Help - Cannot reach Installation Interface

[cutekaOs]

Hello,

I am a newbie!
So, I've been reading a great deal in the last couple of days on sites such as infintemac, insanelymac, osx86 wiki etc. trying to understand how this Pc to Mac transformation actually works.
I have compared my specs to the HCL, and though I have not found exact matches to everything, I have found very similar names to my stuff in the list.

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First, my specs:

Intelcore 2 Quad Q9300 @ 2,5GHZ

Motherboard: ASUSTek Computer Inc. P5Q Rev 1.xx (is the Rev1.xx part of the name? It's displayed in CPU-Z)
Chipset: Intel P45/P43/G45/G43 (Rev. A2)
Southbridge: Intel 82801JR (ICH10R)

4GB of RAM

Graphic Card: Geforce 9600 GSO

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I have tried installing with iatkos 5i first, which did not work. I got up to the screen that said enter to boot from DVD, press ? for more options and type –v for verbose mode. When I pressed enter, the apple logo screen flashed once and then my computer restarted. When I pressed –v, a couple of lines run down the screen, but then it reboots, too. This happens so fast that I cannot even tell you on which line the reboot starts. After the reboot, the whole process can be repeated.
Now, I have downloaded iPC OSX86 10.5.6 Universal PPF5 Final, and just tried it with that, but the same thing as I described above happens.
Well! You might now say I should have searched the forums for an answer. I have tried, and I have found many other people with this problem, but no answers. (That’s not entirely true, since once person, who installed with kaly, managed to get it going by typing tohkernel…)
So, please help me with this, or at least point me in the right direction.
Thank you!

[thorazine74]

You could try booting with "-v cpus=1" and see if it goes any further.

[cutekaOs]

Thank you for replying.
I am happy to say that I did get further - I now managed to install it. However, when I try booting, typing -v -f, it loads the kexts, and then stops at this screen:
EDIT: when I customized the installation, I could not find some kexts that correspond to my hardware. I just installed anyway and thought I could add them later. Could this have caused this?


http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/8245/photo2shi.jpg (http://img41.imageshack.us/i/photo2shi.jpg/)

[cutekaOs]

Ok, so I figured out what to do with the prior problem (duhh, only had to search it ;) )
Then, I got this: Still waiting for root device.
So, I looked around and found several solutions, which I tried one after the other. Since nothing worked, I decided to erase the install I had on a IDE Maxtor 80GB Harddrive and try again on a Partition of my SATA 500GB Harddrive. I went into disk utility and wanted to format the 20GB of unallocated space I had made, but in the process of formating, a warning popped up which said that the Disk Utility lost contact to the Harddrive or someting. I then rebooted and got the following error:

Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device.


Now, I searched the internet and found many results on this problem, but:

Unlike other people out there, when I go into BIOS and then Boot settings, it still detects all of my HDs. I have tried setting bios to default with no result, I have tried disabling other devices in Boot Priority, except the SATA where Windows XP is installed. No result.

Something wierd that I have noticed is that I can now see a Floppy Drive in BIOS Boot Priority settings, though I don't even have a floppy drive.

I have tried inserting Windows CD and repairing. I did Fixmbr, and reformatted the partition that was destined for Leopard, I did BOOTCFG /SCAN and it found the Windows install and told me there doesn't seem to be any errors with it.

Now, the reason I'm asking for help here is because I thought somebody might know why this happened in relation to installing Leopard... and, of course, how I can fix it.

By the way, the next step I was going to do is install windows xp on the IDE MAXTOR 80Gb drive and try with that, but I don't feel that it's going to change much.

Thank you for your help.

[thorazine74]

Are you installing Leo to SATA or to IDE now?
If SATA the easiest way is setting the SATA ports as AHCI in the BIOS and Leopard should see the disk without troubles (you wont be able to install a retail XP disk in AHCI mode though).
If its IDE it would be more difficult you would need to know which IDE Controller chipset your motherboard has and check if iAtkos or whatever you are installing has support for it.
It doesnt really matter if the drives are detected in the BIOS or not, if OS X doesnt have the proper driver kexts for the SATA & IDE controllers it wont be able to see your drives.

[cutekaOs]

Are you installing Leo to SATA or to IDE now?
If SATA the easiest way is setting the SATA ports as AHCI in the BIOS and Leopard should see the disk without troubles (you wont be able to install a retail XP disk in AHCI mode though).
If its IDE it would be more difficult you would need to know which IDE Controller chipset your motherboard has and check if iAtkos or whatever you are installing has support for it.
It doesnt really matter if the drives are detected in the BIOS or not, if OS X doesnt have the proper driver kexts for the SATA & IDE controllers it wont be able to see your drives.

What if I have windows already installed on the SATA and then change to AHCI and install leopard on a partition of the SATA? Is it possible?
But, apart from that, I cant even boot Windows at the moment because of the error:

Please select proper boot device or insert media in selected boot device.

EDIT; ok, this is where I am at right now:

I've managed to get through that error by installing another Windows XP on the IDE Maxtor 80GB Harddrive.
Now, I can access most of my data on the SATA 500GB, which means I won't lose the files.... which is most imporant for me ( although I did do a backup of my more important files before... but its always annoying to lose a lot of stuff...)
Finally, how should I go about now to install leopard on the Sata? If I change it to AHCI, can Windows still recognise the Harddrive and store data on it?For example, can I partition the HD and change to ACHI so that I have a 20GB partiton where leopard is installed, but use the 480GB remaining with both windows and leopard?
Thank you for you kind help

[thorazine74]

XP doesnt have drivers for SATA AHCI but you can install Intel AHCI drivers and it will see it without problems.
If you are booting XP from the IDE drive it wont be a problem, but if XP is on a SATA disk you can NOT install XP to a SATA disk in AHCI with the original CD (need a modded XP Install CD or a floppy disk with drivers) and you can NOT change from IDE to AHCI once XP is installed (need to do some registry tweaking).

[cutekaOs]

Thank you for replying. Okay so I'll do the following:

-Install XP on the IDE Disk.
-Change SATA Disk to AHCI.
-Download drivers for XP to see the AHCI.
-Install Leopard on a partition of the SATA AHCI.

Sound good?

By the way, is it important how my Hard disks are plugged in when doing the things I said above. I think at the moment the SATA is master (or primary??) and the others slave..

Ty for your help.

[thorazine74]

There is no real master/slave with SATA in AHCI, so it should not matter. And SATA and IDE controllers are independent of each other (different devices).
However it is always recommended to connect them following port order in the motherboard (SATA0 first, the SATA1, and so on...), it should speed up HD detection maybe...
The IDE yes its always better to follow the traditional rules of Master & Slave.