No bootable device

[jdgti]

Ok,

If you have time please read my entire post. I do not complain or blame anything. I have been on these forums for a while so please don't flame me, I hope to have this problem resolved by the end of the night.

Today I tried to install xp 64-bit using boot camp as described on many posts via the internet. Before starting I knew that xp 64-bit was not completely supported by boot camp, so I took the necessary precautions by waiting for a complete backup to start and finish through time machine. I then made a disc with all of the necessary 64-bit windows drivers for my iMac because as detailed in many of the online work arounds, the leopard install disc that comes bundled with the imac will not automatically download the necessary drivers for things like NIC, sound card etc.

I went ahead and took the necessary steps to partition my hard drive and then popped in my Legal XP 64-bit disc. Installed using apple's directions posted here:

manuals.info.apple.com/en/Boot_Camp_Install-Setup.pdf

Then I used the disc to update the drivers, spending most of the day trying to get it to work. However, much like many people who do not have a Mac Pro, I was unable to get xp 64-bit to work because for some reason, it seems that 64-bit edition of XP needs its own separate hard drive, or there may be another reason.

So then I restarted and booted using the option key and selected os x as the OS i wanted to boot to. Then I used the manual again (posted above) and followed the directions exactly to "restore" my hard drive back to normal and give up on Windows. Then the slowness began. When I inserted disks into my imac and then ejected them they would eject physically, but they would never disappear from the desktop. Several other problems occurred but that is the easiest one to explain.

I figured it was simply a finder issue. So I relaunched finder and nothing from the desktop reappeared. So I figured I just needed to restart. So I did restart. Then when the restart happened I was stuck at the grey screen after the startup sound but before the grey apple appears with the pinwheel for almost 15 mins. So then I unplugged all of my periferals except for keyboard and mouse and did a hard reboot

Now I am on a black screen with the message:

"No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key"

Now I understand this was my fault for trying to install an unsupported OS via bootcamp, and that is why I am not blaming anything on windows or anything else... I was prepared for this, and I am just posting to let people in the future know exactly how I plan to fix this problem with my specific system.

I plan to simply reinstall leopard and restore via time machine. Considering I have never restored via time machine, I was hoping someone who has could post a step by step so I don't somehow lose everything during the backup. My biggest fear is that I will reinstall leopard, connect my external, and then say backup using time machine, and it will somehow erase my old backups. So please, if you have some time, please detail exactly how to restore using time machine, or send me a link you used that worked flawlessly because once again I have trusted people on the internet, and have put myself in a little bind.

Thanks, and sorry for the long post and any typos along the way.

jdgti

 

[jdgti]

Update:

I just put in my Leopard CPU Drop-in DVD that came bundled with my iMac and pressed 'any key' and nothing happened. I am stuck at this screen.

Does anyone know how to get my iMac to eject the DVD from this screen so I can try my tiger DVD?

Thanks,

jdgti

 

[jdgti]

Update 2:

I feel like I am writing this so someone who has the same problem in the future won't freak out like I am right now.

So the problem with the "no bootable device.." screen was that apparently my iMac is still trying to boot to windows for some reason. In order to get it to pick OS X I needed to hold down the option key at startup. This brought up the bootcamp screen and I picked OS X.

Now I am back to my old system. I so I tried a restart as soon as everything was done booting up and back to the old problem of no bootable device. So it is apparent to me that I need to reinstall leopard and then restore my HD completely if I expect to go back to normal any time soon.

Here we go.

Jdgti

P.S. please post here as I have a laptop and will be checking it periodically throughout this debacle.

 

[rman]

Run the system preferences application. Select start up disk, then select your OS X start up disk. You should be able to reboot your system with no problem.

 

[jdgti]

Thanks RMan,

I did try this, selecting "Macintosh HD" as the startup disk because that was the only other one besides "Network Startup". However, this did the same thing with the "no bootable device menu"

The only way to get it to restart into osx was to invoke bootcamp at startup using the option key and select "Macintosh HD" from there.

Weird....

Thanks for the help.

I should be up and running soon! I'll post my final solution once i get it all going back to normal.

jdgti

 

[jdgti]

Ok,

Update 3:

I am back online, but now when i press the time machine button it doesn't show any of my old backups. I am not all that worried because when I browse my external I can still see all of my backups. I read that Migration Assistant can help me get all of my data back. It seems that Migration Assistant only shows my very last backup instead of all of the backups I have ever done. I would like to be able to get back all of my backups that time machine did on an hourly basis.

If anyone can help me out on how to get this done please post and let me know. For the time being I am going to use the very last backup, but if possible, in the future I would like to get one from earlier this weekend.

