[Dave N]

I brought my ibook into work to do some updates (Garage Band, 10.3.4, Quicktime, etc.) and though I thought I had enough battery to do everything, it must have ran out and shut down at some point during the install. The last I saw, it had downloaded everything and was optimizing the disk, but when I came back to my desk later it had shut down and wouldn't restart.

When I hooked the power up at home, it only boots to the blue screen with the OS X rectangle in the middle and won't go any further. Nothing shows up in the rectangle. I booted from the 10.3 install CD and ran Repair Disk, and Repair Permissions, but that didn't help. If I do a "Apple-V" boot, the last thing it gets to is this:

Checking disks
/etc/rc: line 282: 128 Hangup SystemStarter -gr ${VerboseFlag} ${SafeBoot}
UniNEnet::monitorLinkStatus -Link is up at 100 Mbps -Full Duplex
IP packet filtering initialized, [and some more network stuff]
IP firewall loaded

I'm have it back at work now, so it's hooked up to the network. I don't know if that helps anyone diagnose the problem, but I'm just wondering if there is anything else I can do before a complete reinstall...

FYI, I can access the HD via firewire patch to my work computer.
Thanks.

[andretan]

I had something like this 5 hours ago on one of the iBooks at home.

Tried everything I had. DiskWarrior, Disk Utility, fsck, and checked out the Apple KB. No go.

Early this morning, decided to do Archive and Install. Worked like a charm.

I think my problem was that I had FileVault on. I turned it off in case it screws up anything again.

Good luck!

[Dave N]

Thanks for the reply. I don't have file vault or even journalling turned on. I have everything backed up, so maybe I'll try the archive/install.

[CharlesS]

If the power went out while it was optimizing, probably the worst thing that it could be (barring hard disk problems) would be some messed-up prebinding information. Before going to the hassle of an archive and install, I'd try this:

1. Start up your Mac while holding down the Command and S keys.

2. When you get to the command prompt, type these commands:

fsck

mount -uw /

update_prebinding -root / -force

3. When this is all done, type the following command:

reboot

Then, see if things improve at all.

[Dave N]

Thanks again. I already did an archived reinstall. It wasn't all that big of a deal -- I just put the disk in and let it run while I worked. Seems to be OK now.