Macbook wont boot after update.

[Willis]

Hello one and all.

This is regarding a friend who I'm trying to help.

This is what she sent me:

I desparately need your help!

I think I have killed my macbook, and obviously this is dreadful timing with me leaving the country next thursday and all.

Basically, i agreed to it installing updates and then restarting, when I didn't want it to.. and it was taking ages, so I simply turned it off at the button.. and now, whenver I try to turn the damn thing on is starts up as if it were about to work, and the screen goes blue for a sec, like it's working, then it goes back to loading and freezes.


We've resetting the PRAM and it works in Safe Mode, so deleted Login Items too. Apparently, no applications will open though.

Ideas?

 

[Tallest Skil]

What'choo talkin' 'bout, Willis?

Do you have the install disks? Boot from them and see what Disk Utility has to say.

 

[Willis]

haha, never gets old!

Well so far, I've only helped her through Facebook, so havent actually seen what shes doing. I've told her to dig the CD's out for when I meet up with her later because we'd need them. But other than that, I dont even know what updates she was doing. I think shes on Tiger, so... could of been anything!

 

[Willis]

Well, I got it fixed in the end.

It was running 10.5.5 and is the base Macbook from last years range.

I did repair permissions with my retail leopard disc which should quite a few errors, but that didnt work, tried verbose mode and following instructions I found on another site to delete plists, didnt work. Even in Safe Mode, only Safari and Firefox opened, you couldnt access the Finder.

In the end I put it into Target Disk mode and pulled off her important files, then nuked the drive with a fresh install.

she got a stern telling off to not turn her computer off again during an update!