Thanks,

jdgti

 

[cowasaki]

I bought 64bit Windows vista ultimate OEM (well it was bought for me by a friend for building 2 computers and repairing a laptop) to install on my Mac pro on a second drive. Only to find that it is not supported! Doh!

Anyway. If you boot off the leopard DVD then "Restore time machine backup" is an option so you do not need to install leopard first it is sorted in one pass.

I have a similar booting problem on my iBook, I have the leopard DVD installed as partition 3 and I restored partition 1 in target mode from my pro after installing a 250Gb drive to replace the 40Gb. Now every time you boot it it boots into leopard install rather than the OS. I hold down option and can select the OS and it works. In preferences if you try and tell it to boot from the OS partition the only option available is boot from network! Good job I normally just close the lid on it rather than shutdown! If this was a PC I would have it fixed in 5 mins but I haven't found a partition manager package for the Mac yet !

 

[jdgti]

Update 4:

There is a happy ending! I just want to say that I have some serious respect for apple and Time Machine after this whole ordeal. Thanks Apple for making great products that we can depend on. Please at least read #'s 4 and 5 because I have legitimate questions about my data. Read the rest of the post to find out how everything turned out.

I left my computer overnight to restore from time machine. I have read this tuaw entry:

http://www.tuaw.com/2008/01/27/restoring-your-mac-from-a-time-machine-backup/

Which has helped me understand the limitations of time machine and restoring a previously backed up system.

A few things are still bothering me about the whole backup situation, but I am sure there are reasons Time Machine was developed this way that I don't fully understand.

As the cowasaki said, you should probably just restore as soon as you put in the leopard disc, instead of making a fresh install and then restoring via time machine from a logged in account. Detailed below is what happens to you if you do it this way...

1.) First thing's first. I had to officially change my username when I restored my old system. I could NOT use my previous username despite my efforts. I now have two usernames when I restart and get the login screen. One is my old username, and one is the new username i created.

Just for clarification. Let's say my original username was "original_123". When I made a clean install of leopard I was able to choose original_123 as my username. Then I went to restore the system as detailed in the tuaw.com article above. When I wanted to restore I was forced to make a new username. Let's call it "new_123". So once the long process of restoring was done, I was left logged into "original_123". This was kind of confusing because when it was I expected to have my original system ready to go. But actually nothing was actually restored on original_123. A whole new account was created that contained the said restored backup.

I didn't know this. So I clicked my music, documents, movies, downloads, etc. to find nothing the way I left it. So, I did as any person would have done and manually restored everything from the time machine interface folder by folder until everything seemed back to normal to me. Then I reconfigured Mail to my IMAP gmail account with 5000+ messages, and .mac account with several as well. Then I reconfigured my dock to the best of my memory. Just for kicks I clicked the Software Update button to find 500MBs of updates ready to install. I did this and restarted as recommended. Does anyone see where this is going....?

When I got to the login screen I found an interesting choice. original_123 and new_123 were available. So clicked new_123 and logged in to find everything in my system from before EXACTLY as I had left it. I was dumbfounded! I had just wasted hours manually restoring everything! GUYS DON'T DO THIS! Don't be like me... If you can learn anything from me, learn that new_123 is your new account and original_123 might as well be nothing for the rest of our lives.

2.) Mail didn't quite get everything right the first time in the new_123 account including lots of linking errors and IMAP errors, but let's chock that up to my IMAP account, not apple or mail.app. Just a restore inconvenience.

3.) As the tuaw.com article stated. I had to reauthorize all of my purchased music for the second time on this specific computer subtracting 1 from the overall authorizations I was given when purchasing the song. :-0

4.) If anyone is still reading, I would like to know if I can delete the deemed original_123 and then rename new_123 to original_123? Will this be ok? What is the significance of original_123? If I do delete original_123, will all of the needless manual restores vanish and stop taking up all of my hard drive space?

5.) Dashboard didn't restore right. For reference, don't use stickies to store important information. It seems they don't always restore exactly right. If anyone knows where to find the restore file for stickies and other dashboard preferences in leopard via time machine I would like to go back a couple of days and get my information back.

6.) Developer tools didn't restore for some reason. No biggie I guess.

Lastly, even though I am listing all of things that confused me, I gotta give it up to Apple once more for restoring my system to almost exactly perfect after I destroyed it. It was so amazing to see my dock back to normal and all of my bookmarks and mail messages, and even skins for third party programs!!!! Super exciting to see this work for myself in a dire situation like this one. Thanks Apple for being an awesome company!

If anyone ever has any questions about the whole ordeal or if you are having the same issues please private message me and I would be glad to help you through it as best I can.

jdgti

 

[ieatcannib4ls]

Run the system preferences application. Select start up disk, then select your OS X start up disk. You should be able to reboot your system with no problem.

I was having the exact same problem and this fixed it. Thanks