GA-x58A-UD3R Snow Installation failure

[apostolosn]

I have this board, with a i7 920 processor, a Palit Nvidia GTX275 card. I don't know where I can find the BIOS revision in the bios to look up the board revision, but I bought it early 2010. I've ran this computer successfully for a couple of years now, with a previous Hackintosh installation with no problem. I've had four hard drives in it. One had 10.5.7 on it and another one a later OS, possible 10.6.3. The system on that last one is failing to boot lately, although I can access the hard drive. I bought a new hard drive with the intention of installing Snow Leopard and then Lion. I did what was described in the iboot guide. I went into the bios changed the settings to start from the cd-rom etc. I eventually got to the iboot screen and a couple of times I even got to the Mac Retail DVD screen. The installation even seem to start, I saw the gray Apple logo, but then I got a black screen and nothing.

I tried typing the commands in the iboot installation guide, right after I would see the iboot logo, hit enter, but all I got was kernel panics.

I tried the first command, the -x, the whole thing.

Now I can't get past the iboot screen. In other words I will put in the iboot disc, I get to that screen then I put in the Snow Leopard DVD , hit f5 or enter, but nothing happens.

BTW, I can still boot and operate the computer from the 10.5.7 system. Oh, yes, and I did have 6 2GB Ram simms in it and I took four of them out so I'm left with 4gb of ram now, for the attempted installation. And I did disconnect all the hard drives but the one I was trying to install the OS to.

Any ideas?

 

[shibirian]

Could you try to install Lion (10.7.3) directly and tell us if that works or fails, too?

 

[apostolosn]

I was under the impression that I can't do that. Lion does not exist on a DVD, does it? You have to download it from the Apple store only if your computer runs Snow Leopard.

 

[shibirian]

Downloading it from the *cough* AppStore and burning it to a DVD is no problem.

You can purchase Lion from the AppStore anytime, y'know? ;oP

 

[apostolosn]

I just realized you can do a direct installation of Lion with the Lion thumbdrive too. But you can install Lion directly as well?

 

[ModBot]

Downloading it from the *cough* AppStore and burning it to a DVD is no problem.

You can purchase Lion from the AppStore anytime, y'know? ;oP

Yes for use on a real Mac, no for use on a hack.

 

[Blackstar]

I have this board, with a i7 920 processor, a Palit Nvidia GTX285 card. I don't know where I can find the BIOS revision in the bios to look up the board revision, but I bought it early 2010. I've ran this computer successfully for a couple of years now, with a previous Hackintosh installation with no problem. I've had four hard drives in it. One had 10.5.7 on it and another one a later OS, possible 10.6.3. The system on that last one is failing to boot lately, although I can access the hard drive. I bought a new hard drive with the intention of installing Snow Leopard and then Lion. I did what was described in the iboot guide. I went into the bios changed the settings to start from the cd-rom etc. I eventually got to the iboot screen and a couple of times I even got to the Mac Retail DVD screen. The installation even seem to start, I saw the gray Apple logo, but then I got a black screen and nothing.

I tried typing the commands in the iboot installation guide, right after I would see the iboot logo, hit enter, but all I got was kernel panics.

I tried the first command, the -x, the whole thing.

Now I can't get past the iboot screen. In other words I will put in the iboot disc, I get to that screen then I put in the Snow Leopard DVD , hit f5 or enter, but nothing happens.

BTW, I can still boot and operate the computer from the 10.5.7 system. Oh, yes, and I did have 6 2GB Ram simms in it and I took four of them out so I'm left with 4gb of ram now, for the attempted installation. And I did disconnect all the hard drives but the one I was trying to install the OS to.

Any ideas?

Well, sounds like you're doing everything right. I have almost exactly the same machine myself, and if you're BIOS was set up for a Hackintosh before with a previous OS version, then it should run 10.6 and 10.7 just fine. My BIOS version is 2.0 FA. You should be able to tell during the boot up sequence, it will show you what to press to get to the bios. (mine was the 'delete' key.)

Since 10.5 seems to work for you right now, it may be easier to clone the current working OS to your new drive, then update it, rather than starting from a new install from scratch.

Started with 10.6 - 10.6.8 myself and am now running 10.7.4. Might I suggest using the working Mac OS install to create a bootable USB stick instead of a DVD? You'll have more chances to try if anything goes wrong than with burning multiple Disks. Just change the BIOS boot sequence to go to USB-HDD first, then CD then Hard Drives.

Had one issue with my graphics card (MSI GTX-260) when attempting to boot to 10.7.4; I too ended up with a black screen after the Apple logo. It was fixed by using an 'alternative' install process which for some reason tonymac.com doesn't want people mentioning them here by name, or they will delete this post. *shrug*
Do a google search and you'll see some 'other' Mac OS install solutions.

I chose the 'easiest' type. (hmmmm, cake...) But assured, this was done with the purchased 10.7 OS version from the Apple store, so there is nothing inappropriate about it, and it worked like a dream!

 

[apostolosn]

Well, my configuration was running 10.6. I think other drive that the OS got corrupted had 10.6 something. In fact I have an issue with 10.5.7, in that I can't actually run a second monitor, (via VGA) with this card. Whereas with the 10.6 that I was running on the other drive I could run two monitors. So, once I install 10.6 it will probably run, but I get stuck at the beginning of the installation now, as soon as I eject the iboot disc.