Mac OS experts? Cant boot past flashing "?" No Internal DVD drive! fixed!

[crizdee]

Hi,

Panic over! put an old DVD rom in the internal drive

I tried to re-install Leopard fresh from an external firewire DVD drive. But i wiped the internal drive first and zeroed it out for a clean install. but when i restarted from the dvd drive it went to the flashing question mark ?

I have tried everything i know to try and get it to see my other operating systems on firewire drives and i have my ibook connected in target mode with the install disk, but nada

My internal drive is a CD recorder only (this is a plextor master writer 2 for burning master CD's) so i'm probably going to have to put a dvd drive in side and boot to that right!!!

Any trick i don't know??

Chris

[Mark Dann]

Not all DVD drives will boot a Mac, so tread carefully there before you buy something that won't work.

Did you try this:

Place the DVD in the laptop, connect with a firewire cable, and restart while holding down the "T" key?

[crizdee]

Originally Posted by Mark Dann

Not all DVD drives will boot a Mac, so tread carefully there before you buy something that won't work.

Did you try this:

Place the DVD in the laptop, connect with a firewire cable, and restart while holding down the "T" key?

Hi,

Yes i tried all the obvious stuff! i could get the laptop to see the hard drives and they would mount ok on the laptop desktop, but that had no benefit as i could see for installing onto the G5. i couldn't get it the other way round, like the G5 seeing the ibook drive etc


Chris

[myke2242]

Here are some things you can try.

First of all. try everything like you been doing but boot in Verbose Mode. this is shows all kernel and startup console messages. so you can see what happens when things hang on start up.

Press Option-Command-Shift-Delete
during startup

Bypass primary startup volume and seek a different startup volume (such as a CD or external disk)

I had this same issue when i upgraded to PT8 i couldnt install Leopard. what i did a clean install of Panther or Tiger. i dont remember which one. then i installed Leopard on top. it worked great. some other things below you can try.

Or try installing for a USB jump drive. you can make a disc image and copy it to a jump with enough space. or you can fallow the link and do it that way.

http://www.maciverse.com/install-boo...ash-drive.html

[crizdee]

Originally Posted by myke2242

Press Option-Command-Shift-Delete
during startup

This was the first thing i tried! but it still gave me the ?

Anyway, put a dvd rom back in the mac and booted from Disk.

Now to re-install Everything

Chris