Kalyway IATKOS Blinking Cursor Fix

[magic0200]

Hey,

 

I wanted to start a topic here because everyone is asking in the Torrent annoucement thread and a lot of people are having this problem.

 

I have properly installed both flavors (MBR /GUID methods) but still get the blinking cursor.

 

on IATKOS I switched the partition as told to Disk 1 S1 instead of zero (which showed it correctly placed the EFI).

 

when I boot it goes to the blinking cursor for about 5 seconds then loops to restart (NO F8 for darwin).

 

Some say to use Gparted and others say BIOS settings.

 

Any help is appreciated to all of us in the dark on this one.

 

Thanks

[Maximos]

Have you booted into the GParted LiveCD and set the boot flag?

[magic0200]

Thanks for the quick reply, Im actually grabbing Gparted right now (20kb download from their site) and that's my next set. Is there a tutorial on doing this or is it self explanitory?

 

Also why is this step needed? (would love to know why this occured)

[spanakorizo]

i've installed both versions

1st i did iatkos

many installations (cause it's smaller/faster) but with no luck

then i installed kalyway ,everything was ok with vanilla kernel and mbr darwin

but i had problems with ps2 keyboard and vanilla kernel so i reinstalled

without the vanilla kernel and i thought i didn;t need also the mbr darwin

i didn;t know that this is the common darwin loader

and i got again like iatkos the blinking cursor

so the problem is at the correct darwin loader installation

in iatkos there is a script in terminal to install it

in kalyway no ,it's part of the installation ..you choose it

maybe something goes wrong there in iatkos?

[magic0200]

IATKOS - Update

 

I created an MBR single partition with disk util then installed EFI to D1S1. (installed correctly)

Installed OSX

Rebooted and booted into GPARTED and tried the following

- boot MBR

- Boot MBR 1st Partition, 2nd, 3rd, 4th....etc

 

none of these would launch the OSX. I have no idea what's screwed up at this point....

 

Tryin Kalyway next

[magic0200]

Tried with Kalyway and still got the same result...... I can't believe I'm stuck on this. ha!

[infty]

stuck on this too. chose mbr in kalyway install since that's what disk utility told me was the partitioning scheme... about to start in linux to see if bootable is set on the partition... hope that's all it needs.

 

edit: meh, it was already set to active. this is such a pain in the arse. kalyway's patch said full support for jmicron save for ide dvd-rom, so i suppose it's not that i'm unlucky and have a jmicron chipset...

[39thRonin]

The Blinking Cursor indicates that the partition you are trying to boot has not been correctly "blessed", or set to active. Their are a couple of threads on the board now that address exactly how to fix this - try to search for Leopard active disk and also try in the Genius Bar for a method. Their are a couple, and it appears to depend on some unknown factors which proceedure ends up working - I just tried several before one did the trick.

 

You can also try this with iATKOS (probably will work with the others as well).

 

1) Boot computer with installer disk, do NOT press any keys - let the countdown happen.

2) If all works out, the installer looks to find a partition that's just been set up and it will boot it instead of going to the installation sequence.

 

The above work for me with iATKOS and ToH installs when I horked my partitions...

[infty]

holy {censored}, leaving my dvd in and booting worked! if all else fails i'll have to leave the usb bit hooked up from now on. oh well.

 

now to install server packages on this thing. 10.5.1 client and 10.5.0 server packages on top - that's bound to break. anyone any hints?

[adurbe]

I had the blinking cursor, it was in-fact caused by my monitor not being supported!

 

Have you got another 'generic' crt you can try it with?

[magic0200]

I tried with two monitors but no luck. Both ran 10.4.5 to 10.4.11 just fine with two different video cards. DVD Drive disc trick did not work as well

[magic0200]

Anyone else have any idea? I checked all ideas on this thread and feel I'm out of luck. Thing is my Dell is practically a apple clone for hardware.

[magic0200]

hopefully someone can really help me out on this part....

 

On the Gparted live, do you need to load the disc into an OS? Reason being I have not been able to do so because the monitor image scrambles during the install and I that's why I can't get into the HFS+ area that the tutorials are telling people to set the boot partition with. I have tried with two monitors (lcd) and wonder if there is another software out there that I can use to set the boot flag?

 

(I am hoping this is why my blinking cursor exists) Before I was just selecting the run boot partition in the first STAGE 2 Menu Box.

[padfoot]

My experience to overcome this:

 

1. Perform the boot fix as described by macGarcha (funnily for my case, it works only by using a BrazilMac DVD, not Kalyway 10.5.1 DVD), then

 

2. Run the BrazilMac patch scripts (I am not sure if this is needed for your case).

 

Good luck!

