HP4530s i7 2670qm Boots with 10.6.6 but not 10.6.8

I have an HP 4530s laptop that boots successfully with iBoot 3.3.0 using a vanilla 10.6.3 installation and after updating to 10.6.6. However, booting fails fails if I instead update 10.6.3 to 10.6.8.

Below are the specs on my machine and the results of testing these updates after separate clean installations.

I would appreciate any tips for further testing; I am comfortable using the terminal and can boot off a Linux usb drive to test further.


Specifications:


Model: HP 4530s laptop
Processor: i7 2670qm 2.2 GHZ (quad-core Sandy Bridge)
RAM: 4GB


Test Results:


I followed the sticky guide at http://www.tonymacx86.com/hp-probook-4530s/78905-guide-installing-snow-leopard-hp-probook.html. I partitioned my drive using GPT with Snow Leopard going to a 25 GB HFS+ journaled volume.

1. Used iBoot to install retail Snow Leopard 10.6.3 DVD. Installed Update Helper and rebooted cleanly with iBoot. Installed 10.6.8 combo update and force quit installer at the "installation successful" confirmation screen where asked to reboot; ran HP ProBook installer using suggested options from sticky guide along with the low resolution graphics option. Rebooted.
   
   Result: iBoot to drive hangs at blank load screen showing dark grey background.
2. Repeated the first test and tried not selecting any graphics patches in ProBook Installer. Same result.
   
   Tried using the latest Chameleon boot disc (Chameleon-2.1-r2069) and had the same result.
3. Used iBoot to install retail Snow Leopard 10.6.3 DVD. Tried updating to 10.6.6 based on comment at http://www.tonymacx86.com/hp-proboo...s-boot-all-starts-snow-leopard-must-read.html. Restarted and iBoot loaded the OS successfully to the desktop. ProBook Installer did not recognize the OS version and would not select a drive to install anything.

Is there any other way to boot 10.6.8 successfully? Or is there a way to run the ProBook Installer to patch 10.6.6, or do I need to try to run the patches manually?

boomer3200 said:

...
[*]Used iBoot to install retail Snow Leopard 10.6.3 DVD. Installed Update Helper and rebooted cleanly with iBoot. Installed 10.6.8 combo update and force quit installer at the "installation successful" confirmation screen where asked to reboot; ran HP ProBook installer using suggested options from sticky guide along with the low resolution graphics option. Rebooted.

Result: iBoot to drive hangs at blank load screen showing dark grey background.

Click to expand...

Follow the guide carefully. iBoot cannot be used to boot 10.6.8. You should be booting from your HDD after using the ProBook Installer.

I get the boot0 error when attempting to boot directly from the harddisk drive when following the guide (that was why I tried iBoot again, which I meant to mention above).

Edit: the error as shown at http://www.tonymacx86.com/25-boot0-error-official-guide.html, but I only have a 500 GB drive.

boomer3200 said:

I get the boot0 error when attempting to boot directly from the harddisk drive when following the guide (that was why I tried iBoot again, which I meant to mention above).

Edit: the error as shown at http://www.tonymacx86.com/25-boot0-error-official-guide.html, but I only have a 500 GB drive.

Click to expand...

Read the entire Snow Leopard Probook guide thread (the one you linked in post #1). There is some info on resolving boot0. It is tricky with SL because of the fact that you don't use a Unibeast USB.

The boot0 error can happen with any drive that has 4k sectors. It is not dependent on the size of the disk.

Progress! I booted off a Linux usb drive and copied boot1h from the Chameleon release to the partition where Snow Leopard was installed using dd and conv=notrunc. The system booted successfuly into 10.6.8.

However, after the laptop went to sleep I got a boot0 error upon attempting to power up and again after restarting. Is there some process that would overwrite the boot1h code at the front of the Snow Leopard partition?

boomer3200 said:

Progress! I booted off a Linux usb drive and copied boot1h from the Chameleon release to the partition where Snow Leopard was installed using dd and conv=notrunc. The system booted successfuly into 10.6.8.

However, after the laptop went to sleep I got a boot0 error upon attempting to power up and again after restarting. Is there some process that would overwrite the boot1h code at the front of the Snow Leopard partition?

Click to expand...

I can't think of why the PBR would be overwritten by booting OS X. Unless there is some sort of corruption going on with your partition map.

Specifying the blocksize on dd as bs=4096 solved the problem.