[prutz11]

A friend of mine in Austria (who knows nothing about computers) was trying to update his iBook to 10.3.7. During the installation Software Update and the computer froze. He forced the computer to restart (holding down the power button), but when the computer restarted he got a message telling him that he needed to restart. He can't boot past this restart message.

The problem here is that he does not have his installation disk with him in Austria. Is there anyway to progress beyond the restart message w/o a disk? PRAM? Something?

Thanks much!

[prutz11]

Originally posted by prutz11:
A friend of mine in Austria (who knows nothing about computers) was trying to update his iBook to 10.3.7. During the installation Software Update and the computer froze. He forced the computer to restart (holding down the power button), but when the computer restarted he got a message telling him that he needed to restart. He can't boot past this restart message.

The problem here is that he does not have his installation disk with him in Austria. Is there anyway to progress beyond the restart message w/o a disk? PRAM? Something?

Thanks much!

Okay so... I got him to boot the OS in safe mode and then to fix his permissions... there were a lot of permission errors, but no luck fixing the problem. I think if he could run the 10.3.7 updater again it would fix the problem, but he does not have access to the net.

Any thoughts?Is he screwed w/o the disk?

[themexican]

Boot up in safe mode. Worked for us here.

NOTE: Safe Booting into Mac OS X takes longer than a normal startup. It can be quite a long time. This will depend based on how long it takes to check and repair the directory of your hard drive.


Make sure your computer is turned off.

Press the power button to turn your computer on

Just after you hear the startup tone (NOT BEFORE), press and hold the down the shift key.

After booting in safe mode download Xuport and run all the maintenance scripts. Also clear caches (under maintain)

If this fails, get your important files off ASAP and reinstall.

If you still have problems check your RAM.

[bergy]

Sounds like he is having a kernel panic ..
He needs to run Disk Warrior right away ... can he get a copy over there?

I think it's his only hope .... other than running Safe Boot a few more times to see if disk utility will sufficiently repair the disk ...

Good luck!

[prutz11]

"After booting in safe mode download Xuport and run all the maintenance scripts. Also clear caches (under maintain)"

Thanks for the advice... Is it possible to access the internet when in safe-mode? I'd been operating under the assumption that it was down in safe-mode?

Thanks again guys

[bergy]

Hi prutz ..

Here's what you can and can't do in Safe Mode ..

Apple - What is Safe Boot Mode?
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107392