CandC Posted April 22, 2008 Share Posted April 22, 2008 So after a long and arduous journey to get my vostro 1500 up and running (MBR nightmare), I tried to install the graphics driver for NVidia cards and it comes back with a Kernel Panic. So exactly what happened: installed NVinject, said to restart I restart gets to grey apple and says I have to restart (kernel Panic) I boot in safe mode "-x" and it starts once, I am relieved that it may work.. I restart and it has the same problem and won't boot in "-x" I read a lot online and the only thing I come up with is booting with the command "old_kernel", which works perfectly - with the graphics driver installed. I try to find out how to restore the kernel and came up empty handed. I am really new to this whole thing and have never really had to troubleshoot OS X before, so the commands are a little non-intuitive. I don't even know how to unistall the NVinject pack I installed... Let me know your thoughts. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PlayingKarrde Posted April 23, 2008 Share Posted April 23, 2008 What's the kernel panic you are getting? Sounds like it could be a geforce one. If so try this: Boot with -s and type: mount -uw / mkdir /GeForce mv /System/Library/Extensions/GeForce* /GeForce reboot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ilostmyunicorn Posted April 23, 2008 Share Posted April 23, 2008 Having the same issue here.. I tried your suggestion, PlayingKarrde, but I tried booting in -v and it stopped at "AppleNForceATA: NVIDIA nForce MCP 51 by MeDevil (CMD 0x1f0, CTR 0x3f4, IRQ 14, BM 0x3080)" Tried booting with -v and -F and it stops at "wl0: Broadcom BCM4311 802.11 Wireless Controller" <- this line is directly below the "AppleNForceATA" one. I'll try booting using the "old_kernel" now. Edit: "old_kernel" method didn't work for me. Left me at the same "AppleNForceATA" line. Erasing the partition and starting over feels more tempting now! > Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PlayingKarrde Posted April 23, 2008 Share Posted April 23, 2008 Try what I said before but replace Geforce* with NVinject.kext. Basically you are moving the NVinject.kext so it won't load. I don't think it's a kernel problem personally. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CandC Posted April 24, 2008 Author Share Posted April 24, 2008 I can't boot in '-s', it hangs at the same point as in '-v'. The error doesn't say anything about an nvidia controller error. I think the error is related to the shutdown update/fix that comes with the latest version of NVinject. I think the error says something about intel. I need to look at it again but it looks like a driver that is supposed to control the processor is hanging on boot. The old kernel seems to not have this problem. The only way I can boot is with the old_kernel, a backup in the root dir, but I can't boot to remove mach_kernel and replace it with old_kernel. If I boot old_kernel I can't modify it. Seems like I might be stuck. Any thoughts on how to copy over the file? I have a vostro 1500 for those who want to know. The shutdown doesn't work, or sound (yet), and I had to re-write the MBR to get past a HFS+ partition error on boot. I will try to play around with '-f', maybe that will help. Does anyone know a way to boot the old kernel with a '-s' parameter? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inimicus Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Since the "default" kernel is mach_kernel, you can rename old_kernel this and boot as if you entered old_kernel at boot. Make sense? Like this: Boot with old_kernel Backup mach_kernel cp mach_kernel mach_kernel.backup Remove it. sudo rm mach_kernel Make old_kernel mach_kernel sudo cp old_kernel mach_kernel Now old_kernel and mach_kernel are the same, and mach_kernel is mach_kernel.backup. Repair permissions to keep things happy. diskutil repairpermissions / There are more succinct ways of doing this, but separating out the commands tends to help noobitis. If this doesn't work, you are still OK to boot with old_kernel as we have maintained the file here. The backup of mach_kernel will also help in the event of trouble. If you ever are unable to boot in single-user mode (-s), you can always boot to the install disc and use Terminal from there. Your hard drive is located under /Volumes/[Volume Name] in this method. As a rule of thumb, I never use any NVInject or similar graphics driver installer. Doing it manually ensures you know which files are modified and makes it easier to "Reverse" any ill effects. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CandC Posted April 25, 2008 Author Share Posted April 25, 2008 I broke down and reinstalled. I know, for shame. I reinstalled the NVinject but left off the kernel patch and everything was great. Even got some sound working. I was able to boot into single user mode (-s) using the old_kernel, but when I got there I didn't know my unix well enough anymore to copy/replace/find the needed files. It has been a while. I realized that I didn't really have that much to lose in re-installing. On a sidenote, why does it say it only takes 5 gigs to install and then it takes almost 10GB when you boot it? Is there a problem with my install or does the OS create a large swap file or other operating file when it boots? I put it on a 10GB partition on my laptop and now I only have like 700MB free. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inimicus Posted April 25, 2008 Share Posted April 25, 2008 Strange, mine only takes 6.7GB default install. Maybe additional apps? But I dunno which ones for over 3GB of space... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
th0rgal Posted April 25, 2008 Share Posted April 25, 2008 Hey! have you tried this Nvidia installer : http://scottdangel.com/blog/?page_id=20 It worked a treat for me with my old Latitude D800 (GeForce FX 5200 Go) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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