Macbook will not boot on USB thumbdrive...

[xiaobao12]

hi all,

i was able to upgrade successfully from leopard to snow leopard with a USB thumb drive when my internal HD died in my macbook pro a few weeks ago.

i am now trying to upgrade my wife's macbook to snow leopard (from tiger) but i cannot get startup manager to recognize the drive!

the bizarre thing is that the thumb drive is recognized just fine in finder (this includes disk utility and even system preferences) on her macbook. i can even double click the mac os x icon on the thumb drive and it will ask me to press restart to proceed with installation of snow leopard.

however, after the computer restarts, it just loads right into the tiger os desktop.

i've tried holding down the option key, resetting the PRAM, etc. nothing works.

does anybody have any ideas? thanks very much in advance..

 

[MisterMe]

...

does anybody have any ideas? thanks very much in advance..

What is the source of your OS on the thumb drive?

 

[xiaobao12]

Hi MisterMe,

I'm not sure what you mean by source...I made the thumbdrive GUID partition with Disk Utility and an image of my install disc. Does that answer your question?

TIA.

 

[guitargoddsjm]

Did you go into System Preferences and try changing the startup disk?

 

[xiaobao12]

Hi Guitar,

I did try that already...it restarts, then boots directly to the Tiger desktop.

 

[phatqao]

Also, there's an open-source program called rEFIt that prompts you for the boot volume when you start your computer...that could be helpful

http://refit.sourceforge.net/

 

[xiaobao12]

hi phatqao,

i will attempt to try to restart with refit and post back. thanks for your help.

 

[xiaobao12]

hmmm.....refit will load but as with before, the USB drive does not show up. Only the MAC HD shows up.