[Macobyte]

So this past week I noticed that I never got around to updating my OS X 10.6 Mini 9 to 10.6.1. I upgraded and ran NBI 0.8.3 as usual, and everything worked great, except that suddenly my audio system preferences showed the placeholder strings for output and input (i.e. just speakers, no headphones, line in, or mic). This surprised me because I was 90% sure I had manually installed the VoodooHDA kexts on my machine and had all that stuff working (I'm not 100% sure however because I've Hackintoshed several Minis for various friends recently and it's been a while since I've worked on mine).

Anyway, even though I was 1,000 miles away from my main computer, my OS X install flash drive, or any of my recovery tools; I got greedy and decided to try messing around to get it to work. I tried reinstalling VoodooHDA (both by itself and with the pref pane; neither of which worked), some other patched kext I found (don't remember the name), and even used that Kext Helper program, all to no avail.

After running Kext Helper, I tried to reboot and the machine kernel panicked, and now KPs on boot, either on or before the spinning gear. 5 days later, I'm back at home base and not doing much better. I've tried rerunning NBI 0.8.3 from my patched 10.6 installer USB drive, I've tried reinstalling 10.6 and then running NBI 0.8.3; but nothing works.

I've exhausted everything I can think of. My next step is to buy a $20 mini-PCIe to USB enclosure from MDD and hopefully get my stuff off the drive before wiping it clean and beginning again, but if anyone can suggest something in the meantime to help me out and save me some money, I'd very much appreciate it.

[humph]

Two Things:
1) Boot verbose (-v) at Chameleon GUI prompt (F8 after BIOS splash, if you don't automatically get the Chameleon GUI to select boot drive), that way you'll get an idea what is causing the KP. There'll be some message about half way down the KP info about what kext caused the KP. You may need to know this to for future reference/hacking/avoiding same problem. This step is of course optional.

2) Boot from your installer USB, and rather than reinstalling, select NetBookInstaller app from the Utilities menu. Re-run NetBookInstaller targeting your internal HD. That should fix your /Extra folder, put back the default kexts etc.

Or if you are adventurous, use Terminal app in Utilities from USB Installer, and manually delete or replace bad kext, rebuild Extensions.mkext etc

[Macobyte]

"2) Boot from your installer USB, and rather than reinstalling, select NetBookInstaller app from the Utilities menu. Re-run NetBookInstaller targeting your internal HD. That should fix your /Extra folder, put back the default kexts etc."

I did this first thing when I got the machine back home last night; no good. I've run it two or three times over and there's never a difference.

"Or if you are adventurous, use Terminal app in Utilities from USB Installer, and manually delete or replace bad kext, rebuild Extensions.mkext etc"

Well, I tried doing this to outright delete the /Extra folder, but I must not know how to use the sudo command correctly because it kept returning that it didn't recognize the command. If anyone knows the specific string I should enter into the terminal to delete my /Extra folder, that would be awesome; then I could rerun NBI and simply remake it.

After a good night's rest I remember that at one point I was switching kexts in and out in both the /Extra folder as well as my System folder. Perhaps I did more damage than I originally thought, hence the KP on boot even after a reinstall, but shouldn't a reinstall (not clean install, though) be enough to fix any kext issues in the System folder itself?

[Macobyte]

Booted into verbose mode; I've attached a photo of what was returned. To my untrained eye it looks like VoodooHDA is the culprit, either directly or because IOAudioFamily and/or IOPCIFamily may be messed up or in the wrong place. I may have messed around with IOAudioFamily, but I'm sure I left IOPCIFamily alone.

However, the "Mac OS version: Not yet set" part worries me a little; does it not recognize my OS?

Can anybody help me make sense of this?

[humph]

Yeah, looks like VoodooHDA is the issue. I've seen other posts about this causing occasional panics, but also the need to remove AppleHDA from /S/L/E to prevent Voodoo KP. (if I recall correctly, might have got that wrong).

I guess there's no OS version showing since it's too early in the boot - you've got the kernel # there, and i386 etc, so probably nothing to worry about.

To remove /Extra: First, in below, substitute your internal HD name for the generic "Macintosh HD". I'll use that as placeholder and to show how to handle spaces in name.
Note that you can use tab in terminal to complete the entry, so actually you don't usually need to type full commands/file names etc, just hit tab. So you wouldn't necessarily need to manually type "\ "to handle spaces.
Boot the installer (I mean run that, not use USB to try to fully boot the internal HD).

code: cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/
code: ls -l
> This is so you can see the root directory contents in a list, to be sure you are in the right place. Should see Extra, as well as a bunch of other stuff.
code: rm -r Extra
> No need for sudo, as you are running in super-user mode in this version of the Terminal, which you'll "know" by the bash prompt on left of screen ending in #.

Try reinstall Extra as you described above. In even that you still get KP, try to boot internal HD using safe option (-x) at Chameleon, which will prevent attempted loading of kexts that are not needed for a "safe boot". Failing that, try -s single user!!

In any case, if you think you'd messed up your internal HD /S/L/E contents, you could copy the std kexts over when booted to installer. Of course, that might not "just work", since I guess your installer is 10.6.0 DVD, so some differences to what you have as you'd upgraded to 10.6.1.
I think (but again, may be wrong) that the critical kexts that are in /S/L/E which are totally linked to OS version are luckily the same on 10.6.0 and 10.6.1; these are sandbox.kext and system.kext both of which "match" to the 10.6.0 kernel, which also I think was not changed when going from 10.6.0 to 10.6.1. So you are probably safe. But if you'd gone to 10.6.2. then you'd not want to overwrite these two kexts from install DVDs S/L/E onto your HD's /S/L/E. (mentioning this really in case others read it who did upgrade). If you did want/need to copy the kexts:

code: cp -r /System/Library/Extensions/kextnamehere.kext /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/System/Library/Extensions/kextnamehere.kext
>kext is effectively a directory, so you need the -r flag to the copy command.

Good Luck!

[Macobyte]

I took care of it. I did an archive and install of OS X 10.5.8 so I could access my files, copied them over to my main computer, then wiped it and put a fresh install of OS X 10.6.2 onboard. Couldn't fix it as quickly or easily as I wanted, but as long as I'm never in a point where the Mini9 is bricked beyond repair, I'm happy. Thanks for the help anyway!