[How to] Setting Your Partition "Active" Using Fdisk in MacOSX

[videoguru]

Hi Ramjet

 

Pls could you help as you seem to be the master on this subject

 

I also get the flashing cursor after an install and can only boot with the dvd in the drive ...

I have tried to Fdisk from the console and I get an error that tells me I could not get exclusive acess to the drive to complete the write, would I like to reboot the machine to which I reply yes , exit , reboot . This however does not resolve anything . I tried this from the DVD ( ie from setup - utilities ) and from inside the OS . I tried as SU and as ROOT .

 

I also tried to Fdisk from win98 floppy and all I get is that non dos partition is already set as active .

I tried to drop the drive into a win XP machine and SET DrIVE ACTIVE , but the option is greyed out ...

I also tried to Fdisk from win98 cd , then once dos partition was made and set active I erased ( HFS journaled) and installed from JAS dvd . all to no avail ... It still requires DVD to boot ...

 

the other option I tried was to partition another disk (seagate 80 gb sata ) from disk utility in the OS with the top menu of partition ie not boot sector for dos ... ( to boot an intel Mac ) and all of these options have not worked ...

 

any ideas

 

I would be extremely grateful if you could help out on this one as it is all I require for my hackintosh to be perfect ...

[rational]

Hi,

I was also just having all these problems. It started out with the mac.boot.apple.plist thingie when trying to boot from the CD, then the blinking underscore cursor when not trying to boot with the CD. Then I got the d0 error, I was one step close. I got to this point by going into the disk utility and deleting some free space at the front of the drive. But it turned out that my partition was still not active. Which I knew.

 

I tried the fdisk thing but got the permissions reply. I hadn't realized I coulda tried the 'sudo' in front to upgrade the permissions. This might've worked.

 

Anyway, how I fixed it:

1. Low level formatted the HD to remove everything.

2. Used Partition Magic to create a new partition (unformatted).

3. Made it active.

4. Started the OSX boot installer but went into Disk Utility and formatted the partition with "Mac OS Journaled"

5. Installed OSX with the JAS installer and it finally could see the partition and boot up.

SO I've gotten this far so far. My next problem is that I just have the grey apple screen with the frozen circular progress indicator.... next hurdle to tackle. Anyone point me in the right direction? I'll start my thread searches now I guess in the meantime.

 

Thought this might help you all.

Rational.

[Linux_Inside V2]

For people who don't wanna wait for the installer to load there is a quicker way

 

instead of going in and doing it through the gui just type -s and press enter for the darwin boot options and do it from that shell, much quicker!

[Gieffe]

hello,

I installed the MacOSX 10.4.8 from a JaS 10.4.8 disk on a different HD (not a partition. I tought (wrongly) that I could try that way on a second time. Everything went smooth (seemed) during the installation. The DVD started with the "usual" windows (I am a Mac user) and so on. Until the VERY last when my wife called me.... When I came back there was the underscore symbol blinking on the black screen. I had to restart as I could do nothing... not even type anything. From that time there was NO chance!!!! I am not anymore able to boot from a MacOSX DVD installer! I downladed a new one from a Torrent (may be different as newer) but everytime I boot from DVD I get the blinking underscore cursor!!! So I cannot try to install the OS using the same HD of XP partitioned... :-(

Please.... any suggestion? Do you think I might get trough reformatting EVERYTHING? :-)

Thanks

Gabriele

 

 

 

Anyone with any idea? I tried all in my knoledge to solve the problem. I am sure the installation started the first time!!! I tried with a wired keybord but it does not write when the blinking underscore cursor appears. So it is NOT a keyboard related problem...

I bought a new Hard Drive and I unplugghed the one with XP op0erating system but the blinking bloody cursor appears again. It seems that the first time the OSX started wrote something somewhere in the hardware of the PC, bur where????!!!!! Whwn the only operating system is the one on the DVd ndrive it should stard from there... The hardware is OK: motherboard ASUS P5LD2-SE and ATI X1300. PLEASE any idea? Any other suggestion? Different from buying a REAL Apple mac.... ;-)

Please give me a suggestion...

Thanks

Gabriele

[beheivjer]

all i get is the blinking curser also after going through all these choices and other ides

 

turion64 x2 1.5 gb ram 20gb hd

[demonio]

I did everything as described on the top of the topic, nothing changes. Btw, my osx86 partition was already active. Maybe formatting as one only partition could help?

[kocoman]

I also have this problem to "migrate from a smaller drive to a larger one" windows have Digital Lifeguard, Linux has cp -axv.. but Mac I have to use CCC, at first I got the "b0 error", then set active partition, then reboot and just get a blank screen with the cursor blinking at the top left corner.

I also try to "update" (in fdisk) to update the machine code. but still same problem

 

For migrating CCC doesn't work for me (b0 error, then blank screen). While hatchery does (but needs pw in dmg file), it has the "Bless mode" for hacktonish.

