Help! computer wont recognize any boot files!

Hey there,

So I have been using a successful 10.6.2 build on a p55-UD4 board for the last three months now.

I have had no issues, but this morning when I went to boot, I got the little spinning curser you get just before boot loader appears. Then it froze.

I thought, no worries, I have a drive I backed up with carbonite for this very reason, I'll just get it to point at that drive. SAME PROBLEM!, the curser freezes and no boot for me.

Being a paranoid person, I also had a third drive backed up with a working install, for the very unlikely event that the second disc fails, and you guessed it, I can't boot from that either.

Which leads me to think it must be something in my BIOS or hardware. The only thing is I haven't changed anything, and it's been working flawlessly for months...

Can anyone offer any suggestions, on how I might get my system up again!

I'd see if you can get in using a boot cd. Also, are you sure your bios didn't reset after failing to post or something?

Boot CD wont work either, it just says mounting.. and then the same frozen curser, as in the other three drives.

I checked the bios, it hasn't been reset. But just to make sure I reloaded my saved mac settings that have been working for months...

This is crazy!!

I can boot into windows fine, so all the hardware seems to be OK as far as I can tell.

I don't see how I can even re-install, if the computer wont recongnise any boot files...

Reflash the bios, load optimized defaults, reset Cmos (Take the battery out for a minute), and set everything up in the bios again. That's really all I can think of.

Ok ill give all that a try.....

Hey there,

Well i reset the cmos, and updated the firmware. For luck I also disconnected everything from the back, except the keyboard and mouse. I also disconnected all internal drives, except the main one.....and it booted!!

Now I need to slowly reconnect one device at a time, and try and isolate what is the problem. Maybe the CMOS reset fixed it!

Thanks for you suggestions I really appreciate you coming to my aid. I was nearly in tears!

Cheers

Follow up to my problem..

It seemed that one of the drives was preventing it from booting.

I have no idea why this would be the case.....

I removed that drive and swapped it with an external one, and all seems fine now.

Glad you got it working!