[raggedjagged]

The easiest and the BEST method to correct this:

 

Put in XP disc and run fixmbr in the console and reboot.

[S.SubZero]

The big problem with this is I could find no particular pattern to reproduce the problem, or reproduce the fix. I had similar trouble on 10.4.9, 10.4.11, and 10.5.1. It seemed to be one of these things that would happen after the install, I would try a few things, bang my head against it, and suddenly it would just work, even after doing something I had already tried previously.

 

The "set the boot partition active" thing is old, and while it does happen sometimes, it's not like every blinking cursor is because of this. I've had Darwin's fdisk tell me the boot partition is active AND gparted tell me the boot partition is active, but it still doesn't boot.

 

I did an experiment. I had a hard drive with OS X which would do the blinking cursor. I wiped it and installed Windows XP on it. XP booted fine and installed and whatever. Then, I wiped it again and installed iATKOS. On reboot, instead of getting the blinking cursor, I got XP's version, which tells you it's missing the OS and can't boot. Seeing as this message appeared, it told me that iATKOS didn't put the Darwin boot record on, or didn't do it right, because here's XP's boot record still on the drive. The blinking cursor problem isn't the boot record you just wrote, it's apparently the *previous* install's boot record, which is now hopelessly broken. What I did here to fix it was run the Darwin Bootloader off the original iATKOS release, and suddenly it booted. Now mind you, I had already tried this in the past and it didn't work, so really I have no way to say "yes this will always fix it" because no, it apparently won't. But it fixed the problem this one time.

[asstastic]

If you are dual booting with windows then use the NT boot loader with chain0. that fixed the problem for me. you could also try installing GRUB to the MBR and use that. You might also be able to dd chain0 directly into the MBR but I have no idea how.

[mickles]

Blinking cursor fix:

 

Blinking cursor happens because the apple bootloader isn't loading. To fix this, you need to dd over the bootloader to the beginning sectors of the harddrive. This is also needed if you install another os such as xp/vista on another partition after you've already installed osx (whether guid or mbr) because other operating systems replace the bootloader.

 

Boot a leo install disk and first unmount all partitions on the drive you're booting from. Use diskutility, or in terminal type:

diskutility unmount disk0s1

Note: replace 0 and 1 with your appropriate disk and partition(s)

 

After that's done,

dd if=./boot0 of=/dev/diskX bs=400 count=1

Where X is the # of your disk (disk0 if its the first harddrive)

 

You need the file boot0 to do this, and you need to cd to the directory where you have this file. You can get it in the efi pack in the first post of the thread below and put it on a usb drive, or it is probably somewhere on the kalyway dvd. Also see the thread below for more information on this. You could try the other things too if EFI isn't working properly. But dd boot0 and you will at least get rid of the blinking cursor problem.

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=73952

[shanjack]

I tried this and got the B0 error instead of blinking cursor. My HD is formatted MBR instead of GUID(which would not install on my sys). I treid to replace Boot0 with Boot V8 from the EFI package, but got the blinking cursor again. Any thoughts or suggestions? Thanks.

 

Blinking cursor fix:

 

Blinking cursor happens because the apple bootloader isn't loading. To fix this, you need to dd over the bootloader to the beginning sectors of the harddrive. This is also needed if you install another os such as xp/vista on another partition after you've already installed osx (whether guid or mbr) because other operating systems replace the bootloader.

 

Boot a leo install disk and first unmount all partitions on the drive you're booting from. Use diskutility, or in terminal type:

diskutility unmount disk0s1

Note: replace 0 and 1 with your appropriate disk and partition(s)

 

After that's done,

dd if=./boot0 of=/dev/diskX bs=400 count=1

Where X is the # of your disk (disk0 if its the first harddrive)

 

You need the file boot0 to do this, and you need to cd to the directory where you have this file. You can get it in the efi pack in the first post of the thread below and put it on a usb drive, or it is probably somewhere on the kalyway dvd. Also see the thread below for more information on this. You could try the other things too if EFI isn't working properly. But dd boot0 and you will at least get rid of the blinking cursor problem.

