Troubleshooting

Obviously not every problem and situation can be covered here. But there are some common problems with simple solutions that can help your troubleshoot your netbook. If you know of any other great troubleshooting ideas, please let me know through the Contact page.

  1. There are several "kernel flags" that can help the boot process. Kernel flags tell the operating system what should happen during operation. Kernel flags are entered at the boot prompt, in our case the Chameleon bootloader when it has been halted from automatically booting. On typical installations, you can halt the bootloader simply by pressing any key on your keyboard before the blue progress bar runs out. By pressing another key, you can bring up the boot prompt, which is down in the bottom left corner of the screen. It looks like "boot: ".

    You can use more than one boot flag, all you need to do is separate them by a space. For example: "boot: -x -f". Just press Enter when you have them ready to boot. Here is a small list of kernel flags:

    • -x: This will boot Mac OS X into Safe Mode, which skips over some of the more fancy extensions and login applications during the boot process. This can help if an extension or application is causing trouble.
    • -f: This will force Mac OS X to load the extensions (drivers) anew. OS X makes a cache of the extensions it needs and stores them in a compressed file so that startup is quicker, but sometimes it gets corrupted. This will load the actual kext files instead.
    • -v: Verbose mode. This will stream the startup process commands on the screen until you are safely to Mac OS X. Verbose mode is normally used to report where startup is halting so developers can fix it, but in some rare cases it can help the system successfully boot where other methods do not. Be warned, though, it is much slower to boot in Verbose mode.

    For more kernel flags and their descriptions, please see this thread over at InsanelyMac.

  2. Check you BIOS. Sometimes a wrong version or wrong setting can throw everything off. Some devices can get disabled in BIOS, such as the WiFi, and then it won't work in OS X. Check the BIOS FAQ page to see if your settings are correct.

  3. Keep that flash drive or DVD handy! Especially if you create an USB flash drive for the install process, save it in case your bootloader fails. The bootloader on USB or DVD can still boot from the internal drive, and will also contain proper extensions (drivers) if those were corrupted. If you need to use NetbookInstaller again and you used a USB drive, you can use it from the Mac OS X Installer, found under the Utilities menu.

  4. If during installation the Mac OS X Installer reaches the end but still tells you it failed, it is probably wrong. Your installation probably worked just fine, just go ahead and reboot. Follow the guide and you should be just fine.

  5. NetbookInstaller isn't perfect yet; sometimes it just doesn't recognize your model. As long as you're running the application on your netbook, you'll be fine. You can try it again after a installing and a reboot if you are sure that your model is supported, this will usually make it work correctly.

  6. You don't need to do anything fancy to update NetbookInstaller from an older version (even if you are upgrading from DellEFI.) You simply run the app like you would during your first install. You can also only select the things you want, such as just the bootloader or generating a new dsdt.aml file.

  7. For Leopard users, NetbookInstaller will only work properly for 10.5.6 and above. You need to update to at least that version, if not a later one, for optimum performance. You can check your version by clicking the Apple in the Menu Bar and selecting About This Mac. For update instructions, see the OS Update guide.

  8. Not all USB flash media and hard drives will work for the guides here. There is no easy way to tell if a piece of hardware is good or not, luckily most of it is. But on occassion a person will e-mail me with a lot of issues and it turns out in the end that their flash drive was the problem. The same goes for DVD drive, they are not all compatible with the Mac OS X Installer. Even though these drives may work fine for storage and other things, they may simply just not work for the installtion process. Try a another flash or hard drive, perhaps from a different company.

  9. Because NetbookInstaller is meant to run on version 10.5.6 and up, there is a serious bug with Mac OS X versions below 10.5.6 which causes disks, whether physical USB drives or disk images (.dmg files), to not mount after boot. The fix is simply to upgrade to 10.5.6 or higher, but this is especially a pain since the Combo Update that is required comes packaged in a disk image file.
    The fix is two-fold. You will first need to open the disk image somehow on another computer and copy the package (.pkg) file inside to a USB drive. This can be done on another Mac, a Linux distribution capable of mounting disk images, or on Windows using software such as TransMac or HFSExplorer. (It may also be possible to open the disk image using Disk Utility, this is unconfirmed.) If you happen to have the Toast CD burning application, it can also open the image on your netbook. Assuming you used another computer to extract the package file, you will need to get the netbook to mount the USB drive. This can be done by plugging the flash drive in before the netbook is booted up. Once the Combo Update is installed, the problem should be fixed.

  10. Some people who use the older Leopard discs (10.5.4 and below) have had a strange issue where, after installing the latest Combo Update, the computer will no longer boot and simply reports "Can't find mach_kernel 10.5.6". What you need to do is type "mach_kernel" so that is says "boot: mach_kernel" in the bottom left corner. Press Enter, and it should boot Mac OS X. Once it has fully loaded, open your internal drive folder, select Go in the menu bar at the top of the screen, select "Go to Folder", type Extra and press enter. This should open a new window, find the com.apple.Boot.plist file, open it using TextEdit or your favorite text editor (I like Smultron), and change the line that says "mach_kernel.10.5.6" to just "mach_kernel". Save it and you should be good to go.

If none of this helps, check out the "User Fixes/Improvements not in NBI" thread over at MyDellMini.

mechdrew Troubleshooting Version 3.02