PolyPill Posted March 12, 2006 Share Posted March 12, 2006 I'm trying to install OSX 10.4.4 to my harddrive, I don't have a dvd drive so I gotta do the vmware route. When it starts up I get this error about not being able to boot from the drive, but I set the partition to bootable and had to start windows with a boot disk. I created my partition off a linux boot disk using fdisk, set the partition type to HFS+ (type af) then formatted it in the installer. I also tried letting the installer create the partition, still no dice. Anyone got any suggestions? I've attached a picture of my error. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cue Posted March 12, 2006 Share Posted March 12, 2006 It seems like we face the same problem. I made the same post just 8' before yours Is it just one partition you try to use? If not, is the partition 'Primary'? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PolyPill Posted March 12, 2006 Author Share Posted March 12, 2006 oh, I didn't notice that post, I was going to post a few hours ago...could be 8 by now....but I wanted to try one more thing before I did and it still didn't work so I posted without looking There's 2 partitions, both are set to primary. Right now it's the 2nd partition, I'm in the middle of changing things around to make it the first, then I'll see what happens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PolyPill Posted March 12, 2006 Author Share Posted March 12, 2006 Here's a picture of my partitions from the disk utility, incase there's any question on how I have it setup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cue Posted March 12, 2006 Share Posted March 12, 2006 I also created a Primary AF partition next to C: but still get the same error... I'm surprised that I cannot find any info on this :/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wayneoats Posted March 12, 2006 Share Posted March 12, 2006 I face the same promblem. also i have 10.4.3 Tiger whesly's patch , can someone please help. when i try to create 2 prations it some times give me an error like input out put error or invaild argument. I just dont know what to do , is their a way around this. I have the tiger on a dvd+r. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdxxx Posted March 12, 2006 Share Posted March 12, 2006 For Cue: Some people have found that the AF partition (your OSX) should be the last partition on the drive, and of course it must be a primary partition. After creating the primary partition, set it to ACTIVE. The partition must be active to allow a boot. You are probably getting the error "OSX cannot start up from this partition" (above post) because of the partition status and location. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cue Posted March 12, 2006 Share Posted March 12, 2006 At first I tried with the last partition. (hence you see the unallocated space) and it was active as I mention on my other post. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdxxx Posted March 12, 2006 Share Posted March 12, 2006 After install, did you use Partition magic again to be sure the partition is still set as active? This is also sometimes a problem. Next solution is to install to another disk, create a partition image of this disk, and restore the partition to the desired location on your single primary disk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cue Posted March 12, 2006 Share Posted March 12, 2006 Yeah I did set it to active. I can try again though... Thanks for your input. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PolyPill Posted March 12, 2006 Author Share Posted March 12, 2006 After install, did you use Partition magic again to be sure the partition is still set as active? This is also sometimes a problem. Next solution is to install to another disk, create a partition image of this disk, and restore the partition to the desired location on your single primary disk. After the install? We're not getting through the install, boot off dvd, select language, click continue, agree to EULA, then can't select the target due to the error. I put my osx parition at the end of the disk, still nothing, its definately set to active. I can't install on the entire disk because I need to run windows and this is a notebook. I'm gonna be borrowing an external dvd drive soon, maybe I can get it to install taht way, but I suspect I may get the same error with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PolyPill Posted March 13, 2006 Author Share Posted March 13, 2006 I was just looking over these instructions http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303220 When I use disk utility to change my partitions, on step 6 & 7 of the link it talks about an options button, this button does not exist and I can't set my partition scheme to GUID_partition_scheme it is currently FDISK_partition_scheme Further research I find this information "This button only appears if you have selected to work with an external drive. It does not appear for the internal drive, as Apple assumes the internal drive will always be formatted to be bootable on the machine that contains it, so there is only one possible option." So, because I'm trying to use an internal drive it doesn't allow me to change the partition scheme. Is there a way to trick it into thinking it isn't internal with vmware? Since you can get to the terminal in the installation, is there a way from the command line to change the partition scheme? I noticed I can run fdisk from there, but it is quite a bit different from the linux or windows fdisk utilities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PolyPill Posted March 13, 2006 Author Share Posted March 13, 2006 Oh, I'm very excited now!!! From the command line I used the diskutil command to rewrite my partitions and set the partition scheme to GUID. Here's what I did: 1: Boot to install DVD 2: Click utilities, then terminal 2: Type diskutil partitionDisk disk0 1 GPTFormat HFS+ Untitled 100M *I only made 1 partition that's 100M because I wanted to do it quickly diskutil manual 3: Exit terminal when complete 4: Open Disk Utility from the utilities menu 5: Set the partitions how you want them, this step could probably be skipped if you set them up how you want it from the command line, but I find the gui is easier to see what I am doing. After I did that it let me select the drive and it's currently installing. I did all this in vmware while windows was running on the same drive as the one I partitioned, I have no clue what's going to happen to the windows partition, I suspect I'll have to reinstall windows because the partition will be all messed up on my next reboot, but I created the partitions exactly how I had them before I started them, so maybe there