I just updated to 10.3.6, rather I got half-way through the update when I was prompted I had to manually restart my computer by holding the power button down. I restarted and came to find no icons, no finder, no ability to launch finder, and more importnatly no access to Disk Utility. I open Disk Utility and it mysterously shuts itself off before truly opening. I also tried to re-download the update but it will not successfully install, it gets hung up on the "Read Me" sections. Any ideas?
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Updated to 10.3.6 and lost Finder and Disk Utility
- Thread starter pixmod
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mklos
macrumors 68000
Did you repair permissions before running the update the first time? This is where most people run into problems when running an OS X update. They never repair permissions thinking that nothing will go wrong and then when it does, the **** hits the fan.
Here are a few things to do BEFORE running the update:
1. Back everything up...you never know when something's gonna screw up.
2. Repair Permissions
3. Run update (restart)
4. Repair Permissions again (Apple may of been a little sloppy with permissions so its best to repair them after the update too).
You do these 4 things and you shouldn't have any problems.
Here are a few things to do BEFORE running the update:
1. Back everything up...you never know when something's gonna screw up.
2. Repair Permissions
3. Run update (restart)
4. Repair Permissions again (Apple may of been a little sloppy with permissions so its best to repair them after the update too).
You do these 4 things and you shouldn't have any problems.
Man i had the same problem with my ibook 900! I eventually got disk utility to open and repaired disk permissions, but it didnt fix it. I could get to the desktop/dock but the finder wouldnt open. I just did a clean install and software update and everything works fine! Good luck!
Westside guy
macrumors 604
I had this same problem with my daughter's iBook, and the end result was the update had written a zero-length quicktime file that was required. Specifically /System/Library/Frameworks/QuickTime.framework/Versions/A/QuickTime was zero-length (even without finder you should be able to launch terminal if you've got it on your dock, so you can check this). Please post back if this same file is zero-length for you, because then this probably should be reported to apple.
I had these three issues: 1) Finder wouldn't start (fixed by getting a good copy of above file from my Powerbook). After fixing that, I found 2) X11 wouldn't start (/usr/X11R6/lib/libfreetype.6.3.dylib was zero length - same solution as #1). After fixing THAT, I found 3) I couldn't mount disk images.
At that point I decided to download the FULL 96MB upgrade installer from Apple's website. I opened it on my Powerbook so I could pull the .pkg file, transferred that to the ibook and installed. Everything was fixed at that point.
It would seem unlikely to me that repair permissions would affect an install in any way, since installs run sudo/root (and therefore ignore permissions).
I had these three issues: 1) Finder wouldn't start (fixed by getting a good copy of above file from my Powerbook). After fixing that, I found 2) X11 wouldn't start (/usr/X11R6/lib/libfreetype.6.3.dylib was zero length - same solution as #1). After fixing THAT, I found 3) I couldn't mount disk images.
At that point I decided to download the FULL 96MB upgrade installer from Apple's website. I opened it on my Powerbook so I could pull the .pkg file, transferred that to the ibook and installed. Everything was fixed at that point.
It would seem unlikely to me that repair permissions would affect an install in any way, since installs run sudo/root (and therefore ignore permissions).
I want to reinstall
I don't know Terminal very well at all, I backed everything up but now I can't format and start fresh because I can't access the CD that has the installer on it, is there a way to open the installer from the CD another way, without using Finder, since mine is forever gone? Like maybe booting from the CD like is possible on a Windows based PC?
I don't know Terminal very well at all, I backed everything up but now I can't format and start fresh because I can't access the CD that has the installer on it, is there a way to open the installer from the CD another way, without using Finder, since mine is forever gone? Like maybe booting from the CD like is possible on a Windows based PC?
Westside guy
macrumors 604
pixmod said:
You can boot from the CD by inserting it and holding down the "c" key while booting.