Help! My firmware update failed.

M

mbriand

Registered
I am extremely angry right now, I have spent the last 2 hours looking into doccumentation as to how to fix my problem, and google searches dont come up with anything even close.

I did the EFI firmware upgrade that was released recently.

I did what it said, but my computer never shut down at the "close apps and shut down" step. It just hung. Eventually I did a hard shut down, and then attempted to do the rest of the instructions.

That failed. Now my computer works for the most part, but itunes hangs, disc utility hangs, and my computer always gets stuck shutting down and never does. So I have to hard shut down to shut down my computer.

I tried the firmware restoration cd, but I CANNOT get it to start. Basically, i turn on my computer and keep it held down, and i get several blinks and then hear the "long beep" but the Firmware upgrade didn't start when I initially held the power button down, and the firmware restore does not start either when I take the same steps.

I am on an intel mac mini core solo running 1.4.9

Somebody please help with this, I have no idea what I am doing wrong.
 
First things first.
Did you check to see if your hard drive is in good health?

Boot into single user mode.
Hold down command-s keys during bootup.
You'll see a black screen with white type. Wait for it to stop scrolling. It will present you with the prompt that looks like this:
localhost:/ root#

at the prompt, type:
fsck -yf

rinse and repeat- er, if it finds errors, run fsck -yf again until it either doesn't find any more problems, or the exact same problems keep coming up.

If the exact same errors keep coming up, then you will need to:
back up your data (home folder and any of your documents not filed there),
reformat the drive - writing zeros (I believe it's under the security options),
reinstall the OS,
restore your data.

If this should start happening again, then it's possible the drive is failing.
If the machine is under warranty, then take it in for service AFTER you back up your data.
 
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