# HOWTO: Boot into safe mode (10.2 or later)



## eric2006 (Feb 18, 2006)

This is a short and sweet how-to on how to boot into safe mode. It saved be a LOT of downtime recently, when I installed a program that caused some serious errors. I booted into safe mode, uninstalled, and it was fixed!

1. Shut down completely
2. Press the power button
3. Wait for the startup chime
4. Immediately after (not before) the startup chime, press and hold the shift key. Do this until the grey apple loading screen shows up. 
5. Wait while safe mode boots up. It will take a lot longer than regular OS X.
6. Log in (press shift-enter instead of enter after putting in your password to log in without login items.)
7. You are in safe mode

Safe mode will run disk repair, and ignores the cache of kernel extensions
The regular GUI is used in safe mode by default 

Related Apple help files:

Booting into Safe Mode:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107393
Safe Mode takes longer than regular startup:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107394

If there are any errors in this tutorial, please post the correction(s), and I will add them.


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## schemadesign (Feb 20, 2006)

many thanks for your tips.

i pray they work when i get home - if you could grab some wood near you and touch it for me.

Cheers

Carl


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## Lt Major Burns (Feb 20, 2006)

shift is also used to log in without login items.  instead of hitting enter after entering your password at the login screen, shift+enter will load without log in items.  useful if there's a pesky corrupt login item.


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## eric2006 (Feb 20, 2006)

Lt Major Burns said:
			
		

> shift is also used to log in without login items.  instead of hitting enter after entering your password at the login screen, shift+enter will load without log in items.  useful if there's a pesky corrupt login item.


Thanks, added that.


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## Natobasso (Feb 21, 2006)

Actually safe mode boots a lot faster than regular mode because you don't have to load the OS X bells and whistles. fsck -f to force a system check, type "reboot" to reboot. Hold command + s before the chime and keep it held till you get a black screen. This is the unix shell, I believe, and where you enter the fsck and reboot commands.


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## schemadesign (Feb 22, 2006)

It is my sad duty to report my imac is dead. It passed away on Monday.

It was a quick death - loud clunking noise followed by what sounded like a shortness of breath - flatlined with a grey screen.

Didn't even get to the white apple logo.

I would like to re-incarnate it - is it possible to change the hard drive? I can't afford burial costs.

I hope you will all join me in a minutes silence today at 11am.

Regards

Carl


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## Satcomer (Feb 22, 2006)

schemadesign said:
			
		

> It is my sad duty to report my imac is dead. It passed away on Monday.
> 
> It was a quick death - loud clunking noise followed by what sounded like a shortness of breath - flatlined with a grey screen.
> 
> ...



The hard drive has had a hard drive psychical hardware breakdown. Now you learned the ultimate computer lesson, always backup! Now, yes hard drives can be replaced in all Macs. You can get a new hard drive over at OWC and get instructions (with pictures) off the net by searching for a "how to" through Google.


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## ella5509 (Mar 2, 2006)

what about if you don't get a chime?


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## eric2006 (Mar 2, 2006)

ella5509 said:
			
		

> what about if you don't get a chime?


Then, just use your judgement. Assuming the loading screen is coming up eventually, probably press in a few seconds after power-up, in my case, it's about 3 seconds.. I am not sure how much this matters, but Apple says it does.


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## knatex (Jul 21, 2006)

-	safe mode start up: takes some time, gets to mac osx screen with blue progress bar which goes to 100% and then hangs forever, while coninuing to be animated

-	single-user mode startup 01: diskutil info / --gave bus error

-	fsck fy  --gave overlapped extent allocation files, volume bitmap needs minor repair, invalid free block count

-	only 4 files were over lapped, I removed each with the rm command

-	ran fsck fy again and it gave no problems (vol has been repaired or something)

-	safe mode start up does identical thing still

-	regular startup does same thing

what can i do?
(not a unix guy - just follwoing instructions)


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## eric2006 (Jul 31, 2006)

At this point, it might be best to go into target disk mode, backup, then re-install. (and start a new topic)


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