"This disk cannot be used to start up your computer."

[BobbyRay]

I get this message when I try to install Lion after downloading it from the app store. From what I can tell, this is the first step of Tony's guide. I was dual-booting Windows 7 and Snow Leopard on two separate hard drives, but removing the Windows 7 drive had no affect. Has anybody else experienced this issue?

 

[RevisionZero]

So you downloaded Lion, ran the installer (which just places files) and reboot correct?

So the first reboot after you ran the Lion installer you encountered this issue?

 

[BobbyRay]

This is before the first reboot. The installer doesn't complete because I can't select a drive to install to.

 

[fishsticks]

I am getting the same thing. The steps are Download Lion from the AppStore, Click "Continue", Agree to the License, then on the page listing drives, below is what I see.

This is on a CustoMac 2500k i5, Gigabyte Radeon 6850, 8GB Corsair Vengeance, Crucial M4 64GB SSD (boot drive), 1TB Secondary 7200RPM HDD. Followed the CustoMac Build almost exact.

 

[BobbyRay]

It looks like a lot of native Mac users have been having this problem as well. Here are a couple potential fixes I pulled from the apple support forums:

1. Use Disk Utility to reduce the size of your Snow Leopard partition. 10GB seems to do the trick in most cases.
2. Search for backups.backupdb and delete it.

I don't have access to my hackintosh at the moment, so I cannot confirm that these will work.

 

[eelhead]

(to5 touch on this error message. Maybe it will help.

http://9to5mac.com/2011/07/21/what-to-d ... r-message/

 

[BobbyRay]

Thanks for sharing. I was able to resolve the issue by partitioning my harddrive. If you're following the xMove method, you really have to do it anyway!

 

[fishsticks]

Following the advice in the Apple Support Forums and 9to5mac.com that recommended resizing the problem partition more than 128MB smaller fixed the problem. I write this from my (soundless) Lion installation.

Additionally, I had some problems accessing the recovery console and that was caused by unused Linux EXT4 partitions that I could never get Chimera to see to boot from. Removing those has cleaned up the safe mode/recovery console boot failure issues.

I used Tux Boot gparted linux boot disk to remove those partitions.

Thanks for the Hint!

References:
http://tuxboot.org/
http://9to5mac.com/2011/07/21/what-...ot-be-used-to-start-up-your-computer-message/

 

[elvenpure]

just like to return my thanks, as this worked for me.
i just repartitioned my 10.6.8 sl partition a few hundred gigs to be safe.
it worked perfectly.
just about to restart and try the install
ill let you know how it goes.
elf