agrafuese Posted November 29, 2006 Share Posted November 29, 2006 Hey everyone, I'm new to OS X86 and I can't seem to find a way to make my system boot OSX natively. The first time I installed it, I tried to have my whole drive dedicated to OSX. Everything seemed to be going fine, but then when I tried to boot it up for the first time, it did nothing. It wouldn't even give me an error - just a blinking "_" prompt. So I started over, installing Windows first on a small partition, and then installing OSX on the remaining hard drive space. It worked fine, but Since I don't want windows on my system at all, it became a big pain in the ass to have to select which OS to boot on the Darwin prompt every single time I booted up. Plus, I had the small Windows partition laying around not being used at all. I've searched the forums and looked through every thread on here related to the topic of single booting, but have since had no luck in finding any solution. I've tried making the partition active via the Terminal, but that does nothing to help at all. Some people had reported that they could start up a native installation with the install DVD in the drive on boot up, but that doesn't work for me either, as my OSX installation doesn't even show up when I hit F8. It seems to me like OSX is installing, but the system just refuses to recognize it. Am I missing something here? Any help would be much appreciated. Some information: OS release version: MacOSX_10.4.8DVD AMD SSE3 TEST 1 CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (fully compatible according to HCL) MoBo: A8N-SLI Premium (fully compatible according to HCL) HD: 300GB Maxtor ATA Thanks! Agra Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rammjet Posted November 30, 2006 Share Posted November 30, 2006 Format the entire drive as FAT32 using a Windows/Linux disk/partition utility. Don't use Windows itself because it has a limit to how large a partition it can format as FAT32. Then, when you go into Disk Utility in the installer, you will see the primary partition icon below the hard drive icon (the primary partition is 99.9% of hard drive). Click the partition and erase as MacOS Extended Journaled. Then complete your installation. If when you boot, you still see the boot menu, edit the boot.plist file to remove the Timeout parameter or to set it to 0 (zero). Find the file here: /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tank-mx Posted November 30, 2006 Share Posted November 30, 2006 Alot of text... So I started over, installing Windows first on a small partition, and then installing OSX on the remaining hard drive space. It worked fine Alot of text... Some information: OS release version: MacOSX_10.4.8DVD AMD SSE3 TEST 1 CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (fully compatible according to HCL) MoBo: A8N-SLI Premium (fully compatible according to HCL) HD: 300GB Maxtor ATA Thanks! Agra That is so weird... i have almost the exact same setup as you but i cant even install it native.... Tried using vmware-method and booting from the dvd. Booting from the dvd makes the install hang at "installing essentials". Using vmware i can install it perfecly but i cant boot from the hard-drive i installed it to. Sometimes i get kernel panic sometimes i get other errors. MacOSX_10.4.8DVD AMD SSE3 TEST 1 AMD 64 X2 4800+ ASUS A8N-SLI Premium 60GB seagate pata-drive Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agrafuese Posted November 30, 2006 Author Share Posted November 30, 2006 Thanks Rammjet, I will try your method and report back on the results. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agrafuese Posted November 30, 2006 Author Share Posted November 30, 2006 Ok, after much trial and error, I finally figured out how to make this work. Rammjet's suggestions helped, but there was a bit more to it, so I'm posting the full workaround here for anyone else that may be experiencing the same problems that I had: 1. I began by running a Linux-based partition utility called PartGUI. You can find it as part of a bootable CD called SystemRescueCD here: http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page 2. Using PartGUI, I deleted all of the existing partitions from my drive, then created one FAT32 partition to cover the entire drive. 3. I then booted up the OSX86 installation DVD and ran Disk Utility first, selecting the FAT32 partition and formatting it as a Mac OSX Extended (Journaled) partition. The important step here is to make sure you click the button that says "Options..." first, and tell it to create a Master Boot Record on the partition. This may sound obvious, but the wording of the options is a little confusing if you're new at this like me. [EDIT: Step 3 was my unique solution to a problem I had with Disk Utility. The proper way to do this, according to Rammjet, is to select the partition and erase it with Mac OSX Extended (Journaled) as your format option. Apologies for the confusion.] 4. As an extra precaution, I ran the Terminal and followed the steps in this thread to make sure the partition was activated: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=22844 (Note: this is may be a redundant step, but I thought it was a good precautionary measure to ensure that my partition was set up properly.) 5. I then let the OSX installation run, rebooted when it was done installing, and VOILA! It worked! 6. In order to bypass the now-redundant Darwin boot menu (it runs with or without a dual-booting setup), I followed Rammjet's advice by editting the /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist file and removing the two lines pertaining to the Timeout parameter. (Note: you MUST remove them. If you just set the parameter to zero, the boot menu will stay on infinitely instead of giving you a countdown.) That's it! I hope that helps anyone who is trying to find a straight answer on natively booting OSX. -Agra Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rammjet Posted November 30, 2006 Share Posted November 30, 2006 3. I then booted up the OSX86 installation DVD and ran Disk Utility first, selecting the FAT32 partition and formatting it as a Mac OSX Extended (Journaled) partition. The important step here is to make sure you click the button that says "Options..." first, and tell it to create a Master Boot Record on the partition. This may sound obvious, but the wording of the options is a little confusing if you're new at this like me. If the Option button is available, then you aren't in Erase (format), you are in Partition. You can't select the primary partition (the 2nd icon) in Partition, only the hard drive (the 1st icon). Doing this essentially negates everything you did with PartGUI. But it works. All you really had to do after using PartGUI was to go to the Erase tab and select the partition (2nd icon) not the hard drive (1st icon) and erase (format) it. So, why didn't I say to use the Option button to get MBR? Some versions of Disk Utility are broken and don't do this step well. Also, the Disk Utility on all but one (to my knowledge) of the install DVD's is really old and doesn't even have the Option button in Partition. So, the safest instruction is to format as FAT32 using another utility and then to format (erase) the primary partition as HFS+ (not partition again). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agrafuese Posted November 30, 2006 Author Share Posted November 30, 2006 Hmm...very strange, but good to know. Actually, the reason I had to opt for selecting MBR in the options was because I did try your suggestion of erasing the partition, but it repeatedly gave me an error saying that Disk Utility lost connection with the Disk Manager. I'm not really sure what caused it to do that. I'll hold off on reposting my solution for now and consider this an isolated solution for myself. Thanks for the help! -Agra Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts