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I'm a fairly recent mac user. Been using windows for decades and happily switched. But i upgraded from 10.6 to 10.6.1 last night and the upgrade looks like it failed.

I restarted the machine when it asked to then went to bed. In the morning the computer was still trying to shut itself off. So i forced the shutdown, restarted, but now i'm stuck with the loading spinner.

What can i do?

UPDATE: Verbose didn't show anything interesting. i also did the hardware test. Nothing comes up wrong. Disk utility did not find any error on the HD. But, it did show a fatal error when checking permissions.

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  • Try recovering the setup, by booting off the DVD. That might help.
    – user3463
    Sep 16, 2009 at 7:27
  • and that will not erase my data ?
    – pixeline
    Sep 16, 2009 at 8:27
  • Did you also try booting with x pressed?
    – alex
    Sep 16, 2009 at 8:55
  • fatal error with permissions sounds like something is totally b0rked. Backup your data, and do an Erase&Install.
    – brandstaetter
    Sep 16, 2009 at 8:59
  • yes. Booting with x pressed does not change anything: it stops at the spinning wheel point.
    – pixeline
    Sep 16, 2009 at 9:23

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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You could try booting from the original CD and reinstall Leopard, hopefully without losing data.

If you have a firewire port on the machine AND someone else with a firewire capable computer (and a cable), you could put the computer into target disk mode to copy all your data off and start with a fresh clean install of snow leopard.

You should think about using Time Machine to keep your documents and data safe, as well as a third party backup solution like Mozy (2 GB free) or SuperDuper to make a bootable copy on an external drive.

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  • superduper seems to be a really good solution. +1, Thanks !
    – pixeline
    Sep 16, 2009 at 8:28
  • ended up creating an additional partition via disk utility and restaure via time Machine the last copy. only 3 hours to go now, until i know if my data is still there.
    – pixeline
    Sep 16, 2009 at 9:55
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    i also found an alternative to SuperDuper: Carbon Copy Cloner: bombich.com/software/ccc.html completely free.
    – pixeline
    Sep 17, 2009 at 9:42
  • Yeah, I forgot to mention that. SuperDuper works great, even when TimeMachine is backing up to the same drive. CCC did miss some features the last time, so I went with SuperDuper. But now I think they might be equal.
    – brandstaetter
    Sep 17, 2009 at 10:35
  • SuperDuper is an excellent piece of software. Definitely worth the money if you value your data.
    – Scott Lawrence
    Sep 28, 2009 at 16:25
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When booting up the machine, press v on the keyboard. This will bring it into verbose booting mode. Maybe you'll find out more information that way. You could also try booting with x pressed (this is booting in safe mode, with limited functionality)

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  • updated the question with some more diagnostic info. thanks.
    – pixeline
    Sep 16, 2009 at 8:30
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Try using the "Repair Permissions" option of Disk Utility. It's in Disk utility, after you click on your start up disk, under the first aid tab, down on the left.

Here is an Apple support article that explains what it does.

In any case try the backup that brandstaetter suggested first.

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  • Repair permission fails, with the same error message. "the underlying task reported a failure upon closing" that's my translation, since it's in French...
    – pixeline
    Sep 16, 2009 at 9:00
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Do a reboot and hold down the shift key. This will startup the computer in safe mode. the 10.5.7 and 10.5.8 updates sometimes do the same on Leopard and this sometimes work.

Let the safeboot run through and if it works it will restart the computer and then start up normally.

//Ulrik

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