Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Cant boot into 64 bit

K

kicks66

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 28, 2009
24
0
Ive got a Macbook 5,1 (before they called it a Macbook Pro) unibody and no matter what I try i cant boot into 64 bit kernel. Can anyone understand why?

Using the command

Code: 
ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi

It shows EFI64, but when I hold 6 and 4 it doesnt boot into 64 bit kernel. Any explanations?
 
Yeah, I've got a late 2008 MacBook, like you, and can't boot into 64bit.

From what I gather this page says that it just might not be supported on the MacBook line. It seems MacBook Pros can boot into 64bit just fine. I'm hoping that it's a minor problem that Apple will sort out.

Even the app on that site won't let me boot into 64bit.

Anyone else got any ideas on how we could boot into 64bit?
 
jamesrp said:
Yeah, I've got a late 2008 MacBook, like you, and can't boot into 64bit.

From what I gather this page says that it just might not be supported on the MacBook line. It seems MacBook Pros can boot into 64bit just fine. I'm hoping that it's a minor problem that Apple will sort out.

Even the app on that site won't let me boot into 64bit.

Anyone else got any ideas on how we could boot into 64bit?
Click to expand...


I have a late 2008 MacBook and also cannot get it to book into 64 bit mode.
 
It also appears that Mac Mini's are prevented from 64-bit kernel as well.

All of my testing was done with the edit to /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist.

The latest MacBook Pro and Mac Pro's appear to work fine in my testing.

Biggest downside for me is no VMWare Fusion w/64-bit kernel.
 
I have a Mid 2009 13" macbook and i'm having the same problem. I've tried changing it to boot to 64 bit with nvram and by holding 6 and 4 but it doesn't work.

So a brand new macbook, the one they are selling now, Wont have it? I feel kinda screwed over by this. My macbook can support it as it has a 64-bit processor and EFI64. Why should i pay this much for a product thats artificially limited?
 
jpitcairn said:
I have a Mid 2009 13" macbook and i'm having the same problem. I've tried changing it to boot to 64 bit with nvram and by holding 6 and 4 but it doesn't work.

So a brand new macbook, the one they are selling now, Wont have it? I feel kinda screwed over by this. My macbook can support it as it has a 64-bit processor and EFI64. Why should i pay this much for a product thats artificially limited?
Click to expand...

Oh I agree!! Paying $29 is WAY too much..:rolleyes:
 
Can your Macbook support more than 32GB ?

Chances are you wouldn't notice the difference if the kernel was running in 64bit or 32bit.

I have MBP 5,1 2.93ghz with 8GB memory, that runs both kernels (32 & 64) and I can not perceive any difference when the system is running either, hence Apple's decision to make everything but the Xserve boot into the 32bit kernel by default.

Your 64bit applications will work and be fast regardless of which kernel you start.
 
Peace said:
You really need to study up on what exactly a 64-bit kernel does.
Click to expand...

I'm looking to upgrade my RAM to 6GB so yes. a 64-bit kernel would be nice. I would like to address more than 4GB of RAM to one application because i use audio software such as Pro Tools.
 
jpitcairn said:
I'm looking to upgrade my RAM to 6GB so yes. a 64-bit kernel would be nice. I would like to address more than 4GB of RAM to one application because i use audio software such as Pro Tools.
Click to expand...
Unless you plan on upgrading to 32GB+ RAM, no, you will not benefit from 64-bit kernel.
 
jpitcairn said:
I'm looking to upgrade my RAM to 6GB so yes. a 64-bit kernel would be nice. I would like to address more than 4GB of RAM to one application because i use audio software such as Pro Tools.
Click to expand...

I was always thinking that 64bit apps can still address more then 4GB no matter what the kernel is.
 
From what I've read, regular Macbooks won't be able to boot the 64bit kernel even though they support it. This is a limitation that seems to be set by Apple since the Macbook is the low-end of the Apple notebook line. One thing I do wonder is if the new 13" Macbook Pro's will be able to boot 64bit since they are basically a Macbook.
 
