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Have I borked my boot partition?

someguy

someguy

macrumors 68020
Original poster
So, I decided I was going to put Ubuntu on my PowerBook and wanted to create a seperate partition to install it to on my 80GB internal hard drive. So to create the space, I resized my "PowerBook G4" partition, yes the one with Leopard installed to it, and yes, the one I was currently logged into (smart, eh?). Everything but the mouse cursor locked up about 20 seconds into the resizing process and I was forced to reboot via holding the power button down.

Now all I get when I fire the machine up is the Apple logo and the spinning deal underneath it just spins and spins, but I never get anywhere. I didn't tamper with any files or anything, only played with the free space on the partition, so my install should still be good, but how do I get things back to the way they were?

I have everything backed up via Time Machine, and I also have other Macs lying around so TDM is an option if that helps.

What can I do?


btw, it just hit me, I'm probably supposed to boot to the Live Ubuntu CD, THEN start fooling with my partitions and such, huh? 🙄
 
Erase and Install from the time machine backup is probably the easiest solution. (and when you're doing it setup a partition for Ubuntu 😉).
 
Eraserhead said:
Erase and Install from the time machine backup is probably the easiest solution. (and when you're doing it setup a partition for Ubuntu 😉).
Click to expand...
Alright, but I don't know how to do that. 😀

...and is there no way to fix whatever damage I may have done to my partition?
 
Insert the Mac OS X Leopard DVD and hold down C on startup. It'll give you the option to restore from Time Machine.
 
^^ And you should first load disk utility from the Mac OS X DVD (before the installer, it should be in the tools menu) to create the partitions.
 
Alright, I've "Successful" complete this process twice now, both with fresh formats and each using a different restore point from Time Machine, and I still get lift with the eternally spinning cog-type thing and the gray Apple logo. Just to be sure I was waiting long enough, I let it go all night, and it's still sitting here spinning so something isn't right.

Any ideas?
 
Are you formatting the entire drive and installing it? or are you just installing into the old "Powerbook G4" partition?
 
dvince2 said:
Are you formatting the entire drive and installing it? or are you just installing into the old "Powerbook G4" partition?
Click to expand...
I reformatted the entire drive, creating two partitions this time (one for Ubuntu which has not yet been installed).
 
Repairing permissions on the partition seems to have helped to some extent. I can now get to the stage where my desktop wallpaper shows up (no icons, Dock, or menubar however) and I can move the cursor around.

Getting closer? Any ideas?
 
RESOLVED: The repair permissions fixed whatever was wrong, I just had to turn on my second display which was my primary (hence only seeing a blank desktop on the second display).

Thanks for the help! 😀
 
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