Problem: iBook won't boot up after installing OS X updates

C

cjcole

Registered
I got sick of getting update notices, so I finally figured I'd download and install them. They were only three, but I can't remember what they were. After installing them, I had to reboot, but it hasn't booted up since. It gets stuck on the grey screen with the dark grey apple logo and the animated progress circle. I checked apple.com and followed the steps for doing things in Single-user mode, but I am not able to enter safe mode. They say to enter safe mode to remove some fonts or something. Any suggestions?
 
To start up in safe mode:

1)Shut down the computer.

2)Press the Power button.

3)Immediately after you hear the startup tone,
press and hold the Shift key.

4)Release the Shift key when the spinning progress indicator appears below the gray apple on the screen.
 
That doesn't work, it still gets stuck on the progress indicator. I can start in single-user mode and open firmware, but can't do safe mode.
 
Hold down Command-V while booting to start in verbose mode. That'll make it spew text about what it's doing. Then hunt for an error message or something related to why it's just sitting there apparently doing nothing.
 
Thanks for the tip David. I got this error continuously:

Disk0s9: I/O error.

I also got a couple other errors multiple times:

*** kextd (daemon) failed to start, received signal=10

mDNSResponder[170]: mDNSPlatformSendUDP sendto failed to send packet on InterfaceID 01805C00 lo0/4 to 224.0.0.251:5353 skt 4 error -1 errno 65 (No route to host)
 
Hmm, that's worrying. I usually see the disk I/O error message when there's a bad block that can't be read. Just before that comes up, can you hear the hard drive making peculiar clicking noises like it's looking for the block?
 
See some of the other posts on 10.3.9...That would be the update you performed recently. It hosed one of my computers (Powerbook) the same way. The only recovery was to reinstall the OS from scratch. I first used the computer in Firewire Target mode to get all of my data off of it. (hold the T button while power on and have a firewire cable to another mac) Not sure the iBook has the firewire though.
 
No, I don't hear it now but I have heard it before when it was running fine. How could installing OS upgrades have effected this?
 
I think I resolved the problem after several attempts of reinstalling the OS. It looks like it wiped everything clean and backed up the old "systems" in a folder called Previous Systems, which contains all my documents and images as well as Apple programs, but not my user-installed programs like Dreamweaver and Office. I assume it's ok to get what I need from these and delete the rest, since it's mostly a duplicate of the current setup. It created a folder for each install, and at 2GB per install, I'm down to 4GB left. Is there anything else to worry about, or do I pretty much have it down?
 
So you did several Archive and Installs in a row? Wow :O)
I would have suggested the Archive and Install Option.

Copy all the data you want to keep and delete all those
extra previous /System folder(s) as soon as possible to
free up the disk space - you need about 15% of your
disk space free for the computer to work properly.
 
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