Yosemite installed then wouldn't again!
I used the SFOTT Beta to install Yosemite as a clean install onto one of my disc partitions. All went well and I have a working installation of Yosemite.
There were some issues with identity and permissions, however, where I used the migrate application to copy ID and apps over from my Mavericks partition. While trying to fix this I messed things up a little and decided to install another clean copy of Yosemite onto another partition. (I have 7TB of storage on 4 internal HDs and 2 externals so space is no problem for this). The two external drives are connected by USB3 connections from a PCI card rather than by the native USB2.
When I tried to create another install, however, I found I was unable to do so. The Mac just hangs whenever I try. This is with an unflashed ATI Radeon HD5770 in normal use so I can't see the boot process on screen.
I also Have an original NVidia GeForce 7300 still in a slot so am able to unplug the screens from the 5770 and into the 7300 so that I can see the boot process (and use an alt-start to choose a start-up partition)
I've put the boot onto internal hard drive partitions (which is what I had initially to install Yosemite - and Mavericks before it). I've also tried it on two different USB sticks.
I've tried rebuilding the SFOTT Beta several times (as this list suggests that the installer created is not always the same).
If the 5770 is in use then the system simply hangs. I can leave it for hours and nothing happens.
If I switch to the 7300 then I can see the boot process...
I've had a few different results show up, here. I've had the grey apple screen and spinner start up, then change to the black screen with a progress bar. I've had this progress bar go to about half way then freeze. I've even left this overnight for more than 8 hours but it doesn't go past this point.
More commonly I've had the progress bar go about one third of the way and then the Mac boots into whichever OS is indicated in system prefs.
When I try it in verbose mode I get a few lines suggesting the efi has booted but nothing more (see attached).
Starting in single mode I get a few pages of text then a long stream of 'bug' errors and finally it reboots into the OS chosen in sys prefs.
Once or twice I've had it go straight to a kernel panic report instead.
Not only can I not install a new Yosemite, I can't re-install Mavericks, either, now. I get the same sort of results when I try the previous version of SFOTT installer.
The Mac boots into my original installation of Yosemite happily enough though the 7300 video card can barely cope.
The screen refreshes visible with every window movement and the mouse curser submarines as you move it.
With the ATI 5770, the screens are perfect and the GPU acceleration seems to be working fine.
Some of my reading suggested USB connections might have an effect so I have tried with and without the 2 external USB drives connected and I have unplugged all other USB and firewire devices except keyboard and mouse.
One question springs to mind...
It seems that the there have been several versions of the boot.efi and I wonder whether the version used with the SFOTT Betqa has changed since my first successful install of Yosemite? It may be that my later attempts have been with a different boot.efi?
For information, I am still able to install Snow Leopard and Lion on this machine - tested using internal HD partitions.
