h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's an older MacBook Pro. After a software update, all that appears is the grey screen with the grey apple logo and the grey spinning gear. This goes on and on until the computer shuts itself down.

There are some online instructions but they all begin with "start your mac in safe mode" which I can't seem to get to.

safe mode hold dwon shift key when booting!

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564

Thanks, Menthol Penguin.

Although I was unsuccessful using just the Shift key, I was finally able to get into verbose safe mode with Shift-Command-V.

Along with many lines of exciting reading was this message:

a link/load error occured for kernel extension /System/Library/Extensions/I080211Family.ktext/Contents/PlugIns/AirportAtheros5424.kext

atheros appears to be a wireless internet, from what I can work out from the message when the kernel tried to load the atheros plugin for the kernel it crashed. is there any way for you to turn the wireless off and try again? My guess would be that the software update isn't quite comaptible with you wireless but that's just a guess.

I'm still googling at the minute

what update number/version was it?

how old is the mac and what version os is it running?

Not all that old, I bought it used in 2006 I think. It's running 10.4, and to clarify, most of the other exciting lines of text are:

happy-nerds-computer /System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS/loginwindow: Login Window Application Started

over and over and over

It never advances past this point; it just loops.

The security update was 2009-004.

There's always an "archive and install" - put in your original 10.4 DVD, restart and hold down the "c" key. When the installer starts, click the options to do the "archive and install" - it sets aside your existing system software and installs a fresh copy. Or you could go up to the "Utilities" menu (still starting from the DVD) and start up Disk Utility to see if there are any disk repairs that might help.

If you have another mac nearby and a firewire cable, you can put the laptop in 'disk mode' and then do all sorts of fancy repairs.

Okay, I have connected this computer to that one with a firewire, and restarted that one in disc mode so that there is currently a firewire symbol bouncing around the screen. I used the disc utility, but it didn't find a problem.

I haven't been able to locate the mac OS disk.

Ran /sbin/fsck -fy from the command line.

It said the volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK.

When you used disk utility, did you do the repair permissions thing?

OK - if you have it connected to another mac, you should be able to download the latest "combo" update for 10.4 from the Apple site and reinstall it. That might correct any problems with the latest software install. I'm guessing something got corrupted in the last update, and this should rewrite those files.

Oh, and you can try diskwarrior too - it can often find and fix problems that disk utility cannot. You'll have to pay for it, but since you can start up from another mac you'll be able to use the downloadable version.

Couple of possibly relevant pages...


http://systemsboy.com/2005/12/strange-systems-problem-strange-fix.html

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9234678

The second link is good advice that definitely will not harm anything. But if you follow the advice in the first link, make sure you have the same OS version on the machine you copy from. That's dodgy advice; it could work but if you're not careful it could also make things much, much worse than before.

Definitely proceed with caution

It may be useful to examine the /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/loginwindow.crash.log

~~~

most of the 'solutions' I've found involve the archive/install procedure, which is somehow unsatisfying. Unix type systems shouldn't ought to require re-install, dammit!

okay...

Please still be online

Okay I've got a

/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/lssave.crash.log

It says Thread 0 crashed, and a great deal of complaints about the ImageLoader::recursiveRebase

The update was Security Update 2009-003

Just took a peek.