rEFIt Conundrum

Hi all.

I have a bit of a dilemma, and need some input to get around it. I experienced the admin bug in Leopard, and my account has reverted to simple "standard." I can't install new programs or edit system files, which is extremely inconvenient. This can be solved by booting into Single-User mode, I know. But here's the real problem; while I still had admin status, I installed rEFIt thinking that it would allow me to dual boot Leopard / Edgy (Ubuntu). Now when I start up my macbook, I get the OS selection screen. Since this is the first thing that comes up, holding Command + S puts me into the EFI command shell instead of the regular apple one, dashing any hopes I might have had of regaining admin privilege. When I attempt to remove rEFIt from my machine after booting into Leopard, I get an "admin password required" box. Talk about a catch 22.

My goal here is to either a) find a way to remove rEFIt without admin privilege, or b) gain admin status even with rEFIt still on my machine.

Any suggestions?

Well, it doesn't matter much now anyway. I reformatted the HDD (as FAT) thinking I could then reinstall whatever I wanted - and learned my lesson. Now the computer won't even boot from CD, so I really don't know what to do. When I insert a disk at startup (Leopard installation disk, Ubuntu live CD) the drive whirs for a few minutes and I get a folder icon with a question mark on it, which simply sits on my screen blinking. This seems to me to indicate that the computer now has no way to identify what to do when a CD is inserted. This causes almost too many problems to list here.

I did have a few thoughts on possible ways to solve this, though. Could I physically remove the SATA HDD, plug it into a USB adapter, and use Ubuntu to reformat it to work with Linux? If anything in this thread sounds familiar to you, PLEASE POST. I'm running out of options - and computers - rather quickly.

To boot up from the leopard DVD, insert the disk and keep the C key pressed on boot up. Unlike a PC, the Mac OS assumes you are booting of the start-up disk unless you tell it otherwise.

Once in the installation screen you can use disk utility for partition your drive for Mac HFS+ and / or Unix filesystem (if you want a partition for linux)

Oopps....

Ok. Here's what you do:
1. Insert Leopard disc
2. Start mac pressing C. That will boot it from CD
3. If you want to dual boot your mac you can partition the disk at this stage or you can do it later using boot camp also
4. Partition the disk you want to use for mac using HFS+ (Journaled option)
5. Proceed with leopard installation pointing to this partition
6. Once install is complete install refit on mac
7. If you have already partitioned the disk for linux, put linux CD
8. Reboot. You dont need to press any button to bring up refit menu. The menu will show linux cd icon
9. Select the linux cd icon and boot linux cd... rest you're aware

Thanks for the replies; I also discovered in the meantime that booting while holding "option" works well, as holding "c" wouldn't allow me to boot at all. Now I simply need to get past the x server error in Ubuntu, and I'll be set...