I'm having a pretty troubled day, I'd really appreciate some advice.
I have some work I need to submit at midnight tonight and I can't access it because my Macbook Pro (mid-2009 unibody running 10.7.1 Lion) won't fully start up.
The story:
So I install Sophos antivirus for OSX earlier today. I haven't run a scan yet, but I have updated. This has been the only major recent change on my Mac.
An hour ago I noticed that my machine had a lot of memory wired but inactive, so I decided to restart to speed things up as I hadn't done so in a few days.
The story is the same every time: I login and my applications start loading. I get a rainbow wheel during start up when only a few things are open (activity monitor, chromium, gnu privacy guard, evernote, etc.). The rainbow wheel never goes away.
The WindowServer still responds as I am still able to drag windows and move the cursor, but nothing else is responsive. I cannot click or select anything.
I know that there are a few buttons I can hold down during start up to trigger things like system and disk checks, but I'm not sure what they are or which to use.
Recommendations?
I have some work I need to submit at midnight tonight and I can't access it because my Macbook Pro (mid-2009 unibody running 10.7.1 Lion) won't fully start up.
The story:
So I install Sophos antivirus for OSX earlier today. I haven't run a scan yet, but I have updated. This has been the only major recent change on my Mac.
An hour ago I noticed that my machine had a lot of memory wired but inactive, so I decided to restart to speed things up as I hadn't done so in a few days.
The story is the same every time: I login and my applications start loading. I get a rainbow wheel during start up when only a few things are open (activity monitor, chromium, gnu privacy guard, evernote, etc.). The rainbow wheel never goes away.
The WindowServer still responds as I am still able to drag windows and move the cursor, but nothing else is responsive. I cannot click or select anything.
I know that there are a few buttons I can hold down during start up to trigger things like system and disk checks, but I'm not sure what they are or which to use.
Recommendations?