Costanegra Posted November 9, 2011 Share Posted November 9, 2011 Hello, My frist post here. So I've been running SL for a while (installed with the help of AndyBoot CD v4) and decided to finally upgrade to Lion. As a precaution measure, I did a full backup of my drive (clone) using SuperDuper. After a successful upgrade on my original drive, I started playing around with some preference files and graphics kexts. I did not know what I was doing, yet I was stupid enough to do it. Long story short, I messed up my Lion installation and I cannot boot it up from Chameleon. I can, however, choose my SL dive from Chameleon and work from it. Cutting to the chase, I've noticed that my cloned drive does not have Chameleon installed. On my BIOS, the first boot drive is my original drive (the one with Lion) and my second one is the one with SL. If I switch the order and make my SL drive the first to boot, Chameleon will not load (I just see a black screen with a white ___ line). Even though I cannot boot my Lion drive from Chameleon, Chameleon works on that drive, but not on my SL one. So, finally moving on to my point: I've asked for help on how to fix the bootloader problem on my Lion drive but so far I've had no luck. To avoid hassle, I've decided to clone my current SL drive onto my Lion drive (clone of a clone), and try to upgrade to Lion one more time, but I have some concerns: 1.- Why did SuperDuper did not make an exact clone of my drive with all the bootloaders included? 2.- My Lion drive (original drive) will not boot from Chameleon, but it has Chameleon installed, and I use it to boot up my other drive. I want to erase my Lion drive (the one with Chameleon) by making a clone of my SL to it, but I'm afraid that if I format it, I will lose the Chameleon bootloaders, and I won't be able to boot to ANY of my drives. So, are there any files I can manually copy from my non-booting Lion drive to my SL drive so that it will have Chameleon installed, and so that I can boot directly to it from the BIOS? 3.- Say none of the above questions are logical or viable. How can I install Chameleon or Chimera on my current, working SL drive without messing things up? 4.- Say question 3 is viable, and I make it work. How can I then clone that drive to make it an exact copy, with everything included, so I can upgrade to Lion one more time? 5.- Just for the sake of it, what exactly does AndyBoot CD do? Yes, I'm a total noob and have no idea what I'm doing or what I did when I followed the guide to install SL in the first place. I just followed the guide step by step. I think that understanding how AndyBoot works, and what it exactly installs on my system will allow me to understand how Chameleon or Chimera are installed. Phew. That was a lot to compile. Anyway, I really hope someone can help me answers some of this questions, if not all of them. Any thoughts, comments or suggestions will be much appreciated. Thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noam AA Posted November 9, 2011 Share Posted November 9, 2011 1. Cloners doesn't transfer bootloaders. you need to install it manually from a working OSX or from the OSX installation with the help of terminal. 3.your only way now is to get a modCD and boot with it (i saw you installed SL with AndyBoot CD so it should work), and while in the SL, install chameleon to whatever drive you want, best to do it manually, to avoid any mistake by packages.(note that if it's lion you are trying to boot then the ModCD must be for Lion, as far as i know [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] doesn't work with lion, so the way to fix it is from SL) 4. see answer 1, you can't move boot loaders, so be sure to install it on the cloned partition before restarting/ formatting the working OSX. 5.ModCD have all kind of Extras to make it a suitable for installing and loading the OS for post installation, it can have all kind of different things, like modded kernel, Extra Extensions, and some configurations to make it work on a various modern PC. also, you can make your self a USB Stick with chameleon installed on it (with kernel, Extra, smbios and boot.plist, and if you use DSDT then it too) so, whenever you will have this problem again, you can just stick the USB and boot from it. goot luck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Costanegra Posted November 9, 2011 Author Share Posted November 9, 2011 Thank you very much for your detailed response. You've cleared a lot of things for me. I now understand what I must do, but not quite sure how. I was looking at Andy's Boot Cd and this is what it says it installs: Also, (and I know this is from another forum, so I hope it's not an inconvenience) there's the [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] option, which says it installs: I can't seem to find the ModCD you mention. I did a search in this forum for it but it only returned posts which mention it, not posts that point to it. So, just to make sure, running either of those two options I mentioned above will install a bootloader AND not mess up my current working SL system? [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] does not mention if it installs Chameleon or Chimera, but I guess either of those two would work? Please excuse my ignorance. Little by little I'm getting familiar with all of these concepts and terminology. Thanks again for your help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noam AA Posted November 9, 2011 Share Posted November 9, 2011 The modCDs out there (like [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url], boot 1 3 3( and i think AndyCD are all for there for you to boot your system. install chameleon Manually, not by package, best way to do this, if you don't want to, download a chameleon package only. you don't need all the other extras if they are already installed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Costanegra Posted November 10, 2011 Author Share Posted November 10, 2011 Thank you very much once again. Unfortunately I messed up one more time. I couldn't find a Chameleon stand alone package, so I went ahead and installed it through Andy Bood Cd 5 (I did it mostly for matters of time, since I've had to put work projects on hold because of this situation). Now I can boot from my SL drive, and everything works OK except for my graphics card, which is not recognized. I guess Andy Boot CD replaced my kexts, and for some reason the graphics card kext is not working now. I don't want to take advantage of your good will, you've done a lot for me so far, but if you can think of any way I can solve this, I would be eternally grateful to you. So, what I've noticed is that my Boot.plist changed from (before Chameleon install): <key>AtiConfig</key> <string>Duckweed</string> <key>EthernetBuiltIn</key> <string>Yes</string> <key>GraphicsEnabler</key> <string>Yes</string> <key>Kernel</key> <string>mach_kernel</string> <key>Kernel Flags</key> <string>arch=x86_64</string> <key>Legacy Logo</key> <string>Yes</string> <key>Timeout</key> <string>1</string> To this (current after Chameleon install): <key>Kernel</key> <string>mach_kernel</string> <key>Kernel Flags</key> <string></string> <key>GraphicsEnabler</key> <string>No</string> <key>Timeout</key> <string>5</string> I tried booting with the previos Boot.plist configuration, but booting won't get passed the booting logo with the wheel spinning indefinitely. I then tried just changing the GraphicsEnabler to yes on my current Boot.plist, and same thing happens (can't get pass booting screen). The only way SL boots is with the current Boot.plist shown above with GraphicsEnabler >No<. I also tried using Pacifist to get the ATI kexts from different packages and placing them on /System/Library/Extensions, with those two different Boot.plist, and nothing seemed to work. This is what my system profiler shows for my graphics: Display: Type: GPU Bus: PCIe PCIe Lane Width: x16 VRAM (Total): 3 MB Vendor: ATI (0x1002) Device ID: 0x6738 Revision ID: 0x0000 Kernel Extension Info: No Kext Loaded Displays: Display: Resolution: 1024 x 768 Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888) Main Display: Yes Mirror: Off Online: Yes Again, if you can think of anything I can try to fix this issue, I would very much appreciate it if you could let me know. If not, you've been of great help, and I thank you for that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Costanegra Posted November 11, 2011 Author Share Posted November 11, 2011 Never mind... I got it working. Not really sure what did it, but I tried a combination of ATI kexts from an original 10.6.7 install dvd, and from [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] 3.6.0, topped by a run of Kext Utility... just if anyone was curious. Thanks again for your help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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