Cannot boot hard drive unless the DVD is in

[vpfalco]

I installed leopard on a standalone hard drive on a PC intel P4. It works great but will only boot if I leave the DVD in. I get a blinking cursor if DVD is out. I tried all of the teminal commands I found on this forum but they all indciate a dual boot system. The only partition on my drive is Leopard. Can anyone help?

[teknojunkie]

this happened to me I had to use the dvd all the time, then I tried making it active didnt do anything, then I tried reinstalling EFI didnt work, then I finally i reinstalled mac osx with the kalyway disc, but instead of using MBR bootloader I use GUID and It worked my 2 cents hope that helps

[steelhead]

Basicaly i cant boot on to my mac with out the cd i have to push f8 and type rd=disk0s2 and it will boot to it. What boot loader do i need and how do i install it. the cd seems to be using darwin however i dont have a windows or linux partition on my hard drive will darwin still work? Tanks a million

[coldi]

same prob...

[steelhead]

two pleople with the same problem?if some one with the sem problem please respond i would like to know how you solved the problem??I dont know what to do?

[ujen]

check out this site bootloader go down to "The Bootfix patch"

IT HELPED ME

[Mebster]

Well EasyBCD is if you have Vista. You could try the chain0 method (search for it in the wiki using google) with XP or install a retail bootloader such as Acronis.

 

Also this may not work (as many people have said it does nothing including myself) but you might want to look into Messing with the boot options adding

<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>rd=diskXsY</string>

where diskXsY is replaced by disk0s2

 

Also topics merged to work together.

[Tensuke]

EasyBCD works under XP and Vista, just install the Vista Boot Manager, then add an entry for a generic x86 osx installation.

If you don't have XP or Vista, download a LiveCD for some Linux version and it should be able to install the grub bootloader, which will also work.

[lamder]

Check out

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=86579

 

the script in the bootefi.zip package help fixed things for me.

Just pay attention to its output, and make sure that it didn't

fail in any of the steps it tries to perform.

 

Vic

[Chaos Storm]

If you are using Kalyway, the best way is to Partition your disk as GUID and select a name for the new partition that has no spaces. Spaces or odd characters in the name cause problems with the installation script.

 

On a technical note it may be that commands that include names or locations with space need to be enclosed in quotes ie; cd "/Users/User/Desktop/My Pictures" and perhaps the installer script doesn't use quotes and it fails when it tries to unmount the disk and install the bootloader, hence no booting unless the Install DVD acts as the bootloader. The downside is that although a fix can be made, sometimes it's easier to do a fresh install, I wasted my time with a few guides untill I decided to do a fresh install and it fized it up good.

[Puchito]

Just a small suggestion.

 

Try reinstalling on a partition with no spaces in the name. it worked for me.

 

I had the EFI bootloader mbr, but it wouldn't boot bc the partition name was called "Mac OSX". formatted as "OSX" and it worked fine.

[joeydg]

See my signature for the method I used. It's not perfect, but it suits my needs.

 

There is a bootloader fix called bootefi.zip floating around that works as well. I found that XP didn't boot right unless it was selected as the active partition. So, this is what I came up with.

 

I have XP partition as active and use the XP bootloader. Here's how:

 

1. boot from Kalyway disk and install OSX.5.1

2. After setting everything up how you like it in OSX, go to Terminal and type the following:

sudo -s
password
fdisk -e /dev/rdiskX (where X is your drive number. Mine was rdisk0)
p (shows the various partitions on the selected drive.  Find the XP partition)
f X (where X is the XP partition number.  Mine was f 2)
write
exit
exit

3. copy usr/standalone/i386/chain0 from your OSX86 Kalyway 10.5.1 install disk to c:\OSXBOOT\ (created a folder to put it in) or to a jump drive until you boot into Windows and can write to the NTFS partition.

4. Reboot your computer into XP, go to Run in the start menu, type cmd, and return (or enter)

5. Once in the command prompt, type the following:

cd c:\
boot.ini

This will open the invisible boot.ini file. Adjust the timer from 30 to whatever (I se it as 5). Set the default to

default=C:\OSXBOOT\chain0

and add this line to the end of the document:

C:\OSXBOOT\chain0="OS X.5 (because Windows is pretty much the worst OS ever)"

6. Save and close the document.

7. Put the chain0 file in a new folder called OSXBOOT so that the bootloader can find the file in the correct location.

8. Reboot (the XP bootloader should pop up and give you a few seconds to select XP, otherwise it will boot to the Darwn bootloader)

9. push a key and select OSX from the options. Bling** it works.

10. See this thread to see if there has been an updated post http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=95709

 

Hopefully, eventually I can set it so the Darwin bootloader doesn't even show, just silently boots into OSX without having to select it in the darwin bootloader. Hopefully, this will be of some help (for learning if for nothing else). Total, this method takes an additional 10 seconds to boot into OSX than if OSX booted from the Darwin Bootloader silently without going through XP (ie: XP bootloader timer set to 5 secs and Darwin bootloader set to 5 secs).