"boot0: error" - Can't get into my mac anymore...

[mhunkler]

This is one of those moments when I wish I kept a text file to keep track of how I installed my hackintosh bc I have a bad feeling i'm going to need to reinstall something... (although it'd probably be on the drive I can't access anyway...) UGH! I also can't even find my posts anymore on this forum, which i'm pretty sure I wrote down what I did (for the dell studio 540) so others can figure it out and so I can come back and check if I need to... perhaps a different forum but I remember using this mainly.

I setup my hackintosh about 3 years ago with snow leopard, and I vaguely remember what I had done to get the job done, so forgive me for me ignorance here...

I had a dual boot system going, SL, and Windows 7. When the computer started it would show up with iBoot i think it is, with the red apple and googley eyes, giving me a few seconds to hit a key to select the boot option...

Well, this is where it all went to ****... I was actually having problems with my windows 7 partition not booting properly (i know what your thinking, "no way not windows!"). And was trying to figure out what to do...

I had 4 options at this Boot screen. 1.) Hackintosh 2.) breaks the computer apparently 3.) RECOVERY (for Windows 7) 4.) Windows 7

Well since Windows wasn't booting I wanted to see if I could do anything with the Recovery partition, but that led me nowhere, and then I was curious what that second option was since it had no label. I clicked it, it said "no loader"... Ok, no big deal I think, I restart, now all I get is "boot0: error" off my mac drive and cannot boot.

Since I'm worried about my files, I tried installing macdrive on the windows partition but it cannot read the disk... Really worried about this, I have some photos and files I really do not want to loose

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?!!!!! What did choosing that second option do that now I can't even access my drive at all?

What can I do to repair and get this booting again?

Honestly as long as I get my files its ok bc I wanted to attempt upgrading to the newest Mac OSX anyway.

Thanks so much guys. Glad to see all the progress made since I've been here last, when Lion was a struggle, now your already on Maverick... kudos!

 

[trs96]

http://www.tonymacx86.com/25-boot0-error-official-guide.html

 

[mhunkler]

Sorry but this is a little confusing to me, is this saying I have to do a new installation? I would like to save my installation and files... thats the main focus here...

Why is that second icon on the boot menu if it does nothing but ruin your installation?

 

[trs96]

Sorry but this is a little confusing to me, is this saying I have to do a new installation? I would like to save my installation and files... thats the main focus here...

Why is that second icon on the boot menu if it does nothing but ruin your installation?

If you've still got your iBoot Cd try using that to boot into Snow leopard. If not see if you can
make one on another functional computer. Then boot from the CD to get into your OS X
installation.

Also, you may want to move your thread to the Snow Leopard Desktop support section of the
forum. Totenkopf is the expert on problems with Snow Leopard installs.

 

[mhunkler]

The more I research and look at the guide posted above the more I think it doesn't apply. That definitely seems to be concerning new installations not working after initial install. This is a working installation being used for quite some time, now not booting for some odd reason described above. Other things to mention is I do have a mac book, but I can't download any newer version past 10.6.8 on here bc of compatibility, so I cannot use UniBeast. It looks like I will have to do this the original way...

I still have a couple iBoot CD's, and a legacy CD... Problem is I don't remember what I wound up needing to get this to work bc it was a pain for this Dell studio 540, I had to change my video card and do something special for that too...

And my account was definitely deleted and my posts are gone, I searched my email and found links to my old posts and they just redirect to the home page... that really sucks. Would have really helped me do this again.

I'm sure I can figure out how to get SL installed again though... But again my MAIN concern right now is saving the data on the drive. It seems to be the boot section is just corrupt but the rest of the data should still be there and readable. If I get another disk and do a fresh install on that, will it read this drive as well so i can do a backup?


OR EVEN BETTER, IS THERE ANY WAY I CAN JUST REPAIR THIS BOOTUP AFTER USING IBOOT AND THE SL RETAIL DISK?

 

[mhunkler]

When I boot with iBoot, it does not even show anything but the CD drive with iBoot. does not even list my install... Where to go from here?

 

[mhunkler]

When I eject the Disk it says:

EBIOS read error: Device timeout
Block 0x0 Sectors 0

I'm so naseous thinking I may have lost this data... please someone give me hope...

 

[mhunkler]

I used legacy and the retail SL disk to boot into the system and went to disk utility.

The drive is not mounted. I select the disk where its installed "disk0s1". Tried to mount, it does nothing. I click verify the disk, it says:

** /dev/disk0s1
Invalid BS_impBoot in boot block 454649
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.

I click repair disk...

Verify and Repair Volume "disk0s1"
** /dev/disk0s1
Invalid BS_impBoot in boot block 454649
Volume repair complete.
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
Error: Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Back up as many files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.

So my question is how can I backup my files at this point... I can install another installation on a seperate disk but how can I mount the disk to copy files?

 

[Bob_the_Tomato]

Are these OS's all on ONE physical drive? Or on multiple drives?

Sometimes a good ol' Linux boot disc can read drives that others can't. Try an Ubuntu Live CD: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD

Or perhaps Hiren's Boot CD: http://www.hirensbootcd.org/

It sounds like the master boot record is corrupted. Sorry I can't be of more help, but try the Snow Leopard forums.

 

[mhunkler]

They are separate drives. I believe what happened was when the windows cd was loaded, it wrote files to the Mac drive and corrupted it. I didn't even do anything more then start the cd bc I was looking for an option to "repair" windows but wasn't given that option so I canceled out of it... But I thinks when the cd loads it might still have done something.

i have been able to see the files with a data recovery software so nothing was over written or anything. But I would like to repair the master boot record if possible. That way I can keep my files more organized. I'm not sure how this data recovery will turn out. It's scanning right now. I just have to make sure I get my photos before attempting anything else.

i will check out the two boot CDs you mentioned once I can scrape the most important stuff of this disk. In the meantime if anyone else has recommendations to restore the boot record let me know. Or if the boot record is even possible to repair. The disk can't mount and is showing a MS-DOS (FAT16) format...