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=73952

[King George]

Guys,

This one solved the blinking cursor problem for me quite a few times:

-note: i use MBR-

do what is explained under "the bootfix patch"

http://www.digitmemo.com/articles/658/howt...ot-setup-guide/

 

in short: boot from install dvd and open terminal, then:

activate the partition using commands

fdisk -e /dev/rdiskX
update [enter]
f Y [enter]
“Partition 2 marked active”
w [enter]
"Device could not be accessed exclusively.
A reboot will be needed for changes to take effect. OK? [n]y
Writing MBR at offset 0."
q [enter]

 

Then to fix the bootloading problem using startupfiletool in EFI package:

 

if=/usr/standalone/i386/boot1h of=/dev/rdiskXsY bs=512 count=1 [enter]
umount /Volumes/Leopard [enter]
cd /Volumes/123/EFI_pack/pc_efi_v80 [enter]
./startupfiletool -v /dev/rdiskXsY /usr/standalone/i386/boot [enter]
bless -device /dev/diskXsY -setBoot -verbose [enter]

in this case it was on another partition called 123.

 

Hope this helps YOU too!

 

For manual installs of EFI using former releases (brazilmac, toh) you can also check

http://www.digitmemo.com/articles/734/howt...-in-hackintosh/

[bearloverpr]

Hi friends, I have browsing around for the past 3 weeks searching for that unique solution to the blinking cursor error of death, and trust me I have Installed, parallel it vmware it, IATKOS, kalysways, MBR it GUID it, GParted, Flag it, Brazilaze it, Darwin it, Disktools it, Zero format it, macGarcha it, XP it, Vista it, dd/. It/ ease it, fdisk it, EFI it, change the drive it, cursing it, praying it, budu it or update it, I have tried every single thing I have read and still no solution. I have installed it over 50 times. I change the bios, chance from SATA to PATA to SCSI . change video card, change processor, change the mother board. The worst thing is that 10.4.8 installs perfectly, but I have a 8600 Nvidia card that I want to use with my system. But cannot use the 10.5.2 ktext in 10.4 can anybody point me to something new. Basically I think the problems is Darwin noting else. In the DVD it boots up but there some possess missing in all installations that end up the same. The blinking cursor.

My questions will be:

The ones that manage to succeed in this installation what did they do?

It was a partition on the main drive?

It was a new drive?

It was used?

IDE or SATA?

It was an intel or via chipset?

Is there any corrupted version of the installation disk?

I decided to write because I’m not giving up on this and a soon I find a solution I will share it with everybody. But trust me it’s hard.

Just wanted to get that out. So please don’t give up. A solution will appear.

[jaffe]

Installation method : iATKOS

Location: third partition (first=pre-installation {censored}, second=VISTA, third=OSX)

EFI=false

Darwin bootloader: in disk0s3

Multiboot: chain0

SATA=true

 

Same {censored} worked for Kalyway too.

 

System Specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo T7100

Mobile Intel PM965 Express Chipset

Broadcom 5787 ethernet(unworking)

Nvidia 8600M GT 256 fully sopported

Realtek HD Audio

[bearloverpr]

Installation method : iATKOS

Location: third partition (first=pre-installation {censored}, second=VISTA, third=OSX)

EFI=false

Darwin bootloader: in disk0s3

Multiboot: chain0

SATA=true

 

Same {censored} worked for Kalyway too.

 

Well i try and it did boot, and finally I ended up with the never ending startup loop that everybody is referring to at least i can use comands, i will to to reinstall in all the possible ways iATKOS and KALYWAY, with vanilla without vanilla etc; and i will give you my feedback.

[Envying]

gUYS, i INSTALLED IATKOS. aFTER INSTALLATION, i BOOTED IT WITH A BLINKING CURSOR ALSO.

 

tHEN i WENT INTO MY OTHER RUNNING oSX SYSTEM, CHECK WITH MY DISK MBR AND PARTITION VBR, FOUND OUT BOTH ARE W/O BOOTING RECORD.

 

tHEN i JUST USE DD TO WRITE BOOT0 TO MBR AND BOOT1H TO VBR, REBOOT! Bang!

[jaffe]

Well i try and it did boot, and finally I ended up with the never ending startup loop that everybody is referring to at least i can use comands, i will to to reinstall in all the possible ways iATKOS and KALYWAY, with vanilla without vanilla etc; and i will give you my feedback.

 

Heh, I think you did everything right, you just missed one thing.

Because i did the same stupid mistake.

Ok, When you see the dual boot menu, you pressed leopard or mac os x, then it goes to darwin boot loeader. Then you pressed enter again. Then it went to the dual boot menu again. Right?

Solution: When you choose mac os x in the dual boot menu and the darwin loader comes you need to press f8 or arrow down. Then you can choose the booting partition. In the booting partition menu you need to choose your partition where mac os installation is. Because the default partition is wrong and it goes back to dual boot menu. Thats the reason to your loop.