HELP! MBP Freezes upon start up

[lowercaseperson]

Hi all I'm needing some serious help here!

I'll explain the situation best I can. I have an older MBP (2.2 Ghz Core 2 duo) running Lion up to date. I needed a bigger HD, so I backed my small HD on an external disk (using time machine), put a new seagate drive in the SATA bay, and using my copy of lion on a flash drive, restored via time machine.

Now when I start up mail and activity monitor launch at login like normal, but then I get the pinwheel indefinitely. Now, if I force quit both applications at login the computer won't freeze...until I try to launch a program. Then a couple of different things happen. The first program I try to launch (say Safari) will bounce for a while and then come up as open (ie. little blue light beneath it on the dock, and safari on the top tool bar, but no window), then any other program I try to open will bounce for a while in the dock, and never open, just quit bouncing. So in the end I can't use anything.

A little side note here. I tried multiple restores AND multiple backups to time machine. The times before this I couldn't even get to the login, the infinite pinwheel would come up during the Grey Apple screen. I watched the installer log during the restore, and I got like 1500 message that said something about some file was not installed because the extension did not exist. It was the exact same line every time however.

One more thing. When I start up my MBP. I get the grey Apple screen with the hurricane, after a few seconds it flashes, and another grey apple screen comes up (with the hurricane a second later), and then flashes and dims. After that I get my desktop.

Any ideas??

Thanks for any ideas!

 

[heisenberg123]

Hi all I'm needing some serious help here!

I'll explain the situation best I can. I have an older MBP (2.2 Ghz Core 2 duo) running Lion up to date. I needed a bigger HD, so I backed my small HD on an external disk (using time machine), put a new seagate drive in the SATA bay, and using my copy of lion on a flash drive, restored via time machine.

Now when I start up mail and activity monitor launch at login like normal, but then I get the pinwheel indefinitely. Now, if I force quit both applications at login the computer won't freeze...until I try to launch a program. Then a couple of different things happen. The first program I try to launch (say Safari) will bounce for a while and then come up as open (ie. little blue light beneath it on the dock, and safari on the top tool bar, but no window), then any other program I try to open will bounce for a while in the dock, and never open, just quit bouncing. So in the end I can't use anything.

A little side note here. I tried multiple restores AND multiple backups to time machine. The times before this I couldn't even get to the login, the infinite pinwheel would come up during the Grey Apple screen. I watched the installer log during the restore, and I got like 1500 message that said something about some file was not installed because the extension did not exist. It was the exact same line every time however.

One more thing. When I start up my MBP. I get the grey Apple screen with the hurricane, after a few seconds it flashes, and another grey apple screen comes up (with the hurricane a second later), and then flashes and dims. After that I get my desktop.

Any ideas??

Thanks for any ideas!

first thing you could check is if the RAM cam un-seated, or maybe test some other RAM

 

[lowercaseperson]

RAM etc.

Checked the RAM and it is seated. I don't have any extra RAM to test with.

Also this may be something. When my desktop finally comes up, mail and activity monitor already have windows open...even if I manage to force quit them and restart. So the first thing I see is an activity monitor window (not operational) and a mail window (also not operational) AND I managed to open iCal last go round and it now opens a non functioning window.

Frankly is seems to do something different every time I reboot. This time I didn't try to force quit anything, and the desktop came up all my non-functioning windows came up, and then went back to a grey screen and a hurricane, but no apple logo. I have no idea whats going on!

 

[lowercaseperson]

Old HDD

Hey all,

So I am posting this on the same computer, just put the old HDD back in and it's running as well as ever. So any ideas as to whats happening during the restore?

 

[lowercaseperson]

New recovery drive

Here's another update on what I've done.

I erased my original time machine back-up and did a new back-up. I also used the Lion restore assistant to make a new recovery drive on a different USB drive.

I am in the process of trying to restore again, I'm afraid it's going to be the same thing all over again. Watching the installer log I keep getting this message under the "show errors only" tab:

160 Jun 6 6:16:40:23 localhost OSInstaller [395]: Bookmark failed to issue extension for item /com.apple.recovery.boot/baseSystem.dmg (depth=4001): No such file or directory

161 Jun 6 6:16:40:23 localhost OSInstaller [395]: Bookmark failed to issue extension for item (depth=4000): No such file or directory




Those two lines repeat over and over. The installer log is up to #4000 of those alternating lines now (pic below). Before I did the fresh back up I verified my permissions and my disk. Both were ok. I am so lost right now I feel like I've tried everything imaginable!

Anyone with a bright idea

PS Sorry pic is upside down, couldn't get it to flip. =/