really struggling here guys

[jimbouk]

Hi am new to this lark but am not one to quit easily.Anyway I have a dell xps 420 running a q8200 3 gb of ram and a gts8800 i have tried both i boot and i boot legacy i can get as far as puting the snow leapoard cd in the drive and pressing enter then i get the apple logo with a spinner then after 30 secs or so i get a no entry sign.Have tried using -x command prompt before presing enter and have tried several other commands but still only get as far as the apple logo and no entry sign .I have seen reports of people getting leapoard to work on these comps so i'm sure its possible.
Bios settings are pretty much default have no hpet option or achi just raid on or raid autodetect/ata .

I thought it may be the format on my hard drive as was ntfs so changed to fat32 but still no difference
have turned of all network/firewire connections and tried attaching hard rive to different sata ports any ideas please?

 

[hakkogmx]

You need AHCI option.

I've seen BIOS with RAID/AHCI/ATA as choices in one option (so I chose AHCI).

HPET was not on the BIOS I succeded with, I did look but could not find it.

Check for 64bit options that should be enabled? I had to enable some 64 bit options on my bios with Snow Leopard retail DVD 10.6.3.

Maybe worth updating the BIOS from Dell's website.

Your hard drive format is not an isse here.

 

[jimbouk]

only bios options i have are raid on or raid/ata autodetect?

 

[SnapMan]

Try RAID...

It supports 64 bit, so probably has HPET as default, though I couldn't find it stated explicitly.

Once you get to install screen you will have an opportunity to reformat drive as MacOSExtended.....

I suggest you try iBoot Legacy with the boot flags -v -x PCIRootUID=1 and post any screenshot of the results.

 

[eelhead]

Moved from the Basics to Installation Support.