Wasnt sure if I should put this in the OSX86 or real Mac thread...

I am hoping someone with some knowledge of Macs and iAKTOS can help me.

I am quite experienced in building PCs, about 20 years of experience actually, but not alot about Macs.

I purchased a 24" iMac a few months back and loved it, so I thought I'd built a Hackintosh as well. So far, no luck. My first try I was unable to get the USB stick to boot with iAKTOS v7 with OSXTools installting EFI. Only a blinking cursor on a screen. I then decided to give it another whirl this time using Chameleon.

I went about using Disk Utility on my Mac to format HFS+ and restore the iAKTOS image to the 8gb flash drive. I then installed Chameleon 2. It asked to reboot to complete installation.

I forgot to remove the iAKTOS flash drive and when the iMac came back up it boot from the USB and started the IAKTOS installtion, at the second screen where the disk utlity, etc are located I turned off the machine not wanting to 'continue'. I removed the thumb drive and turned it back on.

The iMac will now not boot, instead it displays a white screen with a folder and a flashing question mark. If I put the iAKTOS usb in it boots back to the installation screen with the utilities. I used Disk Utility to check and repair (no issues) the normal startup volume. It shows no issues. If I say Quit Installer it gives the options of specifying a start up volume but selecting it does not bring up any window to select a volume. If I hold option down on the boot, nothing appears to boot into? If I plug in the usb stick, the installer then becomes the only option to boot from.

How could leaving that usb stick in, and not proceeding with the installation (on the iMac) hose this system completely?

Is there a way to get my system back to booting from that original system volume.

I was excited about Hackintosh, but relectant based on this first experience.

Any help from Hackintosh or standard Mac users would be greatly appreciated as I ramp up my Mac skills.

Thanks again!

You installed Chameleon 2 on mac?
Not good, but I think that nothing serious.
try to do this:
Connect to imac a external hard drive or 16 gb flash drive. Insert restore DVD in imac and start from it, then install new system on the flash or ext drive. After that start up from it (flash or ext drive, try to hold down option button on keyboard on startup and select ext drive). If mac will start up from it, This means that imac is OK, and you only need to backup important files from internal hard drive, formating it and install clean system easy

Thanks for the reply. Trying to avoid the reinstall but might be the only way.