Mid-2009 MBP Only boots in safe-mode

[BuiltforSin]

mid-2009 MBP
2.26 ghz intel core 2 duo
8gb 1067 mhz ddr3
os x [10.9.2 mavericks]

MBP died Sunday. Charged Sunday afternoon and it booted normally, but it froze, and kept giving me the spinning pinwheel. Turned off and restarted in safe mode. Although it runs a little slower, it works flawlessly.

System Info in safe mode:
cpu idle 98%
memory 5.25gb free
mac hd 87.54gb free
volume recovery HD is okay

Diagnostics:
1. cleared cache with onyx
2. uninstalled adobe flash
3. unchecked all login items
4. repaired disc permissions

I'm forgetting a couple things, but is there anything else I can do? Should I run an anti-virus to search for trojans/viruses? I don't have my snow leopard discs so I can't run AHT.

 

[Weaselboy]

So you can boot into safe mode, but not normal mode still?

Can you think of anything you installed recently that started this issue. Safe mode bypasses any launch or startup items and if installed something that uses an incompatible launch agent it could cause this.

When you say it "died", what were doing at the time and exactly what happened?

Try a command-r boot to recovery and use Disk Utility to run a verify disk. Does that show any errors?

 

[BuiltforSin]

So you can boot into safe mode, but not normal mode still?

Can you think of anything you installed recently that started this issue. Safe mode bypasses any launch or startup items and if installed something that uses an incompatible launch agent it could cause this.

When you say it "died", what were doing at the time and exactly what happened?

Try a command-r boot to recovery and use Disk Utility to run a verify disk. Does that show any errors?

Hi,
There's nothing new that I've installed recently. I've unmarked all login items. When I say "died" I meant the battery died, sorry. I wasn't doing anything at the time it just died on its own while sleeping.

When I did command-r boot I verified the disk, and it said HD was okay. Ran a repair disk and it mentioned something about the volume. It repaired the volume, said volume mac HD appears to be okay, and then said it was updating boot support partitions. Restarted the computer, and it's still doing the same thing when I boot normally.

 

[BuiltforSin]

Could it be a virus or trojan that installed third-party software? Should I run a anti-virus scan?

 

[Weaselboy]

Could it be a virus or trojan that installed third-party software? Should I run a anti-virus scan?

I doubt it, but it is worth a try. Try out the free ClamXAV and also maybe give this adware removal tool a run.

Also look in /Library/StartupItems and /Library/LaunchDaemons or /Library/LaunchAgents for anything odd.

Working is safe mode and not otherwise is usually a result of some sort of launch or startup item. But it is off this started all of a sudden without you installing anything. Could it be something auto updated and caused the issue?

 

[ecschwarz]

Although this is probably a long shot, you could just reinstall OS X over itself - although the other replies are more likely (some sort of conflict), if there is some sort of damaged system file that is outside of the "minimum" set used for Safe Boot, that could be causing problems.

I had that happen with an iMac once - due to time and needing to get the machine back into service, I reinstalled OS X and left everything else alone and it took care of the issue. On older versions of OS X, there used to be an "Archive & Install" option that would collect your old installation and install a completely new one from scratch - with 10.7 and later, it only seems you can reinstall over your current one.

 

[BuiltforSin]

I doubt it, but it is worth a try. Try out the free ClamXAV and also maybe give this adware removal tool a run.

Also look in /Library/StartupItems and /Library/LaunchDaemons or /Library/LaunchAgents for anything odd.

Working is safe mode and not otherwise is usually a result of some sort of launch or startup item. But it is off this started all of a sudden without you installing anything. Could it be something auto updated and caused the issue?

I'll try the /Library tonight. The adware tool removed an item of adware, but still the same issue. Everytime I ran ClamXAV or Sophos the computer would freeze or there'd be an error so I couldn't fully run an anti-virus program.

I don't think it's something auto-updated, because I upgraded to Mavericks when it happened thinking something was out of date and it still did it.

Although this is probably a long shot, you could just reinstall OS X over itself - although the other replies are more likely (some sort of conflict), if there is some sort of damaged system file that is outside of the "minimum" set used for Safe Boot, that could be causing problems.

I had that happen with an iMac once - due to time and needing to get the machine back into service, I reinstalled OS X and left everything else alone and it took care of the issue. On older versions of OS X, there used to be an "Archive & Install" option that would collect your old installation and install a completely new one from scratch - with 10.7 and later, it only seems you can reinstall over your current one.

I haven't tried reinstalling osX yet. That's a last option for me, but I'm running out of troubleshooting ideas.