Mac won't start up after OS X update.

S

SideStepSociety

Registered
Well, I recently downloaded the latest update for Mac OS X(10.4.8) for my Mac Mini which I just received at Christmas time. After the update finished installing it asked me to restart or shut down my computer, so I clicked restart. But when it restarted, it never actually started. It sat at the screen with the grey Apple and spinning gear for about 2 hours. So I shut it off and tried turning it on again and it still just stayed at the grey apple and spinning gear screen. I tried this several times and nothing ever worked. So now I come to the forums for help, and I hope I don't have to do any formatting cause I've got so many important files on there, I couldn't afford to lose them. So if anybody has some advice, it'd be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
 
Try these steps:

1. Reset Your Pram.

2. Find your original system disk and look for the one that has (in small letters) "Hardware Test" and boot with the disk and run the Hardware tests/repairs.

3. Boot with the Mac's first original system install disk and startup with it (by holding down the "c" button while booting) and when the install first starts, go to the Finder menu and look for Disk Utility. Run that program's fixes and see if the Mac will boot properly.

Good Luck.
 
'None of these things will cause me to lose files, right?' - correct.

'... in Disk Utility, how do I find out if it will boot or not?' - in the left side column, click once on the indented hard disk drive name (second line), and then click 'Disk Utility's toolbar 'Info' button. Look for the 'Bootable:' row.
 
Well, I tried all those suggestions, and they didn't help so I just went ahead and re-installed OS X. It's still installing at the moment so I don't know if it'll fix it, but if it doesn't I'll come back for more help. Thanks for all the help you gave me though. :D
 
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