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Question

Deleted my OS X partition and now I can't boot to install

Jul 20, 2012 1:02PM PDT

Hi! I posted this over on the apple support forums but haven't gotten much help. If anyone has any ideas, I would really appreciate it!
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Hopefully someone can help me with this because I'm completely at the end of my wits!

I recently decided to clean up my mac by upgrading my OS X Tiger partition to Lion and my Windows Vista partition to Windows 7.

Initially, I didn't realize I needed to upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard before I could install Lion, so I put in my Lion DVD and booted into the install menu, but when I tried to install it over the top of Tiger it gave me an error. I didn't realize what was wrong (now I realize you can't intall Lion on top of Tiger but the error message doesn't say anything about that). So, what I did is, still in the Lion Boot menu, I went into the Disk Utility and decided to erase my mac partition and try a clean install.

That didn't work either, and so then I decided to just go back to Tiger -- but this is where I ran into my problem.

Then I think I did something stupid. I decided to upgrade my Windows partition first, but instead of installing my new version of windows over my old Bootcamp partition, I instead installed it to the partition that used to be my TIger partition. So, essentially I now had two bootcamp partitions. My thought was that I could then just copy over my essential files from my old windows partition to my new one before wiping it and re-installing OS X to my old Windows partition.

I think this was a mistake because now I've found that I can't get my mac to boot using an OS X install DVD -- neither my original Tiger discs nor the Lion disc that I used to erase my partition in the first place.

I'm also no longer able to see my bootable partitions by holding down the "option" key when booting. I also can't put my Macbook into Target Disk Mode either. If I try any of these things all it does is hang on the boot until I reset it by hitting the power button. All of this was working fine before I went through the above process.

There is nothing wrong with my hard disk because I currently have two Windows partitions and they are working perfectly.

It's almost like I've accidently deleted some bios-level operational data that usually allows you to boot to an install DVD or boot to Target Disk Mode.

I've had macs for a long time and never had this problem before -- unless it was a hard disk or memory issue, but, as I said before, I don't think that can be the case because my windows partitions are working perfectly.

I apologize for the long-winded description but I always figure it's better to be as detailed as possible if you expect someone else to help you solve a problem.

My advanced thanks for any help you can give! I'll be checking this hourly, so let me know if there is any other information that would help!

--eric

P.S. Just a couple of misc info that might help:

1. Without being able to go into my "About this Mac" menu I can't remember exactly what model my Macbook Pro is, but I believe it's 2nd or 3rd generation Macbook Pro. I think I bought it in 2008...? I believe it's a Core 2 Duo.
2. Windows is telling me that I have 3 Gigs of RAM (although I thought I had four...)
3. Finally, my internal superdrive died years ago, so I'm using a USB DVD drive to boot OS X from. I've used this external drive to install OS X before though, so I don't think it is the problem.

Thanks again!

Discussion is locked

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Answer
A veritable comedy of errors,
Jul 20, 2012 11:24PM PDT

what happens when you try to boot from the original Tiger discs?

Do you hold down any keys when attempting this?

Try holding down the Option key, right after the chime (right after pressing the power button if no chime) and keep it down.
You should see a number of options on the screen. Choose the DVD and go from there.

Alternatively, go buy yourself a replacement hard drive, install it and then install OS X. Keep the old drive and get yourself a SATA dock (or an external drive case) which can then be used to recover your important files. Right now I'm guessing that you have no backup of any of your stuff.

P

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Answer
Correct order of Partition and HFS+ needed?
Nov 18, 2012 7:46AM PST

Going out on a limb here, I'm going to suggest you try formatting the original partition that had Mac OSX on it, to HFS+ (rather than what it is now, which is NTFS). You probably cannot make the second partition the Mac OSX one; it has to be the first. This is because the 200MB bios partition is looking in order for the partition it expects to be the Mac one. Simply swapping them around so that Windows partition is first, is going to mess you up. Try that, then please report back to tell us if that worked. Cheers.