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Stuck with spinning ball on Mavericks installation


DEMandell
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Greetings,

 

I am doing a "vanilla" installation using the excellent instructions in this installation guide, and have run into a problem:

 

First, the hardware list:

 

Motherboard: Asus P5K-V, latest BIOS (version 1002)

CPU: Core 2 Duo E7500 2.93 GHz

RAM: 8 GB

Graphics: PNY GeForce 9800 GT GDDR3 1GB

 

This computer has been running Snow Leopard stably for quite a while, so I know there are no fundamental problems with the hardware.

 

When I boot from my prepared USB drive, it boots the operating system to the point where the graphics mode is engaged, and then I am left with a white screen initially with a mouse pointer arrow, and then with the "spinning beachball". Since it takes quite a while to reach this point, I have left the system in this state for a long time to see if it ever recovers, and so far it hasn't. I know that the CPU hasn't crashed completely because the "beachball" continues to spin, I can move the mouse pointer, and the system even blanks the screen if I let it sit long enough, turning it back on when I hit a key on the keyboard.

 

I have used a variety of boot arguments: -v (I would never boot without this one!) GraphicsEnabler=Yes (graphics come up, but then something else seems to hang), -x (safe mode simply takes longer with the mouse pointer arrow before the spinning ball appears), but nothing seems to give a different result.

 

Any suggestions? What else might I try? Is there any way to have the system provide additional debug information?

 

Thanks in advance to all.

 

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Hi Mirone,

 

Thanks for the response.

 

Unfortunately GraphicsEnabler=No doesn't work. That causes the screen to shut off entirely and the computer to become completely unresponsive. Even the caps-lock key no longer turns on and off the light.

 

I'm pretty sure this isn't a graphics problem since once the computer switches to graphics mode (about 3 minutes after the last text is printed by the kernel boot process) the screen correctly shows a mouse pointer initially that tracks mouse movements, and then shows the colorful spinning ball, still tracking mouse movements. Caps-lock remains responsive, and even screen blanking timeout works, and the screen comes back on with a key press.

 

If I could only get some diagnostics to show up on a serial port (this is a PC after all and does have serial ports) or have a getty started on a serial port (see this link) then I might be able to see more of what's happening. Not sure how the serial port enumerates in a system like this...

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