real_sinjon Posted October 26, 2007 Share Posted October 26, 2007 Hi everyone. I've been using a stable OSX 10.4.6 through 10.4.9 install for over 12 months now with no issues. The set up is OSX on my first IDE HDD (Disk0s1), a "spare" OSX install on a small partition on the same drive (Disk0s2). Windows XP Pro on the second IDE HDD. Up until last week I could boot from the Darwin bootloader into either OSX install. This was the default boot set up. I could also select the second hard drive from the BIOS boot selector and boot to Windows. This was a very satisfactory set up for me using Windows only rarely when my kids wanted to play some games! I also have a full disk back up of my primary OSX partition, done daily with SuperDuper, on a Lacie USB drive. I was able to boot to that drive as well by selecting it from the Darwin Bootloader. That was then. Now everything has gone to pot! I don't know why, But for some reason, the last time my kids wanted to use Windows it wouldn't boot, I just got a blinking cursor. So I activated Acronis OS Selector and Windows booted fine from that. The next time I wanted to go into OSX however, I got MBR3 Error, then after a few seconds, OSX would boot. Then after another restart booting to OSX I just got a blinking cursor. When I tried booting the Lacie HDD I got a kernel panic! I tried booting from Acronis, but just got the same so I've wiped the two partitions and reinstalled OSX 10.4.6 on both and then used SuperDuper to copy the clone back to my main partition. I still can't boot directly from the HDD. I don't get the Darwin bootloader anymore, but worse still, when I try and boot through Acronis it will only boot the "spare" install and can't see the restored clone. I know this must be something to do with the MBR on my first HDD. I just hope someone can give me some simple pointers as to how I can fix this, otherwise, I suppose I'll have to reinstall from scratch and use the migration assistant to copy all my files and apps back. If this is the route I have to take, how do I get the Darwin bootloader to work on my newly formatted HDD as when I did the two clean installs of "main" and "spare", I could only get to them through Acronis. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67892-broken-boot-record/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
real_sinjon Posted October 28, 2007 Author Share Posted October 28, 2007 No help here then. Couldn't wait any more so I reformatted the drive and partitions and installed clean. Then used migration assistant to get settings back onto main disk. Had a few broken links where apps needed to be repaired/reinstalled but, touch wood, eveything back to normal now. Would have been nice to have had one or two suggestions though. Thanks anyway. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67892-broken-boot-record/#findComment-484581 Share on other sites More sharing options...
PANERAI Posted October 7, 2008 Share Posted October 7, 2008 To solve this issue you should reactivate Acronis OS Selector from Bootable Rescue disk (Tools -> OS Selector). There is a simple workaround to prevent such situations in future: - Create a small (not less than 10 Mb) FAT/FAT32/NTFS partition on the hard drive. No matter in the beginning of the drive or not; - Run Acronis OS Selector installation program (Start -> Programs -> Acronis -> Acronis Disk Director -> Install Acronis OS Selector), uninstall it and reboot; - Run the installation once again in Custom mode and choose the created small partition as the installation target; - Reboot the computer and never defragment that partition. http://www.allacronis.com/solutions-10.php Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/67892-broken-boot-record/#findComment-921075 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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