[jswadley]

My OS X install, which had been working perfectly, suddenly stopped working. I left the netbook in my car for a few nights, and I think something messed up when it ran out of battery (it had been in sleep mode).

Now, every time I try to turn it on, it gets just past the Dell screen and goes to black with a flashing/blinking cursor _ in the upper lefthand corner. Not the one that spins, but just the blinking underline.

I've reinstalled NBI from both the USB drive and OS X (after using the USB to boot), but no luck. Any ideas?

-J

Mini 10v
10.6.2
NBI 0.8.3

[jswadley]

Sorry for the bump, but any ideas?

I've seen a few other questions about this issue on the forum, but no answers, so if we can figure it out, it'll be useful for others.

[minimalpc]

Make sure that you choose to install the Chameleon bootloader when you run NBI (check the box). If that doesn't work, try using OS X Disk Utility to do a repair. If that still doesn't work, let's have a look at your MBR. Grab it with the following command in Terminal:
sudo dd if=/dev/hda of=/home/WHEREVER_YOU_WANT/MBR.img bs=512 count=1

Zip up the resulting MBR.img file and post it.

[jswadley]

Hey, thanks for the reply and the help. I did choose to install Chameleon when I ran NBI, and the disk check came back fine (I repaired permissions too, though I'm sure that wouldn't do anything to the bootloader).

When I try to run that command in terminal, I get:
dd: /dev/hda: No such file or directory

Any ideas?

-Jason

[minimalpc]

Originally Posted by jswadley

Hey, thanks for the reply and the help. I did choose to install Chameleon when I ran NBI, and the disk check came back fine (I repaired permissions too, though I'm sure that wouldn't do anything to the bootloader).

When I try to run that command in terminal, I get:
dd: /dev/hda: No such file or directory

Any ideas?

-Jason

Sorry. Use /dev/rdisk0 instead.

[jswadley]

Thanks. Alright, I'm attaching the file.

Thanks again for your help.

[minimalpc]

There are no obvious problems with your MBR. The Chameleon bootloader boot0 appears to be properly installed there. Try booting to OS X using NBI again then entering "sudo rm -f /var/vm/sleepimage" from Terminal.

If that still doesn't work, try running gptsync (available here if not already installed in OS X). It is possible that your GUID partition table and MBR partition table have somehow gotten out of sync, and gptsync should fix that.

If that doesn't work, then there may be some sort of problem with boot1, which is on the HFS+ partition. Reinstalling the bootloader with NBI should have fixed that for you but...

[jswadley]

OK, I tried the first two options, but no effect. Strange, isn't it?

[minimalpc]

Try installing NBI Chameleon manually by following the instructions here (you can skip step #6 for installing boot0 to the MBR, as we confirmed that is okay). You will need to extract the boot and boot1h files from the NetbookInstaller 0.8.3.app package. They are located at "Contents\Resources\SupportFiles\bootloader\Chamel eon 2 NBI."

[jswadley]

Ok, I made it to step 9, and here's the error message I get:

fdisk: could not open MBR file /usr/standalone/i386/boot0: No such file or directory