Macbook Stuck on Gray Apple Boot Screen after 10.5.8 Update

[brownac5786]

So here's the deal.

Last weekend, my white Macbook was requiring a software update to 10.5.8. So I said, go for it and let it restart. That's when the trouble happened.

It began to restart but just stuck on the gray apple screen with the gear circle thing spinning. I tried several times to restart, but it never worked. I did all the things I knew to do (boot from DVD and run disk utility to repair permissions, zapped PRAM, ran it in the fsck thing; Booting in safe mode wouldn't work). Nothing helped. So I booted from my backup and used SuperDuper to rewrite my boot drive. (I guess I should point out that when booting from my backup, I was able to access all my files on my internal HD, it just wouldnt boot). After doing that revert thing to 10.5.7, everything worked fine.

So then I tried to update again this weekend. Same thing happened. I've tried the same steps. I can still get to anything I've added to my regular drive since my backup and all that. Just won't boot from that main drive.

Any ideas?

 

[JediMeister]

Although SuperDuper is a great convenience, if your computer won't run successfully with the update, there's something wrong with the image it saved. An archive and install (preserving) of the system will more than likely resolve the issue and allow you to update without complications.