How to reset my internal hard drive as start up drive?

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How to reset my internal hard drive as start up drive?

Recently my Mountain Lion OS X got screwed for some unknown reason & it wouldn't boot and my Snow Leopard OS X Install DVD wouldn't finish the installation. I had access to ubuntu so I thought may be i could partition my Macintosh Hard Drive and install it in a partition and I made two partitions, one-Macintosh HD and the other- UBUNTU. And the Mount Point of my Macintosh HD changed from "/" to "/Volume/Macintosh HD". Now it wouldn't even show in 'Start Up Drive selection' and wouldn't let me install any Mac OS X saying "Mac OS X can't be installed on this system" even when I merged the partitions back. How do I change the mount point back from to "/" fro "/Volumes/Macintosh HD" and set it as my start up drive?
It would be very helpful if anyone can solve my problem. Thanks.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Nov 29, 2012 10:11 AM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Nov 29, 2012 10:14 AM in response to cursed binny

Open Startup Disk preference pane, select the desired startup volume, click the Restart button.

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Answer 2

cursed binny Author

Level 1

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Nov 29, 2012 12:35 PM in response to Kappy

only "network start up" is appearing in the pane! Also, i told about the change in mount point, my internal hdd mounts like an external one at /Volumes/Macintosh HD. "Macintosh HD" is the name i gave the partition. No luck even after converting it back to one partition!

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Answer 3

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Nov 29, 2012 2:30 PM in response to cursed binny

Are you sure you haven't effectively changed the disk format? You may have also lost the standard OS X boot loader. I can't really tell what's going on without being able to "see" the disk's partition layout.

As for the mount point "/" and "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/" are equivalent.

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Answer 4

Courcoul

Level 6

18,558 points

Nov 29, 2012 3:24 PM in response to cursed binny

If you've tried all the above and still can't see the Macintosh HD startup volume, you may have lived up to your moniker and hosed your data. The last desperate measure would be starting up with the SL DVD, using its Disk Utility to repartition and reformat the internal drive to a single GUID/Apple Extended format volume and reinstall everything. If you have a bootable clone, pain will be minimum, increasing exponentially the less backups you have.

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Answer 5

cursed binny Author

Level 1

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Nov 30, 2012 6:21 PM in response to Kappy

@Kappy: I made 2 partions, 1 of Mac os extended (journaled) and the other MS DOS format. i'll soon upload the picture of it

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Answer 6

cursed binny Author

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Nov 30, 2012 6:34 PM in response to Courcoul

@Courcoul: what do you mean "repartition and reformat the internal drive to a single GUID/Apple Extended format volume" ? i have partioned the drive using SL DVD Disk Utility in the 1st place. i repartitioned it to mac extended format but no luck! 😟 also, i read in 1 of the forums that for the SL DVD to boot in my start up drive, it's mount point should be "/" and "/Volumes/Name" implies that the drive is not being detected as internal drive!

Also, i tried using terminal to create a user but it says "sudo: command not found". it showed the same for ubuntu installation. could you help me with that? I'm okay with installing either of the OS for the time being. Thanks

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