Having trouble reinstalling a system that used to work great... 10.6.8 problem?

[mhunkler]

I've been having a hell of a time with my hackintosh after a couple years of no problems. First my windows drive (seperate drive) must have written something to the hackintosh drive and messed it up, gets a boot0: error (which the common fix does not work), was made FAT16 and I can't access the drive anymore on windows or mac (on another system)... Nothing was really written though I don't believe, all I did was load the windows install disk and never actually installed (i was looking for a repair install option for my windows install which crapped out). I was able to use data recovery software in windows (Get Data) to pull files off, such as jpegs, but they're scattered, not like I was able to just recover my iPhoto album, so if anyone has any ideas to fix that drive that would be fantastic, but my main issue here is installing again on a new drive while this is set to the side..

First off let me tell you about my system...
Dell Studio 540
3 GHZ Core 2 Quad Q9650
8GB Ram (only 4 GB installed during install)
500gb drive
ATI XFX RADEON HD 5770 1GB Video Card (not installed during install)

I am able to boot to the installer with my legacy cd, and then I can install the retail disk, when I try then to install the combo update, then multibeast, on restart I get the boot0: error, which I have followed instructions to fix that in terminal booting the install disk again, and then after that I just get the other common error "still waiting for root device". I know that (at least for my system) this happens when the drives are on the incorrect SATA PORT when installing, but i've tried all ports with no success. I think this is something to do with the combo update, or possibly an update in Multibeast but I think the combo update is the culprit... I remember at one point, I read not to update further, I forget what my previous system was on though, possibly 10.6.6?

I really would like to update past SL anyway, obviously as far as I can go, but I'm thinking maybe my system is not liking it too much, I have also seen that support for the xfx 5770 has been lost at some point. If this is true, if someone can recommend a good video card to get and I'll sell this one. Also, is it even possible to install Lion or is basically I have to either go with SL or Mavericks?

If anyone has suggestions on fixing that original disk, getting my SL installed stable again, or advising me on what my system can handle and how far I can update past SL, I'd really appreciate it. I've just been a little out of the loop since my system was maintenance free for so long... Thanks guys.

 

[mhunkler]

tried reinstalling, install went fine, updated to 10.6.6 instead and ran multibeast, same problem... got the boot error that, and I still get waiting for root device. As I have seen other people mention to change BIOS settings to AHCI, I do not have this setting in my Dell Bios... Any Thoughts?

 

[mhunkler]

tried combo update 10.6.5 now, and booted and got the boot0 error, followed this link again bc i can't use unibeast

http://www.mymac4music.com/2011/10/boot0-error/

fixed that boot0 error, and then ran multibeast again, booted and again, still waiting for root device on all SATA ports...

This is really frustrating because I used to be able to get to this point no problem, it must be an update in the multibeast which is causing this. For one, I never used to have the boot0 error after multibeast.

Can I find previous versions of multibeast somewhere?

For now i'll try one more time, no combo update and just multibeast to see what happens...

 

[Going Bald]

Can I find previous versions of multibeast somewhere?

http://www.tonymacx86.com/downloads.php?do=cat&id=6

 

[mhunkler]

Thanks for the link! I used Wayback machine to see what combo update and multibeast version were being used at the time. And will give it a try later...

 

[mhunkler]

i'm getting so frustrated. I don't understand why I can't get this to work, the only thing different in my setup is a different seagate 500gb drive, same as the other that i never had a problem installing on, it was purchased recently, but could that really be the difference? Every attempt, I get the boot0=error which I never used to have, and then after fixing that by copying over the boot1h file in terminal, i get stuck at "still waiting for root device". It also confuses the hell out of me since I can boot fine into the system after install but after I run multibeast, i have this issue...

I have now tried using combo update 10.6.4, with multibeast 2.6.3, and had the same issues...

I then tried combo update 10.6.6 with the newest multibeast, and using this AHCI Patch script...
http://www.insanely-mac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=280062&st=20&p=1834431&#entry1834431

I know thats meant for ML, but since I am having the same "still waiting for root device" problem, I figured I would give it a try... no success...

if this is an AHCI error, I have no setting in my BIOS so i dont know what else to try...