Suddenly my Mac volume is named "EFI Boot" and I cant get it to boot

[Yixian]

I updated iTunes and QuickTime via/. software update, it asked me to restart, which I did, then it came up with an installing progress bar, when that finished it restarted... into XP

So I restarted, and again, went straight to XP.

So I restarted again and held Alt, but I wasn't given a choice between Macintosh HD and Windows, but "EFI Boot" and Windows. If I select it and tell it to boot into that volume, it just boots into XP.

What the hell is going on?

 

[MyMacIsBroke]

im getting the same thing. My mac wont start and the drives it selects at startup are now efi.

 

[matthewscott661]

EFI is your firmware. It's like the BIOS(basic input/output system) of a PC.
This is what allows you to use your hardware without as OS running. I know on my aluminum MacBook I recently had to update the EFI via software update.
The only thing I can assume is that your mac attempted to install the EFI update and for some reason failed. Call up applecare or visit an apple store and see what they say to do. There may be some way for them to update/reload the EFI from another mac.

 

[killerrobot]

Holy Dead Thread Resurrection Batman!

@mymacisbroke

Please provide a few more details:

10.4 or 10.5?
What kind of Mac are you using -Mini, iMac, Macbook ...?
Do you have your install disk readily available?

EDIT: It sounds like you interrupted an EFI update. Some EFI updates require that you hold down the power button once it shuts off until it flashes or emits a sound.

 

[Infrared]

I updated iTunes and QuickTime via/. software update, it asked me to restart, which I did, then it came up with an installing progress bar, when that finished it restarted... into XP

So I restarted, and again, went straight to XP.

So I restarted again and held Alt, but I wasn't given a choice between Macintosh HD and Windows, but "EFI Boot" and Windows. If I select it and tell it to boot into that volume, it just boots into XP.

What the hell is going on?

This sounds vaguely familiar.

You might try blessing '/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi':

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/Manpages/man8/bless.8.html

You can run the 'bless' command from a terminal window after
having booted from your OS X DVD. Feel free to ask for help on
'bless' if you're not sure about it.

You might also check the filesystem integrity while you're at it,
using Disk Utility (also available from the DVD).