will be no problem that a disk check can't fix, but I'll keep everyone updated with how it turns out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cue Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 PolyPill although we face the same error, the type of installation is completely different. I'm trying a native install while you do it through VMWare. Anyway....back to the point! I have good news and bad news. The good news is that MacOS did finally see the partition and I could actually install it. The bad news is that my whole partition structure is wiped out..... So what happened? I believe it has nothing to do with MacOS per se but Partition Magic (PM). As far as the installation goes, I did try again with the final partition and it did proceed with the installation! BUT I noticed that now the mount point was under '/dev/sda2' which is right after the WinXP partition so maybe that did the trick... Any comments? So all went well and I restarted my machine only to get a 'chain boot error'. So I tried to boot into windows and it would keep restarting. So I loaded PM and I noticed that all partitions where whiped out (180Gb of unallocated space, omg!) but the WinXP one. Anyway...to keep it short. I did manage to recover some of my partitions but as far as I can see the whole partition information is messed up (e.g. unallocated space found in between partitions, different order of the partitions etc). For now I'll perform a backup and then try MacOS as a standalone installation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PolyPill Posted March 13, 2006 Author Share Posted March 13, 2006 So then how did you get it to allow you to install? Mine finished installing, but when I reboot and checked the partition table it had over written everything and replaced it with 1 HFS+ partition even though I used Disk Utility to create 2 partitions. Although some good did come out of that, I deleted the HFS+ partition using the linux fdisk I have on a boot disk. Created 2 partitions again, a FAT32 and HFS+. Reinstalled windows, and started my vmware install again. When I did an info on the disk from disk utilities it still said GUID_partition_scheme So all I had to do was start the install. I have high hopes for this one since I didn't touch any of the partition info in OSX, so there should be nothing that gets messed up. *Edit I'm doing an install through vmware to the physical disk, there should be no real difference between our errors unless you've got driver problems that are causing it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cue Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 As I said I'm not sure. It could be because of the mount point! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PolyPill Posted March 13, 2006 Author Share Posted March 13, 2006 As I said I'm not sure. It could be because of the mount point! I'm currious, when you're in disk utility, click info while on the drive (not the partition) and see what partition scheme it says it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cue Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 Well for now as I said my whole partition structure is messed up so I have to clear things up and try again later... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cue Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 Ok! Fortunately no data is lost... I'm thinking of formatting WinXP and install just MacOS. I have the Marklar iso patched to the Release 1. If I have understood this right all I have to do is, Format C:\ Boot with a Live CD and set the partition type to AF Install MacOS Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PolyPill Posted March 14, 2006 Author Share Posted March 14, 2006 I've got it installed and running. The main problem was that partition scheme. Getting it set to GUID instead of FDISK let me install. One thing that did cause problems, I thought OSX was messing up the partitions because after I'd install it, my 2 partitions would overlap and cause an error. Well it turns out that it was actually Windows that didn't seem to understand the GUID scheme. I was doing fresh Windows installs, then installing OSX, well when I told Windows to do a complete format upon installation it would mess it up and I wouldn't notice until I installed OSX. I did a FAT32 format from my linux boot disk then didn't have Windows format at all and that solved everything for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wayneoats Posted March 14, 2006 Share Posted March 14, 2006 Ok first off my iam trying to install the 10.4.4 with update to 10.4.5. I have done almost everything to try to install it ive used partition magic, Arconis,& dispart and every time i went to try to install my hard drive it will not come up on the hard drive seletion. Ive tried to use disk utitlity and i went to format to exetended journaled but it says in put out put error and the all my partition drives are gone and when i shut down my and try to reboot my windows xp is gone ,it says invalid system disk, then i have reinstall windows for the 8th time. and aslo this is the same promblem with the 10.3.4 that i tired to use. What am i duining wrong i would apreciate if someone could help me install this. Any guiedes out thier for my situation, and if i need another kind of botable dvd tell me please. Also my computer specs is an: AMD Semprom 3100+ 100GB ATA HD 512MB DDR SDRAM NVIDIA GeFroce 6100 WINDOWS XP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cue Posted March 14, 2006 Share Posted March 14, 2006 This is it! This is my first post from MacOS setup on a 20Gb hd under my Shuttle SB61G2 (v1) using Marklar's ISO patched with the Generic OSX 86 Release 1! Everything is running smoothly! Is 10.4.5 available or should I go on with 10.4.4? Kudos to the community! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wayneoats Posted March 14, 2006 Share Posted March 14, 2006 How did you install . can you tell me step by step. For i can install it to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cue Posted March 14, 2006 Share Posted March 14, 2006 Actually it was a lot easier than I thought it would be! I just boot up from the DVD. Install MacOS. Restart. Boot into MacOS! That's it! It takes about 25'' to load the desktop on a [email protected] 800FSB and 1Gb of DDR3200. After what I've been through I believe its best to get a second small drive and install MacOS there leaving your first drive to WinXP. I now have a small 20Gb PATA drive where I have installed MacOS and a SATA drive with my XP setup. If I want to boot from the SATA I simply disable the IDE controller from the BIOS! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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