Okay, have a 4 month old 15" Macbook Pro here. I installed Snow Leopard and everything went fine. But I just checked the kernel in Activity Monitor and I noticed that it wan't 64 bit. Everything else was except for usbmuxd and Flash Player in Safari.

So I reboot holding down the 6 and 4 keys and it boots into 64-bit mode. Okay, that's great. But now, do I always have to hold down the 6 and 4 keys to get it to do that EVERY time I boot? Or is it defaulted now to 64-bit?
 
Im not really concerned about being able to boot into 64bit kernel, just couldn't understand why it wouldnt do it.

Oh well.
 
ksgant said:
Okay, have a 4 month old 15" Macbook Pro here. I installed Snow Leopard and everything went fine. But I just checked the kernel in Activity Monitor and I noticed that it wan't 64 bit. Everything else was except for usbmuxd and Flash Player in Safari.

So I reboot holding down the 6 and 4 keys and it boots into 64-bit mode. Okay, that's great. But now, do I always have to hold down the 6 and 4 keys to get it to do that EVERY time I boot? Or is it defaulted now to 64-bit?
Click to expand...

Should be default now. If you want to boot back to 32-bit, just hold 3 and 2
 
I'm getting Snow Leopard is a few days (family pack).

64-bit Kernels are great, and let me give you guys some background. 64-bit is the data bus line in the chipset. However, if you do the math (2^64) for memory, you get way over 1TB of RAM to use. So in all reality, 64-bit = 40-bit. 2^40 = 1TB.

Now when it comes to the kernel, if an application is made in 64-bit, you'll see it run much faster on the 64-bit kernel. However, you will not see a speed increase if you run it on a 32-bit chipset. This should be quite logical, because the processor has to get the data from the data bus in 2 clock cycles. However, if you take a 32-bit program and run it on a 64-bit chipset, you'll probably see a speed increase, but memory usage depends on this.

Now, since a few people complain about not being able to boot in 64-bit, a good way to test this is to a memory test and a highly computation intense. So find a Mac version of a program to calculate PI.
 
jpitcairn said:
I'm looking to upgrade my RAM to 6GB so yes. a 64-bit kernel would be nice. I would like to address more than 4GB of RAM to one application because i use audio software such as Pro Tools.
Click to expand...

Yeah.... Do you actually know Pro-Tool's that well ? If you did you should realise by the time Pro-Tools is updated to support Snow Leopard we'll all be talking about the next Mac OS ;) It takes them 'that long'.....

Hellhammer said:
Should be default now. If you want to boot back to 32-bit, just hold 3 and 2
Click to expand...

No - it defaults to 32bit regardless if you previously started up by forcing it in 64 bit.
 
64 Bit Macbook Alum.

If you have bought Snow Leopard you are booting into 64bit and running 32bit. In the system profiler its saying 64-bit Kernel and Extensions this has nothing to do with booting into 64 bit or kernel 64 bit.

However if you check your Activity Monitor (according to Apple) you will see that all your apps are running in 64-bit under kind ** Intel (64 bit).

I'm not disagreeing with anything anybody has been saying but only putting my 2 cents into it.

Snow Leopard is 64-bit and runs 64-bit you can't boot into it. On there developers page there is a way to boot into 32-bit however maybe somebody can find that.

In my opinion people are wasting there time complaining about why they can't boot into 64-bit when you "ALREADY ARE". OS X is a good OS! :)

this code is only used to check your efi others words its used as a grep command for the efi.

ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abiioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi

and I hate to say it but that guy who wrote that program to choose between 32-bit & 64-bit is nothing but terminal commands that you run. Search google.

if you have a 32-bit apple computer you can't run snow leopard (according to apple) only if you have a hack or something.

if you hold down 128 you can run into 128-bit mode. ;)

thank you!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back