Won't boot up normally after installation

[lushen124]

I posted this in the post-installation, but that might be in the wrong place since I haven't gotten to the screens that ask you questions in a regular boot.

 

I say regular or normal boot because it works in safe boot, and ONLY in safe boot. I have no idea why as I don't know what safe boot entails specifically.

 

I can only guess that one of my drivers is incorrect, but I've messed around with those already.

 

As for more information, again, I used the iAtkos disc v5i and the Chameleon bootloader. The default decrypter (AppleDecrypt or something) was selected. For the Enabler, the SMBIOS Enabler was selected (default was SMBIOS - EFI or something). I chose this one since I assumed the default was for the EFI bootloader. No special Kernel was selected, so I would assume the Vanilla Kernel was used (or however you interpret "stock kernel"). Disabler.kext was checked during the installation.

 

As far as drivers go, I checked the EFI String for nVidia GeForce 8600GTS 256MB, as it corresponds to what I have, the nForce SATA drivers, no speedstep, NTFS-3G, and the nForce Ethernet driver.

 

As for what I've tried, multiple reinstalls with different customizations. I've tried the PC_EFIv9 Bootloader and the stock kernel and it seems to just automatically restart during boot. This bootloader seems to only boot something if a modified kernel was selected, oddly enough. In any case, I used the Chameleon bootloader. I never messed with the Decrypter since that looked to be the better one. SMBIOS Enabler, I've already explained above. As for the Kernel, I've tried the stock and the 9.5.0 Voodoo kernel, but neither seems to make any difference. Same goes for the 9.2.0 ToH kernel.

 

Disabler.kext seems to be required for Chameleon, so I haven't messed with it either.

 

As far as drivers go, the only one I've kept through every try was the EFI string for the graphics. I've disabled nForce Ethernet multiple times, none of them really made any difference. I left nForce SATA unchecked once, without observing much difference. And NTFS-3G only made it so that my NTFS drives weren't accessible for R/W, which is understandable.

 

I can try a few more to see and give more specifics, since right now, after going through so many installations, I'm not quite sure how far each one got without recording them. Maybe I'll record the result next time.

 

But if anybody has any ideas, that would be great. My system specs should still be in my sig.

[westwaerts]

1. when darwin bootloader appears, hit F8 and type -v ( verbose mode to show error message)

 

it doesnt make sense to screw round with kexts=drivers when you dont know the errors,

if you reinstalled pcefi over chameleon, reformat the whole drive ( not only partition)

both bootloaders are very sensitive, and you cannot do it like cocktail shaking, you are writing to an unvisible partition,

that you can hardly edit.

[lushen124]

It usually hangs right after mDNSResponder is starting. Sometimes I'll get errors from the mDNSResponder, but other times, it just says it's starting and freezes.

 

I will, however, try formatting the entire drive between each trial though, since I just set aside the partition to fool around with and just reformatted the partition to retry.

 

I'm going to try it with no special drivers installed. I'll post back the results.

 

Thank you very much for your help, westwaerts.

[lushen124]

Perhaps this will shed more light on the issue.

 

First, let me explain what I did to get to this point.

 

First, I restarted my computer and booted up PartitionMagic Live CD to format the hard drive. I deleted all the partitions on the target drive and formatted the entire drive to a primary partition of type FAT32.

 

I then restarted again, and booted up from the iAtkos DVD. As it boots, I press F8 and boot with options -v and cpus=1. This boots up fine and I get to the Installer. I then use Disk Utility from the installer and format the hard drive to Mac OSX Extended (Journaled) file system. I then use the terminal and use fdisk to set the hard drive active for booting. (If it matters, the hard drive shows up as HFS+ format here.)

 

I then proceed to select the hard drive to install to and the customize with the following settings:

 

iAtkos Main System

Bootloader: Chameleon

Decrypter: AppleDecrypt

Enabler: SMBIOS - EFI

Kernel: 9.5.0 Voodoo (beta 2c)

ACPI: None selected (stock, I assume)

Disabler.kext

 

I didn't install any drivers afterwards. I set the installer to begin installing. It takes about 5 minutes and it installs completely. The next window shows a big green circle with a check mark inside, saying it will restart in 30 seconds. It then restarts, and I take the DVD out and let it reboot. I let newly installed Mac OSX boot up with the flags -v and cpus=1 and it goes on to load. It stops at around this point:

 

 

Again, thanks for your time. I really appreciate your help.

 

EDIT: For the record, Safe Mode still works in this case. So using the options -v and -x still works fine.

[lushen124]

Just wanted to let you know, I finally got it working. Switched over to a Kalyway package and it had a lot more options that I could play around with. Eventually, I think it was finally using an nforce kernel that got it to work. I am typing on the new OS right now. The speed is great, and everything works without a hitch.

 

Again, I'd like to thank you for your time for your reply. I really appreciate it, westwaerts.