Unable to boot into Leopard

[artimeg]

Hello,

I have a 2nd gen MacBook, running Leopard.

I did a clean install of Leopard when it came out.

I did the latest Software Update. Then the computer went to reboot, I shut down any programs that were running before restarting. Once I told it to restart the Finder went away, but I could still see my desktop picture.

After at least 30 minutes of waiting. I had to hold the power button down in order to shut the system down. When I went to power the system up again I got the Setup Assistant.

I then booted to the Leopard Install disk and Repaired Permissions and did Repair Disk. This did not help.

Upon exiting the Leopard disk I ran Startup Disk and selected my Hard drive, which it saw as running OS X 10.5.1.

I also tried /sbin/fsck -fy the first run found some problems, so I ran it again and it said everything was fine.

I am fairly new to the Mac world and those are just some of the common solutions to problems that I could find.

I am at a loss now as to what is going on.

I do have AppleCare, but the nearest Apple store is over 45 minutes away. So, if anyone has any ideas as to what could of happened and save me a trip that would be great.

Thanks.

 

[mad jew]

If you did a clean install and already the drive is having issues, then I think the drive may be failing.

 

[artimeg]

Hi, thanks for the response.

It was running just fine (Had Leopard installed for a little over a month), until the last Software Update, the Quicktime patch. I guess I will have to try another clean install.

Boo...

Should I even attempt another install or should I take it to an Apple store and have them look at it? As I said the closest is 45 minutes away and this weekend we are supposed to get 6-8 inches of snow, so getting there may be a problem.

Thanks.

 

[mad jew]

I wouldn't personally try another clean install because I think this looks like a hardware fault.

 

[Cleverboy]

The EXACT same thing happened to me. Upon getting home, I stuck a DVD in my Mac, and it crashed... showing me a pleasant "You must now reboot" message. As it restarted, it went to the Setup Assistant... which was highly disturbing.

This is a known bug. Here is the solution I found.

1) Boot into Safe Mode by holding down the shift key upon boot... (wait, wait, wait... it will finally come up)
2) DO NOT LOG IN
3) Hit the back arrow key
4) Then hit the restart button
5) Wait, it will then run/rerun the updates
6) Wait, wait, wait and it will finally restart...

Also someone ran into it here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/4500911/

Honestly, Apple has a bit of a PR nightmare with this. I almost ruined my computer/files trying to restore it to working condition. I'd accidentally unplugged my Time Machine drive, so I hadn't backed up in 10 days. Fixing that as of NOW.

~ CB

 

[drew0020]

The EXACT same thing happened to me. Upon getting home, I stuck a DVD in my Mac, and it crashed... showing me a pleasant "You must now reboot" message. As it restarted, it went to the Setup Assistant... which was highly disturbing.

This is a known bug. Here is the solution I found.


Also someone ran into it here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/4500911/

Honestly, Apple has a bit of a PR nightmare with this. I almost ruined my computer/files trying to restore it to working condition. I'd accidentally unplugged my Time Machine drive, so I hadn't backed up in 10 days. Fixing that as of NOW.

~ CB

Thank you so much for this. Worked perfectly!!!

 

[Cleverboy]

Thank you so much for this. Worked perfectly!!!

Awesome!

As an aside, God bless having an iPhone. It is something special to be able to come home, see your computer freak out, and be able to effortlessly go online and find an answer. It's incredible how much the Internet has become an integral part of navigating the mess life can dump us into sometimes whether its making sense of "doctor-ese" at the hospital or figuring out where a convention center is.

~ CB