[omass]

Anyone can explain me please, why there is emty tabs when I write "p" on terminal???

 

[carloshgdv]

Okay after a couple of days Ive figured out the solution for those that simply get a blinking cursor when they boot up after a fresh install. The reason is in disk utility we formatted the hard drive using GUID partition, which only Macs can "read". For regular PC's you need the MBR partition. To get it working:

 

1. Within Disk Utility Select a Physical Hard drive

2. Go to partition

3. Once you have chosen how you want to set up your partitions at the bottom go to options and select Master Boot Record

4. Continue installing, re-boot, and hopefully no more damned blinking cursor.

[l3opard]

When I check my hard drive with a ubuntu live cd, it tells me the partition is hFS and the flag is boot. Does boot mean 'active'?

 

When I boot it gives me a boot loading error..that's it. I will try these steps suggested by ramjet hopefully the loading error means it is not active... anyone experienced the same please shed some light...thanks!

[alireza_sh]

hi

how to make a bootable partition for mac osx in mac terminal?

When i make a primary partition in windows xp sp2 and reboot system and run mac os x dvd installer

and select disk utility and make a Macintosh extended (journaled ) partition and continued install in customise .

After copmplat installetion and reboot system i try to make bootable this partition.

i used pdisk in terminal.After select device and Apple_HFS partition when i try to write in map partition

show this message:

partition map unwritable.

please help me

 

my pc :

MB=GIGA 945P S3

CPU= CORE 2 DUO 6420

HDD= 320 G SATA2 MAXTORE

VGA= ASUS 7600 GT

[avbmenon]

Hey all,

 

I have followed all this. I am using VMWARE. Got the b0 error. Now i go in and use the fdisk, make primary as the installed partition, the system seems to start up and then after initial intializing commands, the vmware just restarts and keeps doing this everytime.

 

Anything I overlooked creating this fault to restart the vmware image or anyone else who got this and found a fix?

 

requesting help...

 

thanks in advance...

[marriott]

I incidentally used a logical partition to install osx. so now my harddrive looks like this (see attached picture):

 

of coz, when I tried to boot OSX, it says "HFS+ partition error", I have tried the fdisk trick talked in this thread, no go. WinXP can boot without any problem though.

 

 

1, DELL Utility - very small partition for dell primary FAT

 

2, windows xp active Primary

 

3 (*) extended Primary

 

4,FAT32 user Logical

 

5, AF bootable Logical<--- this is where os86x was installed

 

6, another dell utility partition.

 

I don't know how to change a logical drive into a primary dirve.

 

Am I totally screwed up here? Is there any chance to fix the problem without re-partition the disk?

[melino]

After I have entered fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0 the prompt goes back to root, instead of fdisk:1.

 

What's wrong?

 

see: Terminal

[oSxFr33k]

rammjet, there is one serious flaw in your tutorial you need to edit. You have to umount the partitions before you set them active or the MBR never gets written.

 

You get a message "unable to access the drive exclusively" then another message requires a reboot (y)n.

 

I unmounted from the gui diskutil.

 

then ran your procedure and then I saw the message writing to MBR after I executed the command "w".

[MuffinFlavored]

This saved my tail! Thank you!

 

And for anyone else, I read to boot up with "-s", but if you need to find out your disk (by doing diskutil list), do not do this! This will boot up in "safety", or console mode.

 

Thank you!

+1 for fixing b0 error.

[Siforee]

Hey there,

 

I bought a new IDE disk specially for OSx86, formatted it to FAT32 and, using the uphuck 10.4.9 DVD, I reformatted the disk to HFS+. After that I finished the installation and rebooted. After the reboot I'd only had a blinking underscore. So I went back to windows searched the forum and found this thread. I followed the instructions from the first post; So I rebooted using the DVD and in the installation menu I opened the Terminal, typed the code as posted here, saw that the drive I needed is disk1. After I finished this, I rebooted and stil I have the blinking underscore.

 

I already tried various things. But the only messages I got where like:

"unable to mount /dev/disk0s1" and "/com.apple.Boot.plist not found"

 

After a couple of hours of trail and error, I saw no other option but to post my question here.

 

Thanks a lot!

 

P.S.

I actually never been able to get past the installation menu.

[Badie05]

Thanks. Gonna try this with my iATKOS.

