# Please Help!: Deleted my OS X partition and now I can't boot to my install DVD!



## eonxl (Aug 8, 2006)

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!


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## strawsy (Jun 23, 2011)

That sounds like quite a predicament  Just a couple of questions though. You said you have a copy of Tiger and Lion. Do you mean Tiger and Snow Leopard? Also with Tiger disc in the drive, have you tried holding 'C' straight after pressing the power button?


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

You can have a Lion disk, if you make one, which you can't do unless you have Snow Leopard, so I have to ask, where did you get the disk from? If you didn't buy Lion yourself from the Mac App Store, you can't legally use it.

But as for your problem, you have wiped out the Mac boot partition. The best thing is to backup anything you need from the Windows partition. Now I'd pull the hard drive out and then boot from the Tiger DVD to make sure you can still boot the Mac. If so, you'll need to connect the hard drive via USB to another Mac and let it reformat the hard drive to HFS+ with GUILD partitioning. Now you should be able to reinstall the drive and install OS X.
If you can't boot from the DVD with no hard drive, then reset the PRAM and try it again.

About the RAM, 32bit versions of Windows can only see up to 3 Gig.


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