osx - Mavericks freezing on boot

15
2013-12
  • silvertriclops

    I updated my 2007 non-unibody Macbook Pro with 4gb RAM and 2.2ghz Core 2 Duo. It successfully installed, then the spinner froze on boot and the computer wouldn't start. I ended up just reinstalling Mavericks from scratch and starting over. But now, a few days later, I was just doing random stuff and the computer froze. It usually isn't a problem and has never been a problem for me before. This time, when I rebooted, the spinner on the boot screen froze again, and it just sits there for 5 minutes then shuts off. I can't boot in safe mode and I don't want to reinstall Mavericks and all my apps from scratch again. Is there anything I can do to get this thing to work??? Any commands I can run from recovery? Thanks ahead of time!

    UPDATE: I booted into recovery and restored from the most recent Time Machine backup. It told me to reboot so I did, and then I got this message. I didn't boot into verbose, it just did this. http://pastebin.com/rFaUtWfN

    • Answers
  • random

    After four days of testing, I found out that it was when I turned off the wireless (Airport). My laptop would totally freeze within seconds and every time I would try to reboot. When it still froze even after I rolled back to 10.8 I knew it wasn't a hardware issue.

    I found a fix on day 5: Do not turn off your Airport, Turn off your modem!

    Seriously, if it happens to you, get your Mac on target mode and browse your hard drive to:

    /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/

    and rename the file "com.apple.airport.preferences.plist" to something like "com.apple.airport.preferences.plist~bad" and reboot.

  • John Marc

    If you are in school, and have it running I would say keep it the way it is until you have some time to look at it. In my experience when you are having your specific issue with boots to spinning gear, then shuts down after a while it is an issue with the hard drive in specific. By the time that it gets to that gear in the boot process it is loading the boot.efi, and kernel extensions (Basically your actual software)... Meaning that it is trying to read what is on that disk. Which by your specs of your computer (Silver Key MBP) if that is your original drive.. Is probably getting pretty close to kicking the bucket. But you've done the smart thing and backed up. So, if you get more issues (slow (yes it's a 2006-07 computer it's gonna be slow) hard to start up, force shut down after sleep) it might be time for that new hard drive. Check out AASPs' to replace it, you WILL break your keyboard if you try it the first time. locate.apple.com will send you to a place that will do it, at cost. But you can get a pretty cheap drive on newegg.com


    • Related Question

    osx - OS X Snow Leopard fails to boot after upgrade to 10.6.1
  • pixeline

    I'm a fairly recent mac user. Been using windows for decades and happily switched. But i upgraded from 10.6 to 10.6.1 last night and the upgrade looks like it failed.

    I restarted the machine when it asked to then went to bed. In the morning the computer was still trying to shut itself off. So i forced the shutdown, restarted, but now i'm stuck with the loading spinner.

    What can i do?

    UPDATE: Verbose didn't show anything interesting. i also did the hardware test. Nothing comes up wrong. Disk utility did not find any error on the HD. But, it did show a fatal error when checking permissions.


    • Related Answers
  • brandstaetter

    You could try booting from the original CD and reinstall Leopard, hopefully without losing data.

    If you have a firewire port on the machine AND someone else with a firewire capable computer (and a cable), you could put the computer into target disk mode to copy all your data off and start with a fresh clean install of snow leopard.

    You should think about using Time Machine to keep your documents and data safe, as well as a third party backup solution like Mozy (2 GB free) or SuperDuper to make a bootable copy on an external drive.

  • alex

    When booting up the machine, press v on the keyboard. This will bring it into verbose booting mode. Maybe you'll find out more information that way. You could also try booting with x pressed (this is booting in safe mode, with limited functionality)

  • dertoni

    Try using the "Repair Permissions" option of Disk Utility. It's in Disk utility, after you click on your start up disk, under the first aid tab, down on the left.

    Here is an Apple support article that explains what it does.

    In any case try the backup that brandstaetter suggested first.

  • ulrikhansen

    Do a reboot and hold down the shift key. This will startup the computer in safe mode. the 10.5.7 and 10.5.8 updates sometimes do the same on Leopard and this sometimes work.

    Let the safeboot run through and if it works it will restart the computer and then start up normally.

    //Ulrik