Major 10.7.3 update problem

[dgwrigley]

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Trying to boot into SL just leaves the wheel turning again for hours and nothing happens

Also to link to another Mac don't I need FireWire which my 2009 Mac doesnt have!

Can I copy an installemd.dsg from someone elses Mac onto a bootable USB and use that to boot mine?? Will mine boot from that USB?

I can't believe an apple update has left me so messed up!!!

Thanks.

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

Trying to boot into SL just leaves the wheel turning again for hours and nothing happens

Something may be wrong with your optical drive, then, since both your SL and Lion discs refuse to boot.

Also to link to another Mac don't I need FireWire which my 2009 Mac doesnt have!

You said you have a MacBook Pro, right? ALL MacBook Pros have FireWire, and yours (I have the same one) will have FireWire 800.

Can I copy an installemd.dsg from someone elses Mac onto a bootable USB and use that to boot mine?? Will mine boot from that USB?

Yes, but you have to go through the process outlined earlier in this thread. You can't boot from the DMG file itself, it has to be restored to the USB drive through Disk Utility. The USB drive must first be formatted HFS+ Journaled and set to have a GUID partition.

I can't believe an apple update has left me so messed up!!!

Sounds like you got a perfect storm of a botched update process and a failed optical drive. Sucks big time, hope you get it figured out soon.

 

[scottsjack]

You said you have a MacBook Pro, right? ALL MacBook Pros have FireWire, and yours (I have the same one) will have FireWire 800.

Not true. When they renamed the alu MacBook to MacBook Pro it didn't have FW. Later, FW was added at the next refresh. I'm not sure if that was 2009 or not.

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

Not true. When they renamed the alu MacBook to MacBook Pro it didn't have FW. Later, FW was added at the next refresh. I'm not sure if that was 2009 or not.

Yes true. I HAVE the MacBook Pro that's essentially identical to the aluminum MacBook, and I have several drives daisy chained off the FW port as we speak. The 2009 model IS the aluminum MacBook renamed MBP (with a few upgrades, it wasn't a direct rename). I know what I'm talking about. There is no MacBook Pro in existence without a FireWire port... yet.

 

[Fubar1977]

In the end I swallowed the £55 charge and bought Lion on the official Apple USB drive and it has saved me about 2 days of messing around so probably worth it...