OSX 10.5.7 update bricked my Macbook
Last night, my 13" white Macbook, which I bought less than a year ago and has since been my primary work machine, downloaded & installed an automatic update from Apple, that being 10.5.7. The update said there were 8 total updates to install, and I know the 10.5.7 update was part of that, and sometime during the installation, a message appeared to the tune of "[something something] is corrupted or invalid" and the update quit, the computer shut down, and that was that. I went out for the night and didn't check my Macbook again until this morning, when I discovered that my Macbook would enter into a blue-screen-of-death / infinite loading loop after the gray Apple logo went away.
I won't waste too much time on the details, but with my Applecare Protection Plan in hand, I called Apple support and spoke to a rep. He guided me through doing a complete disconnect/reconnect, PRAM flash, and booting from the install disk. When I got there, my hard drive did not show up as a bootable partition. There was no "archive and install" option either, which means that whatever was on my hard drive may as well be lost. Unable to help me any more, the rep set me up for a Tuesday appt. at the Apple Store, which is frustrating because it means that for the next two days I'll have to work off my Windows box without much access to my work files.
A quick Google search shows that a lot of other users are having trouble with the 10.5.7 update, and the current consensus is that you shouldn't install it until Apple publishes a fix. Most people are complaining about quirks such as weird fan speeds, random freezes, and computers not waking from sleep mode. Those are major problems, but at least you can back up those machines and roll back to a previous version of Leopard. My Macbook can't even boot. It has basically been bricked and I can't do anything about it.
I might be an idiot for not backing up my machine before allowing an update to apply, but this was an automatic update and the series of prompts that appeared last night made it pretty clear that my Macbook wanted me to install the update ASAP. Plus, I figured the last thing I should have to worry about is a core update direct from Apple. I shouldn't have to be living in fear of OS updates direct from the OS vendor; I thought that was what the Windows world was notorious for. Right now, I'm thinking about my Vista desktop, which runs 64-bit Ultimate, and my wife's Vista laptop, which is an old Inspiron 6000 with Vista 32-bit Business, and how both have installed countless updates (one today even) without ever having a single problem. I'm also thinking about how in the past year that I've been using my Macbook consistently, I've noticed a lot more freezing and hanging than I ever thought I would see on an Apple product. Considering the number of users who have been negatively affected by this latest update, I'm beginning to feel rather jaded about switching to a Mac.
We'll see how things go on Tuesday.
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quit downloading so much porn to your MB. it's hard (no pun intended) to properly install updates when the hard drive is full of…
I am sorry this happened to you. Your data shouldn't be lost though. You can pull the drive out and use a USB to SATA bare drive unit to copy off your data. This is the one I have: http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-Sata-HDD-Docking-Station/dp/B0012Z3MKW/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1245073064&sr=8-6
Another option is to connect your White MacBook to another computer via FireWire and boot your MacBook into firewire target disk mode. This basically makes your MacBook an external firewire drive. See docs on this here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661
This weekend I had some weird stuff going on with my macbook. I was stuck in an alternating blue screen/ apple loading whirlwind. I called my IT guy and he helped me through it. But during which I booted in safe mode and found out that my user profile didn't exist!? Luckily it was still on the machine, but it just wasn't showing up in the "accounts" listed. He was as equally stumped as I was in terms of determining why that would happen. Upon reading this post I thought… hmmm did I update to 10.5.7 and sure enough I checked and I am on that version. So the bottom line is that I feel your pain, and I guess I can make some sense of it now.
@Wing Lian lol…
well .. your own fault - never trust a company producing proprietary stuff
Or, to stop the "microsoft-apple"-bashing-course: Never trust an automated update application
Especially if its running on your (main) productive computer unit. On mine, there too is a somewhat nerving update app trying to unnerve, but at least I've tuned it down that much it just annoys me with its unreliable notices in the main desktop panel. Next thing I usually do if that bloody bastard is done with its appearance show, is shooting down its process using kill -9 [process-id].
BTW: I'm running Ubunt 8.04.2 LTS on a standard, very ugly looking PC unit - just to be on the safe side. But it works
cu, w0lf.
hahahahahahahahahaha "your own fault - never trust a company producing proprietary stuff"
IN MICROSOFT YOU TRUST?
sounds like the updates did not D/L properly……….the updates are usually verified before installation,something bad has obviously happend……so u have lost ur data and recovery programs are shite……
the only thing to do is use the os x disc to reinstall the whole os,
there is a combination of keys,
(4 i think…maybe ctrl,alt,del and shift?)
which will bypass the hard drive altogether and start up from the first optical drive that it finds…..
google it kids………it's friday night and im watchin a good movie!
p.s. works on most macs……i have tried as far back as G3 imacs