What's wrong with my boot.plist?

georgegeorge · #1 09-20-2010, 11:10 AM

CPU is i7 980X
Graphics card is nVidia Fermi

After I installed Snow Leopard 10.6.3, bootloader (PC EFI) keeps restarting my computer after I click the hard drive with the Apple icon where the OS is installed.

Could my 12 GB of RAM be the issue? I hear Snow Leopard will restart if there are more than 4 GB of RAM.

So I altered the com.apple.Boot.plist file in Library\Preferences\SystemConfiguration with Notepad:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>-v -f -x cpus=1 busratio=25 maxmem=4096</string>
<string>rd=disk0s2</string>
<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>1280x1024x32</string>
<key>Boot Graphics</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>Quiet Boot</key>
<string>No</string>
<key>Timeout</key>
<string>5</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Even though all the boot flags go through and screen resolution changes with "1280x1024x32", when I add maxmem=4096, the bootloader still shows "12279MB memory" on the upper left corner and computer restarts again. Why is the maxmem=4096 string not working? With Windows msconfig I am able to reduce the amount of RAM available to 4GB, so I know my RAM's not at fault.

boot.plist is the only file I modified. Are there any other files that need modifying to boot Snow Leopard? Perhaps mach_kernel or smbios.plist? I read something about a DSDT file but I don't understand what it is nor where to find it.

Nameci · #2 09-21-2010, 09:04 AM

why not remove the other 6 gb and try if you will the same problem?

Taisto · #3 09-21-2010, 06:29 PM

Try what Nameci suggested.

But on the other hand - were you able to boot this install earlier ? Cause to be honest i don't think this is a problem related to the memory. Does it reboot instantly after you hit enter ? With no info/text on the screen ?