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danefc98

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 9, 2013
2
0
On my MacBook air I am stuck on the boot-up screen (apple logo and white screen)

I accidentally changed the permissions on Macintosh HD from "Everyone: Read and Write" to "Everyone: No Access" how stupid, I know. Anyway, I then turned the computer off (Even more stupid!) then when I attempted to reboot, I got stuck here, tried all the basics like SMC reset, PRAM reset. When I try to safe boot, the little bar at the bottom disappears and then the spinning gear also disappears. What can I do? :confused:
 

NorCalLights

macrumors 6502a
Apr 24, 2006
597
85
Still no luck mate, back onto the screen I was stuck on. Has anyone got any ideas?

What model Macbook Air do you have? If you have a thunderbolt-equipped model (and access to another thunderbolt-equipped Mac), you could try accessing it from another machine via Thunderbolt Target Disk Mode.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ph3838

Once you have the drive mounted on the second computer, just change the permissions back.

Also: Have you tried booting up holding the Option button? Maybe the recovery partition's Disk Utility could repair permissions again.
 
Last edited:

keysofanxiety

macrumors G3
Nov 23, 2011
9,539
25,302
If you're running Lion or higher --

Hold alt on startup, boot into the recovery partition. When booted into that, select the 'Reinstall Mac OS X' option. This will only reinstall the core OS files and won't touch any of your apps or data.

If that doesn't work, do the same again, but then go into Disk Utility, erase Macintosh HD, and then go back into the 'Reinstall Mac OS X' option to do a clean install of the OS (providing you've got a backup).

Also through the Recovery partition, there may be a way to change back what you did through Disk Utility (I'm just guessing though, I've never had experience with the problem you encountered)

I'm hoping the first option will work, however.

Please keep us updated :)
 
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