I just downloaded Maverick and tried to install it however I get an error message in the "install" window which says "This disk cannot be used to start up your computer". Well it does indeed start up my computer so I'm not sure what the problem is. Currently running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 with 8 GB memory. Any ideas?
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
Your disk might need repair. Start Disk Utility and see what it says after you push the "Verify Disk" button.
The other possibility is that the drive is partitioned with APM instead of GUID. Select it in Disk Utility and look at the bottom, right info section. The Partition Map needs to say GUID Partition Table.
If not, you have to back up completeley and repartition the drive with a GUID partition table.
If you've Bootcamped the drive, see here: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3926
Thanks bigschwabbel. As it turned out I had to decrease the size of my disk volume.??? I'm not sure why but it worked. I did a third seach within the support community and found this information in a thread entitled: "while installing mountain lion I am getting: This disk cannot be used to start your computer" I'm installing Maverick however this users problem gave the same error message. So I decided to try the solution they received (reduce the disk volume). Happily it worked!
It is clear to all that I'm not a computer expert. In fact I'm barely a novice. However it seems reasonable to me that Apple might have mentioned this in the directions for upgrading from Snow Leopard to Maverick. Such a problem as I had, adjusting drive volume for installation, is a big deal for a person like myself who hasn't the background to intuitively know this. For that matter, maybe dealing with this potential problem should be built into the Maverick OS installation download. I should add that once this fix allowed the OS to install everything went perfectly so kudos to Apple for that.
It needed space to create the Recovery Partition and couldn't do it on its own.
I was sort of wondering about that possibility but I wouldn't have been able to word it so succinctly. Thanks Barney!
this disk cannot be used to start up your computer
