Can't Boot from USB to Install Mavericks on H77N-WiFi

[chrisman]

I'm trying to install Mavericks, and the system is hanging on boot from the USB drive. I have tried several flags on booting, and nothing seems to work.

Attached to this post are some screenshots taken from a verbose boot.

As far as background is concerned, I'm trying to install Mavericks on a new build using the following components:

• Gigabyte H77N-WiFi
• Core i5 Processor (I think it's an i5 2400S -- it was salvaged from a mid 2011 iMac
• 8 GB G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series
• Kingston Digital 120GB SSDNow V300
• No video card installed - using integrated graphics and DVI monitor.

I prepared my SanDisk USB drive using Unibeast, and everything seemed to go fine. After running into problems, I actually prepared a whole new drive, and the same problems persist. I also checked the BIOS settings, and everything looks ok (fast boot disabled and SATA mode set to AHCI). The BIOS is also the latest version available from Gigabyte.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Otherwise, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Going Bald]

In BIOS try to disable VT-d and add dart=0 to your boot flags and see if that will work.

 

[chrisman]

In BIOS try to disable VT-d and add dart=0 to your boot flags and see if that will work.

Thanks for the quick reply, Going Bald. Unfortunately, I had no luck. I tried with and without the "dart=0" flag and had no luck either way.

I am leaving VT-d disabled in BIOS unless someone suggests otherwise.

Attached are updated screenshots in case anything changed. These were taken from verbose boot with the following flags:

boot: -v -f -x dart=0
​

Please let me know if anyone has any questions. Otherwise, any guidance is appreciated.

As always, thanks in advance for any help.

 

[chrisman]

I never figured out what was wrong with this. However, it's related to use of the on board graphics.

First, I put an old hard drive in this build that had Mavericks installed. The hard drive came from an iMac I had. I was able to boot that drive using the same setup and choosing the hard drive from the boot options when booting from my USB disk. I still was not able to get to the point where I could install Mavericks from that same USB disk, though.

After I was able to boot the old hard drive without any mods, I figured I'd start messing around with things to see if I could get the Mavericks install to work. I ended up dropping in an old GeForce 9500 GT. After doing that and using just the "GraphicsEnabler=Yes" boot flag, I was able to boot from the USB disk as expected and install Mavericks with no problems. I chose some modifications during the Multibeast process based on other users' experiences, and the system is now up and running with very few issues. I'm going to post a separate thread to address those issues, but they're minor (bluetooth, iMessage, etc). Networking and sound are working, and the GeForce 9500 seems to be fine with this system. As a side note, I tried using on board graphics after running Multibeast, and I still had no luck.

I just wanted to post this in case other users run into issues with booting a Mavericks USB disk and trying to install from it. Based on my experience, this was an issue with on board graphics, and once it was removed from the equation, everything seemed to be fine.

Thanks to all.