Members gearmike Posted July 22, 2010 Members Share Posted July 22, 2010 So this morning I went to upgrade my Mac Book Pro from Leopard to Snow Leopard. I have my important data backed up, but I didn't create a Time Machine back up. So I ran the SL installer, and now my machine is royally unhappy. It won't see the hard drive as an available Start Up Disk. I spent an hour with Apple Tech support, and it sounded like the guy was reading his support book for the first time... no help. Finally says he thinks it's a bad installer disk and he'll get me one in the mail in 4-5 biz days... So I dug out my Leopard install disk and ran into the same problem... Won't see the hard drive as an available Start Up Disk. I've used Disk Utilities to repair permissions and still no dice... Anyone got any suggestions? Help Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted July 22, 2010 Members Share Posted July 22, 2010 Oh, crap....I unfortunately have no idea. If it comes to that, I know a good Apple tech. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted July 23, 2010 CMS Author Share Posted July 23, 2010 There's no such thing as a Mac guru, because as all of us PC users know from being told it repeatedly, Macs don't have "those" problems. But still, stuff happens. Best thing to do with upgrades is to ignore them until you have a computer to upgrade that you aren't yet using all the time for important stuff. Migrate your applications, not your operating system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff da Weasel Posted July 23, 2010 Members Share Posted July 23, 2010 Damn man. I could offer advice on just about anything expect an OS upgrade screw-up. I wish you the best of luck, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members spokenward Posted July 23, 2010 Members Share Posted July 23, 2010 They have a procedure over here that might be worth a read-through. It goes beyond the permissions. Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1417 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members offramp Posted July 23, 2010 Members Share Posted July 23, 2010 Help me understand... when you say it doesn't see it, at what point in the install process are you? Walk me through step-by-step (the steps you're on...) edit: DU and FSCK were going to be among my suggestions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Geoff Grace Posted July 23, 2010 Members Share Posted July 23, 2010 This sounds similar to the problem I encountered last month. I couldn't boot from any of my boot drives, and I was staring at a gray screen. I discovered that I was able to boot from the Snow Leopard installer disc, though, so I booted from it and told it to again install Snow Leopard on my main boot drive. This gave me access to my main boot drive again and I was able to startup from that drive. Then, when I looked at my desktop, all of my drives other than the boot drive had little padlock icons displayed lower left hand corner, meaning I was locked out from using them or even from seeing what was on each drive. Long story short, the only way to rectify this situation was to enter commands in the terminal. (In other words, the normal "Get Info" window fix of entering an administrator password to get permission to read and write to a drive wouldn't work.) I went to the nearest Apple Store and the Genius Bar tech there entered the command lines in, but only after I signed a form that said I was willing to risk losing all of my data. This solution worked, and I've been able to access all of my drives ever since, but the main boot drive is still having some minor problems. I'm going to need to reinstall some of my apps. The lesson I learned was if you don't have permission to access a drive, then you can't boot from it or even see it displayed by holding down the option key at startup. What I don't know -- and the Apple Store employee wouldn't hazard to guess -- is why this happened in the first place. Good luck, Mike. Best, Geoff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members amplayer Posted July 23, 2010 Members Share Posted July 23, 2010 That's a sucky problem. Sorry. As a user of both PCs and Macs, I can say that problems stemming from upgrading the OS happen frequently on both. This is so true that I now NEVER upgrade the OS on either. Instead, when I want to "upgrade" an OS, I start with a fresh install of the OS on a newly formatted HDD. And then I painfully migrate all my important data, and then even more painfully reinstall all my apps. Of course, music apps are the worst because of the licensing issues. Actually, bringing up a new OS is the one case where a dongle is the preferred method of copy protection. BTW, even if you have the Snow Leopard $29 "upgrade" DVD, you can still use it to do a clean install. Click here for instructions on how to do it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members gearmike Posted July 23, 2010 Author Members Share Posted July 23, 2010 Ok here's exactly what happens Offy: I started with the latest version of Leopard being nice and stable on the machine. I then put in the 10.6.3 Snow Leopard upgrade disk. It ran through the installation process and rebooted. I think it might have rebooted a couple of times because I was working on another machine and keeping an eye on the upgrade. It eventually came to rest on a screen that says "To install OSX click continue" it's the same screen you get when you boot from the install disk. I've gone through DU and repaired everything but the hard drive just doesn't show up on the list under Start Up drives. I then tried everything over again using the Leopard install disk I have. Exact same situation... So I was able to boot off a USB stick with Leopard on it. Everything is still on the disk, I just can't boot from it... I'm gonna go read the link that Spokenward posted and see what I can do... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members spokenward Posted July 23, 2010 Members Share Posted July 23, 2010 I then tried everything over again using the Leopard install disk I have. Exact same situation...So I was able to boot off a USB stick with Leopard on it. Everything is still on the disk, I just can't boot from it...I'm gonna go read the link that Spokenward posted and see what I can do... Well, you could do that, but you are pretty close to Apple Store opening hours so I think I might do like Geoff did and hike over or call and make an appt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members gearmike Posted July 23, 2010 Author Members Share Posted July 23, 2010 That would be great if I had time to be down... Trying to power through a mountain of work today... Then spending the evening doing the final mix of the Cathedral Choir project... then the Blood Drive for Tammy tomorrow... Capitol Records on Sunday... whew... what a weekend... