Velocium Posted August 5, 2008 Share Posted August 5, 2008 Alright, I decided to give tri booting a shot so I use gparted in ubuntu following a guide on wiki to make all the partitions for ubuntu leopard and vista.vista and ubuntu work fine with grub. I proceeded to load the iatkos 2i DVD and then my problems start. The disk utility tool can't partition the unallocated space and proceeds to give me an error. No sweat right just quit the Osx installer and try again later but when I do that my mbr is messed up so icant load anything. I try to boot from a live cd or any other bootable cd and get no luck either just a black screen with a blinking cursor. This has never happened I have always been able to boot through the optical drive. Now my question is it possible the bios is corrupted because it loads slower than usual or do I have failed hardware. Three hours with dell and I got no where I should have known so I hope someone here can help me. Thanks in advance. I have a dell xps 1330. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/119403-request-help-corrupt-bootloader-or-failed-hardware/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Velocium Posted August 5, 2008 Author Share Posted August 5, 2008 Can anyone please help me? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/119403-request-help-corrupt-bootloader-or-failed-hardware/#findComment-845991 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Macshiba Posted August 5, 2008 Share Posted August 5, 2008 Sounds like your drive is dying. Start all back over, and fix your mbr and boot record by booting a Windows XP disk then loading recovery console and typing fixboot then fixmbr and reboot. Then start back off like you originally did with gparted. Or buy all new drives, because if your drives are taking forever to boot at POST that usually means your drives are failing. Mine take quite a while at time to POST because of my drives, I just haven't gotten any new drives yet. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/119403-request-help-corrupt-bootloader-or-failed-hardware/#findComment-846058 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Velocium Posted August 5, 2008 Author Share Posted August 5, 2008 First of all thank you for your help Macshiba.Well I think the iatkos corrupted the mbr but that should not affect me booting from an optical drive. I cannot even load the xp cd or any bootable cd for that matter. Even after i set the boot sequence to start of with the cd drive I just get the blinking cursor and it stays there forever with no movement. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/119403-request-help-corrupt-bootloader-or-failed-hardware/#findComment-846071 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Macshiba Posted August 5, 2008 Share Posted August 5, 2008 So you cannot boot from any disk whatsoever? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/119403-request-help-corrupt-bootloader-or-failed-hardware/#findComment-846106 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Velocium Posted August 5, 2008 Author Share Posted August 5, 2008 Yes nothing whatsoever. I don't know maybe I corrupted the bios somehow. Oh well maybe ill just send it back to dell Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/119403-request-help-corrupt-bootloader-or-failed-hardware/#findComment-846200 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Macshiba Posted August 5, 2008 Share Posted August 5, 2008 It seems like more of a direct problem than the BIOS. Have you reset the BIOS from the motherboard? There is usually a little switch, or you can take out your BIOS battery for about thirty minutes and then replace it and then make sure you factory reset your BIOS, and then let it find your IDE/SATA drives again. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/119403-request-help-corrupt-bootloader-or-failed-hardware/#findComment-846229 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Velocium Posted August 5, 2008 Author Share Posted August 5, 2008 I'll try opening up my laptop and remove the battery. Hopefully that helps. I'll post the results after i try it Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/119403-request-help-corrupt-bootloader-or-failed-hardware/#findComment-846317 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Velocium Posted August 5, 2008 Author Share Posted August 5, 2008 Nope it didn't do anything but ask me to set the time again. Still the stupid blinking cursor! so frustrating. I cannot boot from the optical drive to fix the corrupt mbr. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/119403-request-help-corrupt-bootloader-or-failed-hardware/#findComment-846353 Share on other sites More sharing options...
spartango Posted August 21, 2008 Share Posted August 21, 2008 BIOS is very difficult to damage... I'm assuming you can't get to the "setup" screen? Try booting from USB stick...ur optical drive could be copping out... If the HD's bad...disconnect the HD and try to boot from optical alone Worst case..send the machine in...they'll reflash the bios and replace the drives if they're bad. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/119403-request-help-corrupt-bootloader-or-failed-hardware/#findComment-864221 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts