Unable to install Snow Leopard on Alu. Macbook

[store2000]

Hi guys,

 

I have an early 2009 Aluminium Macbook on 10.5.8. When I was trying to upgrade it to 10.6, I'm unable to select my Leopard partition. I get the following error when I select my current Leopard partition:

 

<Booted into the installer>

Mac OS X cannot start up from this disk

 

<Running the Installer from within Leopard>

Mac OS X cannot be installed on "Leopard", because this disk cannot be used to start up your computer.

 

I can easily dual boot into Windows 7 & Leopard and the details of my disk are below. I've also tried with and without rEFIt, no luck - same message. <edit> I've also tried choosing the Leopard partition from the Startup Disk system preferences panel - again, no luck. </edit>

 

Does any one know what the fix to this may be? This is a straight-up legit Mac ... so I would have thought it would work right out of the box!

 

Thanks!

 

Output of fdisk

===============

 Disk: /dev/disk0	geometry: 30401/255/63 [488397168 sectors]
 Signature: 0xAA55
	   Starting	   Ending
  #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [	 start -	   size]
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [		 1 -	 409639] <Unknown ID>
  2: AF 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [	409640 -  368635540] HFS+	   
 *3: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 369045180 -  119346885] HPFS/QNX/AUX
  4: 00	0   0   0 -	0   0   0 [		 0 -		  0] unused

 

 

Output of gptsync

=================

 Warning: /dev/disk0 opened read-only

Current GPT partition table:
 #	  Start LBA	  End LBA  Type
 1			 40	   409639  EFI System (FAT)
 2		 409640	369045179  Mac OS X HFS+
 3	  369045180	488392064  Basic Data

Current MBR partition table:
 # A	Start LBA	  End LBA  Type
 1			  1	   409639  ee  EFI Protective
 2		 409640	369045179  af  Mac OS X HFS+
 3 *	369045180	488392064  07  NTFS/HPFS

Status: Tables are synchronized, no need to sync.

[LouCioccio]

Have you repaired permissions?

The SL disc (retail??) should show up on the desktop or in a finder window depending how prefs are set for finder.

The reason I ask if it is a retail disc as I have not gotten mine as of yet no Apple store nearby so I expect mine sometime early next week.

 

You could try it in safe mode if something is interfering with (extension) and the last possibility is set up a new administrator user in case something may be corrupted.

 

Hope this helps.

 

I won't upgrade my hack until next month I figure by that time it will be safe and most of the bugs taken care of by then.

 

Ciao,

Lou Cioccio

[Charles Tawn]

I'm having the same problem with my boot volume. I was able to install it fine on another volume and on my macbook pro. But my desktop boot volume (intel MacPro, GUID formatted, single partition drive, HFS Extended Journaled), which currently is running 10.5.8, cannot be selected as the boot volume. I get the similar message as above.

 

This is Snow Leopard build 10A432.

 

PS: Permissions were last repaired after installing 10.5.8 just recently. And the same problem exists whether installing while booted into 10.5.8 or while booted from the SL install DVD (so in latter case nothing like safe mode or 3rd party conflicts should matter, right?)

[store2000]

Have you repaired permissions?

 

Thanks for the tip but that didn't seem to help. So I'm back to square one ... After reading http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1600 is looks like something about the partition table itself (vs format of the partition). The KB says for intel macs the partition should be GUID based otherwise you will get the error I reported.

 

However, I DO have a GUID setup - that's what disk utility shows ("GUID Partition Table") and is also what my gptsync output seems to indicate. So I don't know why this problem crops up ...

[BreakTheChains]

I'm having the same problem and I'm currently going through the list until I hopefully figure out what's wrong. I have a late 2006 Macbook Intel Core Duo processor. rEFIt is installed, with Mac-Mac-Linux-Windows on my boot disk. The odd part is that I can install it to my second Mac partition containing a dev build of Snow Leopard but not on my default boot partition. Hopefully it's just something ridiculously easy to fix and not something that has to be hacked together to get it working.

[srs5694]

store2000 PMmed me to ask that I chime in, since I've been posting a lot about partitioning issues of late. (I'm the author of GPT fdisk, which is a text-mode GPT partitioning tool for Linux and MacOS.)

 

My first inclination is to suspect that the hybrid MBR on at least some of your systems is confusing SL; however, Charles Tawn implies that he's got a conventional GPT configuration with no hybrid MBR on it. (OTOH, the disk might have something weird on its protective MBR -- perhaps the remnants of a former hybrid configuration or just something else strange.) Still, if my idea that the hybrid MBR is confusing the SL installer is correct, the solution is to revert to a non-hybrid (pure GPT) configuration for the install, then restore the hybrid configuration later. I'm not sure offhand if Apple's Boot Camp tools enable converting a hybrid MBR into a pure protective MBR. If not, my GPT fdisk can do it; it's the 'n' option on the experts' menu. If this works, you can restore your hybrid MBR using GPT fdisk, gptsync, or a backup you make before creating a conventional protective MBR. Try to restore something as close to the original as you can, to keep from confusing Windows when you next boot it.