[Transylvania]

t's not working for me...I have tried everything. Same error, but if i check...the partition with leopard is marked as active...so I don't know what to do. I can only boot with the OSX86 dvd. I have used the flag method too. My diskutil list is like this....if anyone has any other ideeas...please share...Thaks

Last login: Wed Jan 2 08:25:23 on console

 

alexs-mac-pro:~ AM$ sudo -s

 

Password:

 

bash-3.2# diskutil list

 

2008-01-02 08:27:27.756 diskutil[161:10b] _CFGetHostUUIDString: unable to determine UUID for host. Error: 35

 

2008-01-02 08:27:28.083 DiskManagementTool[162:10b] _CFGetHostUUIDString: unable to determine UUID for host. Error: 35

 

/dev/disk0

 

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

 

0: FDisk_partition_scheme *465.8 Gi disk0

 

1: Apple_HFS Leopard 14.3 Gi disk0s1

 

2: Apple_HFS Mac-Data 14.3 Gi disk0s2

 

3: Windows_NTFS DATA-2 437.1 Gi disk0s5

 

/dev/disk1

 

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

 

0: FDisk_partition_scheme *372.6 Gi disk1

 

1: Windows_NTFS SYSTEM 31.3 Gi disk1s1

 

2: Windows_NTFS DATA-1 330.8 Gi disk1s5

 

3: Windows_NTFS Recovery 10.5 Gi disk1s2

 

/dev/disk2

 

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

 

0: Apple_partition_scheme *4.4 Gi disk2

 

1: Apple_partition_map 31.5 Ki disk2s1

 

2: Apple_HFS Leopard_Install_Osx86 4.4 Gi disk2s2

[Ol!ver]

Not working here either. Partition is already set to active but I still get the b0 error. This is with the kalyway disc. Anyone got any ideas?

[lmwong]

Kalyway disc, formated Fat32 journaled, used fdisk to activate the partition, and getting frozen gray apple screen with locked throbber circle with dvd bootup after install and b0 error without dvd. Then used fdisk to activate windows partition and now windows won't even start... b0 error. Please help, anyone!

[Juice Daddy]

Not working here either. Partition is already set to active but I still get the b0 error. This is with the kalyway disc. Anyone got any ideas?

 

I've got the same issue here...

 

my specs

 

~note: I am using a 40gb ide hard drive, both sata drives are unplugged and this was a fresh install~

[boundlesseagle]

Good post, you saved me from formatting my computer

 

Good Job

[oscarg]

OK I blooody well got IT!!

 

FIRSTLY RESPECT FOR A GREAT POST THANKS!

 

Secondly, despite many (Ive lost count but at least 8) full rebuilds (including trying SATA and IDE drives I had zero success (all bo error)

 

I have been using Kelway 10.5.1 sse2 sse3 BTW

 

Despite trying the above process, I still got the bloody b0 error.

 

Anyone who has made the partition active, but with no result, try this...

 

1) During install, the installer seems to timeout. you have to keep moving the mouse every couple of minutes (weird I know - read it in another part of the forums). If I don't do this, the installer will lock up. It may be due to the SATA settings on my MB, but I dunno.

If you watch the logs, you can actually see the script that sets the partition to active exactly as described in this post (at the top). My install I think would timeout and never get that far, but I never noticed cause I was'nt watching.

In short - Keep moving the mouse every couple of minutes during the install.

 

2) The partition was set to MBR (Master Boot Record- You can get this from Disk Utility during the install), but the install defaulted to putting in the GUID EFI (?) - I can't remember the exact names, but you must confirm that you have the correct setting when you click "Customise" just before the final "Install" process.

In short - make sure your partition type matches the MDR or GUID driver from customise.

I also installed on the basics, not sse2 or Nv drivers, or any others. I am going to go back and test, but this is REAL progress!!! Yaaay!

I still have to get the networking working

.

 

Current system as in my sig, but current HDD is a seagate 7200.9 IDE

[-AruL-]

OK I blooody well got IT!!

 

FIRSTLY RESPECT FOR A GREAT POST THANKS!

 

Secondly, despite many (Ive lost count but at least 8) full rebuilds (including trying SATA and IDE drives I had zero success (all bo error)

 

I have been using Kelway 10.5.1 sse2 sse3 BTW

 

Despite trying the above process, I still got the bloody b0 error.

 

Anyone who has made the partition active, but with no result, try this...

 

1) During install, the installer seems to timeout. you have to keep moving the mouse every couple of minutes (weird I know - read it in another part of the forums). If I don't do this, the installer will lock up. It may be due to the SATA settings on my MB, but I dunno.

If you watch the logs, you can actually see the script that sets the partition to active exactly as described in this post (at the top). My install I think would timeout and never get that far, but I never noticed cause I was'nt watching.

In short - Keep moving the mouse every couple of minutes during the install.

 

2) The partition was set to MBR (Master Boot Record- You can get this from Disk Utility during the install), but the install defaulted to putting in the GUID EFI (?) - I can't remember the exact names, but you must confirm that you have the correct setting when you click "Customise" just before the final "Install" process.

In short - make sure your partition type matches the MDR or GUID driver from customise.

I also installed on the basics, not sse2 or Nv drivers, or any others. I am going to go back and test, but this is REAL progress!!! Yaaay!

I still have to get the networking working

.

 

Current system as in my sig, but current HDD is a seagate 7200.9 IDE

 

i try install using mbr but still can not boot normal...

already do simple dual boot but still no use...

can you help me...