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Alndln2 Posted July 23, 2010 Members Share Posted July 23, 2010 I'll take a guess. I got the same message trying to install XP a while back. I eventually found out it didn't have SATA drivers on my earlier install disk so I had to slipstream them in a custom install disk. A newer install disk may solve your problem. Just a guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members gearmike Posted July 23, 2010 Author Members Share Posted July 23, 2010 Hmmm, but the Leopard disk is the same I used when I moved from whatever cat came before Leopard... and it's giving me the same problem... playin around in terminal now... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Alndln2 Posted July 23, 2010 Members Share Posted July 23, 2010 Hmmm, but the Leopard disk is the same I used when I moved from whatever cat came before Leopard... and it's giving me the same problem...playin around in terminal now... Apple may have put them on the HD that you wiped out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Eddie Posted July 23, 2010 Members Share Posted July 23, 2010 ...Everything is still on the disk, I just can't boot from it... Do you have access to another drive?You could try installing 10.6.3 on a separate drive, and then migrating your settings/applications. Once this is done, you can use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone his drive into your original one. It's not ideal, but it's simple and should work. Disappearing drives have been a problem for years, and the same goes for the inability to find the OS in a Startup Disk. Apple's "repair" utilities are good for very basic maintenance, but mediocre when you really need them.I highly recommend that you get Disk Warrior, a basic suite (e.g., Tech Tool Pro, Drive Genius), and if you work with large files get iDefrag. Coriolis also makes iPartition. The disadvantage of buying separate applications is the expense. The advantage is that they typically work much better than a suite. Something like Tinker Tool System, Mac Pilot, etc., also helps. A better option -but more time consuming- would be to install EVERYTHING from scratch (e.g., clean install and NOT using the migration assistant but installing each application again). Many people prefer this approach with every major OS X release. I did it with Leopard since it was so buggy when it came out, and although it was time consuming, in the long run it has given me a very fast and stable OS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members gearmike Posted July 23, 2010 Author Members Share Posted July 23, 2010 Well, spent some time playing in terminal with fsck and still same issues... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted July 23, 2010 CMS Author Share Posted July 23, 2010 That would be great if I had time to be down... Trying to power through a mountain of work today... Then spending the evening doing the final mix of the Cathedral Choir project... then the Blood Drive for Tammy tomorrow... Capitol Records on Sunday... whew... what a weekend... Ever think of hiring a maintenance staff? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Eddie Posted July 24, 2010 Members Share Posted July 24, 2010 Well, spent some time playing in terminal with fsck and still same issues... IIRC, you won't solve this via Terminal. You would need to start in Single User Mode (press Command-S at startup) and run a few commands from there. For fsck: /sbin/fsck -fy When I ran this a while ago I think that I also zapped the PRAM. Probably zapped it before the fsck Even if you get to run fsck in Single User Mode, I'm not sure that this will fix your problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Johnny-Boy Posted July 24, 2010 Members Share Posted July 24, 2010 Hey Jim, Try the Logic Pro website: http://www.logicprohelp.com/index.php I know Logic Pro isn't your problem, but they're all Mac users over there. A lot of smart techies. They've helped me out many of times. Good luck, John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Eddie Posted July 24, 2010 Members Share Posted July 24, 2010 This is also a good option:http://macosx.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ggm1960 Posted July 25, 2010 Members Share Posted July 25, 2010 That really sucks, I've managed to upgrade to SL on two MBPs without any serious problems fortunately for me. If I'd encountered the problems you're experiencing I would first try copying all programs/data to a backup FW drive and start over with a complete fresh install on the internal HD hoping a clean install would be bootable. If that still didn't work I would install SL on a replacement 2.5in drive in an external FW drive enclosure, make sure the FW drive was bootable, swap the HDs and then either copy programs/files from the old drive to the new one or install programs fresh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members gearmike Posted July 26, 2010 Author Members Share Posted July 26, 2010 Ok, ggm... I decided to do exactly what you suggest... I went and bought and external UBS drive to make a backup of my current drive. But since I can't boot to anything but the OSX10.6 disk, I can't figure out how to back up the drive. So I figured I'd install SL on the USB drive and make it bootable, then I could copy the data to the USB drive, reformat the internal, instal SL to that and then reload all my programs... But, when I tried that, the installer did the same thing... hangs at about the 50% mark, then restarts and brings up the install SL screen... UGHH! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted July 26, 2010 Members Share Posted July 26, 2010 Just a thought. Perhaps you are having a hardware problem. Do you have the opportunity to try the install/upgrade on another computer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members gearmike Posted July 26, 2010 Author Members Share Posted July 26, 2010 No, I don't have another SL compatible machine. The computer has been fine, and the drive is fine, I can see all the data, but I'm starting to think maybe the SL install disk is bad... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members gearmike Posted July 26, 2010 Author Members Share Posted July 26, 2010 Well, new install disk does the same thing... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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