb spare disk.

 

try loading bios defaults.. reboot back to bios and reconfigure it to work with os x. ( check changelog of bios versions also for AHCI or SSD patches?)

 

so sad after 2 Tb its usualy advanced format 4k sector

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