rEFIt Freeze, Cant boot to OSX

[SevenDayFestiva]

Hey y'all!

I do not have ubuntu, but I have seen people talking about booting with and customizing rEFIt here, and this seems like a knowledgeable place to seek advice.

So here's my problem:

I have a macbook pro on which I have OSX 10.5.8 and Windows7 x64 (installed through bootcamp 3.1). I downloaded rEFIt and tried to modify the rEFIt interface following the instructions here:

http://colinharrington.net/blog/2009.../#comment-3970

After trying to change the background (hostname.bmg) to a different image rEFIt opened to show the new background (.bmg file) but nothing else (no mac or windows logos like previously) so I can't select an OS to boot to!!

I can still hold down the option key during startup to bring up the regular bootcamp menu which allows me to choose between my bootcamp partition (with windows 7) and what is now called the rEFIt partition (previously called Macintosh HD before I installed rEFIt) So I CAN boot to windows, but cannot boot into OSX without going through rEFIt, which is not showing me any options to choose from.

The modifications I made to rEFIt were through the rEFIt.const file in the rEFIt folder in the efi folder on my Mac partition. This const file now reads:



timeout 20
banner hostname.bmp
selection_big selection-big-ring.bmp
hideui tools shell funcs hdbadges label
legacyfirst


I can see and read my mac partition in windows, but cannot save to it to reverse these changes I made to the .const file. I was also hoping that the timeout in rEFIt would automatically talk me into OSX even though I cannot see any icons, but after 5+ minutes waiting on rEFIt nothing happens. Also, I made sure not to list badges under hideui so they should still be shown.



So my Q is:



How do I circumnavigate rEFIt to boot to OSX so I can reverse these bad changes I made


OR does rEFIt have shortcut keys that may let me circumnavigate its GUI?



OR is there a way I can change the rEFIt.const file on my OSX partition while booted in windows and save it back to the OSX partition?



Thanks!!

-----------------

Woops! had the wrong link to the tutorial I was using... the right one is: http://colinharrington.net/blog/2009/05/customizing-refit-an-efi-bootloader-intel-macs-slick/

-----------------

and by ".const" i meant the .conf file...

 

[balamw]

OR is there a way I can change the rEFIt.const file on my OSX partition while booted in windows and save it back to the OSX partition?

You should be able to boot from your OS X install disc and edit the files you need from Terminal.app, or get MacDrive and do it from Windows.

B

 

[SevenDayFestiva]

Got back in!

Thanks balamw!

I couldn't figure out terminal.app but what i did was select the startup disc utility after booting from the OSX install dvd and it let me choose to boot into the mac HD directly with a restart.

now my question is if anyone has successfully changed the banner on rEFIt? since I got back in I tried it with a different bitmap and I ran into the same problem. If I keep everything else in the .conf file the same and just disable the banner hostname.bmp rEFIt works normally so this is definitely the problem.

Does the hostname.bmp have to be a specific size to work? Has anyone changed it successfully?

Cheers!

 

[Nago]

Hi!
Sane experience here, ended up burning a rEFIt boot CD and trying out different hostnames.

Some of them don't even show up any changes, some other a black screen of death

I'll keep on trying and will report back!

I hope someone figures this out!

EDIT: Solved!
Got it, ended up working with a a 496x66 (pretty much random) monochrome (1 bit) black bmp that i created on Microsoft Paint.