GA-P55A-UD3R, i7 860, ATI HD 4870 can't load SL installer

[johnno_smith]

Hey guys,
Been trying for about a week now to install snow leopard 10.6.3 but i just can't get to the installer at all.
When booted normally and in verbose mode it stalls at the following
Error.jpg

and when i boot in safe mode i get the following
Safe Mode.jpg

My system specs are:
Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3R
Core i7 860
4gb DDR3 1600mhz
ATI Radeon HD 4870 512mb

I've enabled AHCI and HPET 64-bit like tony's guide says and the hdd and cd drive (both sata) are plugged into ports 0 and 1. What am i missing??

Any help would be awesome.
Cheers

 

[MacMan]

Hey guys,
Been trying for about a week now to install snow leopard 10.6.3 but i just can't get to the installer at all.
When booted normally and in verbose mode it stalls at the following
Error.jpg

and when i boot in safe mode i get the following
Safe Mode.jpg

My system specs are:
Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3R
Core i7 860
4gb DDR3 1600mhz
ATI Radeon HD 4870 512mb

I've enabled AHCI and HPET 64-bit like tony's guide says and the hdd and cd drive (both sata) are plugged into ports 0 and 1. What am i missing??

Any help would be awesome.
Cheers

You will most likely need to boot in safe mode -x with your video card until you can install the 48xx patch. Also make sure you only have a USB keyboard and mouse installed.

 

[monkshack]

Hi Johnno,

I was having the exact same problem you described: Booting with "-x" was no help because (as you posted) the SL installer would still fail, just like your screenshot there "wait for service.... timed out"

GA-P55M-UD2
ATI Asus 4870HD

I was totally gutted... but all is not lost: The good news is I was able to resolve this by using a different video card - I was able to temporarily poach a card from another machine (Nvidia Quadro FX 570) and the iBoot -> SL install process worked flawlessly.

Now that SL is installed and in a bootable shape, my plan is to see if I can now swap my ATI 4870 back into place....

If you have a friend or office machine willing to temporarily donate you a video card you may want to give it a shot!

 

[johnno_smith]

ah sweet thanks monkshack, i had a feeling the graphics card may have been a problem. I can get my hands on an 8600GT so i'll give that a go and see what happens.
I'll keep you posted.

 

[monkshack]

A quick update on my progress with the ATI HD 4870:

I successfully installed SL with the loaner video card. With SL installed, I attempted to swap in the 4870, but after several trials I discovered that even after using the UserDSDT for my motherboard (DSDT-GA-P55M-UD2-F11.aml) I was not able to successfully boot into SL with the 4870.

After some googling, I made one more pass, this time using Multibeast 2.5.1 and enabling the following extension: "PCI Root ID fix". I also made sure I was using one of the com.apple.boot.plist entries that utilized "GraphicsEnabler=yes". A reboot and a video card swap later...

Success!!! I'm now able to boot into SL using my 4870, and the system recognizes the card properly.


... however now it can't see my DVD drive. I have a feeling I know what the problem is, hopefully I will be able to get this sorted.