 

Another possibility that occurs to me is that there may be trouble with the EFI System Partition (ESP), or possibly the blank space between partitions. According to Apple (see this document, in the "Partitioning Policy" section), OS X requires an ESP, probably of about 200MB. Apple also recommends putting 128MB of blank (unallocated) space between partitions. If you've repartitioned your disks with something other than Apple's tools, you might not meet those requirements. You might be able to non-destructively tweak your partition layout to improve matters.

 

Best of luck with this.

[BreakTheChains]

I didn't need my Snow Leopard or Linux partition so I deleted them and then I was able to install Snow Leopard onto my regular partition without any problems. I don't really know much about this but I'm assuming my partition table was messed up and when I deleted the partitions I didn't need, Disk Utility rewrote the partition table which "fixed" it.

 

Since the problem is solved I don't really need an explanation of what fixed it but if anyone would like to chime in and tell me what they think, maybe it could help someone else. It'd be a good chance to learn more about how it all works too.

 

I hope everyone else with this problem has good luck fixing it.

[Charles Tawn]

In my case, my main boot volume was formatted by Apple and shipped with this new MacPro. As I said it's the only partition on that drive, and located in drive bay 1 (using all 4 drive bays though). I've got a lot of 3rd party stuff installed, so one of those things could be the problem, but no idea what. What can I post here that would help someone help me to get this installed?

 

ps: there is another thread here with other such reports

[store2000]

Thanks Rod ... you're the man! I'm flooded today but I'll try your advice over the weekend and let you guys know how it went.

 

FYI: I DID use gparted (SysRescCD) to partition my system and then used gptsync to "fix" the disconnect between the GPT and the MBR ...

[cparm]

hi, store2000

 

i move this topic to the snow leopard apple world section

[store2000]

Rod, I tried replacing the existing MBR (3 parts: type 0xEE, HFS+, NTFS) with another MBR with only a single protective partition entry. I used your utility, hit x (expert) and hit 'n'. Since I'm paranoid, I had printouts of the partition start/end/types etc via gptsync, fdisk as well as gdisk before I ran your tool - just in case (along with Time Machine + GHOST of the 2 OS's). I've got the same info in this post for the whole internet to see, but I needed a local backup - just in case!

 

Anyway, that didn't help - same issue. So I reverted back to the original MBR (ran gptsync). Now I'm putting 200 MB of unallocated space between all partitions using gparted (via the SysRescCD CD + option key during bootup to boot from CD). It'll take another 4 hours for that to complete. Lets see how that works out.

 

finally, if that fails, I plan on creating a dummy partition in that last 200MB I made ... looking at BreakTheChains' post, I think if I delete/add a partition via Disk Utility, it somehow alters the state of the GPT/MBR data structures to be more digestible to Snow Leopard's installer. At this point I'm fairly convinced its an Apple bug ... I hope they care to fix it.

 

If others have been experimenting, please report back on what worked and also what didn't (saves us time). I'm fairly certain we can nail this one if we pool our resources.

 

hi, store2000

i move this topic to the snow leopard apple world section

No problem, but I think this may affect even the hackintoshes if they've got the same/similar MBR/GPT issue with the installer.

[Charles Tawn]

A tip by William Maxwell solved the problem for me. Involved tweaking the size but not actually repartitioning, the boot volume with Disk Utility.

 

Note: PGP Desktop also appears to be a culprit, and I have it installed too, but the above tip worked without uninstalling PGP Desktop.

 

Now to just muster the guts to make the leap with the other known incompatibilities...

[store2000]

That tip came in late for me ... I had already started the partition resize via gparted ... took ~8 hours! I basically inserted 200MB free space between partitions (via gparted) and now installer works fine !! I guess the other tip is a more efficient one though ...

 

For me, problem solved ... gtg now ... will post back tomorrow ...

 

Thanks Rod, Charles! Thanks a bunch!

[LouCioccio]

Hi guys,

 

I have an early 2009 Aluminium Macbook on 10.5.8. When I was trying to upgrade it to 10.6, I'm unable to select my Leopard partition. I get the following error when I select my current Leopard partition:

 

<Booted into the installer>

Mac OS X cannot start up from this disk

 

<Running the Installer from within Leopard>

Mac OS X cannot be installed on "Leopard", because this disk cannot be used to start up your computer.

Here is another link I saw to day:

http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20090901115158237

 

Hope this give more insight.

Lou Cioccio