I foolishly allowed Software Update to do its thing tonight on my backup machine (10.4.11). It installed a Quicktime update and a security update. Now the freakin' machine will not boot past the grey screen with its little wheel. One simple thing I wanted to do with that machine tonight, and Software Update seems to have rendered it useless. It doesn't get far enough along for me to boot from another disk.

Any suggestions?

A safe boot (shift key down until grey wheel starts) might help.

You can also boot from another volume by holding down the option key at boot, and it should display all bootable volumes.

First, try about 20 minutes of patience....
I had an iMac that I thought wasn't going to boot, and spent about 20 minutes on the phone (unrelated to the iMac), turned around, and it was at the login window.

Failing that, yes... Try a safe boot (hold down shift while booting).

You might also boot from a system CD, and go to the Utilities menu and repair permissions and repair the disk with Disk Utility.
(Thats PROBABLY not the problem, but it won't hurt to try it)

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Paul F.
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A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca c. 5 BC - 65 AD
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Good is the enemy of Excellent. Talent is not necessary for Excellence.
Persistence is necessary for Excellence. And Persistence is a Decision.
--
Eureka, CA

Safe boot did not work, but then I did get it to boot from a second disk and am now running Disk Warrior. I didn't give it 20 minutes to spin the grey wheel of aggravation, but it had a good 15, I think. A tiny voice was telling me not to fsck around with the software updates, but did I listen? Nooo…

Start up from another volume and run Disk Utility on the fussy drive?

I would try DU before Disk Warrior.

What's your backup situation?

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MR/F Guestmap: [www.mapservices.org]

Sometimes I have to unplug all external drives until I see it progressing through the startup and then I plug them all back in again before I log in.

Wait for it... another success story for Diskwarrior from ka jowct.

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Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.

> What's the cure for endless grey wheel at startup?

A hammer, a lime and a bottle of Tequila. Use as directed by a physician.

...

But often, a safe-boot will take care of it. If the safe boot doesn't work then yeah, move on to DW and get yourself ready to do an archive and install or a restore from your nightly-backup.

Happened to me too. Here's the solution:

[dltj.org]

I used target disc mode to go in and delete the corrupted files.

Disk Warrior found and fixed some problems, but I still can't boot from that drive. I let it sit at the spinning grey wheel of doom for at least half an hour, no luck. Installing the updates seems to have hosed something.

The drive contains some backups. I think I have other copies of most or all of this stuff, and don't think those files are affected anyway. But I'll probably have to reinstall the OS.

What problems did it find? It sounds like your system had pre-existing issues.

if your drives are the same system -- update the drive again.

It may have been incomplete. In the past I've waited, on slower (but not THAT much slower) machines
that I thought for sure were dead, and the system was patching holes and doing an FSCk and other
crap, and it all took time on a slow drive.

So download the update and manually install it from another drive boot, and let it spin. Go to bed if you
have to.

I have never had a problem updating from SU. Like lazydays said, I unplug all externals plus RP before and after.

Update again, using the full update, rather than the delta.

Quote
tronnei
Happened to me too. Here's the solution:

[dltj.org]

I used target disc mode to go in and delete the corrupted files.

Talk about foolish, I clicked on your link, which downloads a text document. Does it run a Terminal script? Is it a readme file? is it a trojan? I'll never know.

Don't know what you're talking about. It's just a web page for me.

I got a GZ document. It wanted to make EIGHT outside contacts.

Disruptive Library Technology Jester
We're Disrupted, We're Librarians, and We're Not Going to Take It Anymore

Fixing a Mac OSX Leopard Login Loop Caused by Launch Services

Posted on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008, at 2:19 pm, and filed under Raw Technology.

After the release of the latest update to the Macintosh operating system (10.5.3), some users were reporting a “login loop” to MacFixIt.com. I followed the always helpful advice on MacFixIt for updating the operating system, and after the first reboot everything came back fine on my PowerBook G4 I thought I was in the clear. With the second reboot, though, I started seeing the login loop: the machine boots fine, but when you put the username and password in, the system hangs for about 20 seconds before displaying the login window again. Clearly something is hosed, and fortunately I was able to fix it.

I tried the suggested solutions — booting in safe mode and logging in (still had the same problem); running a file system check in single user mode (no errors reported); deleting the login window plists; and changing the password — but they had no effect. I could log into the temporary admin account I give to Apple when the machine is sent in for service, so I knew it was something specific to my day-to-day account. I was able to get into single user mode (hold down Command-S right after the startup twang) and examine the /var/log/system.log file. This is part of the underlying UNIX nature of MacOSX, and was the only place I found that gave clues to what was going on. Here is a portion of the log file that occurs right after hitting return at the login screen:

(CODE WAS HERE)

The key clue is bolded — the lsregister process is crashing. I found a clue to the fix in a 2003 blog posting by a guy named Rick when he said “After a couple hours of snooping, and some luck (I was able to ssh in from another machine and watch the system log report the crashes), I discovered that Launch Services’ cache was corrupted, and was causing lsregister to seg fault.” His posting was related to MacOSX 10.2.6, and since then the name of the Launch Services cache file has morphed. I found it in the same place (the /Library/Caches directory), but now there is more than one and they take the form of “com.apple.LaunchServices-023uid.csstore” where uid varies depending on the appropriate userid number.

I removed all of the Launch Services files from /Library/Caches, restarted, and was able to log in fine. The only side effect was that the applications-to-launch-at-login list was gone (the “Login Items” tab of the Account Preference Pane) and had to be reconstructed.

So I’m productive again, and I didn’t have to reinstall the operating system or transfer all my old files and settings to a newly-generated account. I hope this message helps someone else, too.
(This post was updated on 02-Sep-2008.)

Quote
tronnei
Don't know what you're talking about. It's just a web page for me.

Wasn't your fault, but like Jimmypoo indicated, we got a .gz file download, not a web page displayed. Looks like they fixed their site now.

There must have been issues before I let Software Update install things, but they were not obvious, or I wouldn't have been doing what I was doing. I'm trying to get to the bottom of it again tonight. Disk Utility found a problem with the catalog, which it was unable to fix. So I'm back to Disk Warrior.