Mac os x cannot start up from this disk

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Level 1

24 points

Mac os x cannot start up from this disk

I have a 2008 MacBook Air which runs Leopard. I want to upgrade to Snow Leopard and then Lion. I have the Snow Leopard family pack disk and try to do the install but it say 'Mac OS X cannot start up from this disk' and shows a yellow triangle with a !

I went to the genius bar and they told me to put the Snow Leopard disk in the superdrive and restart holding down C and it would then work - but it did not. I also saw on a forum about using disk utility and partion and resizing the partition then putting it back as it was originally and then re trying but I get the same message.

Anybody got any ideas?

iMac 27" 3.2GHz Core intel i3, Mac OS X (10.6.5), MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, MacBook (all 10.6.1), iMac G5 (10.4.11

Posted on Dec 31, 2011 2:30 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Guy Emerson Author

Level 1

24 points

Dec 31, 2011 6:58 AM in response to Guy Emerson

Saw an article by Topher Kessler: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10330520-263.html

The extract from that article below worked for me.

Note when I first resized the partion (comment above) I did not 'apply', this time I did and then resized back to the original full size and hit 'apply' again. Although when the install starts it shows the size of the partion to be the smaller (temporary) size, it is not and the install completes with no issues.

Boot from the Snow Leopard DVD and select your language. Then launch "Disk Utility" from the "Utilities" menu and perform the following steps:

Select your boot device (the device above the boot volume name), and select the "Partition" tab.
Resize the partition by selecting the volume name in the rectangular volume representation and drag the bottom-right corner of it to change its size.
Click "Apply" to change the partition's size.
Revert the change by dragging the same resizing corner back to the bottom, and click "apply."

After this is done, quit out of Disk Utility and try installing Snow Leopard again. Since you are booted from the Snow Leopard DVD you should be able to continue immediately without having to reboot your system.

Hope this helps others. Thanks Topher!

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Answer 2

Teela

Level 1

58 points

Apr 30, 2017 3:31 AM in response to Guy Emerson

Your answer is still helping people. Never would have though of that to clear a glitch. That might have solved my problem when trying to reinstall lion from the recovery partition. Oh well back to snow leopard for this original MB-air.

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Answer 3

Nov 20, 2017 4:41 PM in response to Guy Emerson

This worked for me too! Preparing a 2009 Mac Mini for sale - just glad i kept the original install discs for it (10.6.2) to reinstall from. Had no luck trying to download El Capitan (it's last OS).

Massive thanks again!

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