Mayday, S.O.S.

June 22nd, 2007
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RED ALERT. My iMac won’t boot, thanks to the 10.4.10 update to Mac OS X. I’m frantically trying to solve the problem by mimicking people who successfully finagled their way out of the same issue during the 10.4.9 update. The most helpful things I’ve found are Igor Minar’s posts and this article from Unsanity. All I have to say on the subject is that updating my Windows machines never killed them. Generally speaking that happened before I updated them or after, but not as a direct result of the update. Darn you, Apple. Darn you to heck. :-(

For those of you wondering – yes, I am a bit too calm about this. Probably because I realize that 3 years worth of my life is stored in digital form on this computer. Photos, projects, papers, music, programs, everything. I don’t want to erase myself and start over, which is the conventional wisdom (or at least the conventional tech support wisdom) for these situations. I want to save my own butt. And to do that, I gotta be calm. Pray for me. I just might lose it if things go south. But I’ll lose it calmly. Ha ha.

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  • I booted to the installation disc - could have pulled stuff off through Terminal commands in a worst case scenario. But it was all ok. Just had to learn what I was doing. :-) Thanks for worrying, Scott.
  • Scott
    Ouch. Just out of curiosity, doesnt the OS X recovery disc allow you to boot to it so that you can at least get stuff off of your hard drive in the event something catastrophic happens?
  • Ha ha - Aaron, truer words were never spoken. I've learned my lesson. :-) By the way, I figured it out and fixed my lack of backups, too.
  • Oops, forgot to add: No problems updating to 10.4.10 here.
  • It's really simple:
    1. Always keep backups
    2. If you don't keep backups, never be an early adopter.
  • Nic
    I think if any newbie jets rub me the wrong way and are happening into the Niihama area, I'm going to point them in the direction of the planetarium. Brilliant plan.

    Don't threaten me, Richardson. I have a wealth of Potter jokes up my sleeve that I haven't even come close to touching yet.

    I have just spent the past hour WASTING time on facebook and leaving you crap comments. Are you coming tonight?
  • Kathy - nope. I was in the process of archiving everything onto an internal backup directory that I was setting up to auto-backup at given intervals starting next month...whoops. So I pulled all my info off of the external (where it was safe) and onto the brand new iMac, which then stopped booting. Great...I'm smooth, what can I say?

    Clay - I remember reading about that a while back! How on earth did you do that? And hey, don't complain...run with it. Btw, when the new system comes out in October, you could just backup all the important stuff and install that sucker. It's supposedly a new system entirely - so a clean install would fix any conceivable problems that you're having. (That is, until we begin attempting to update prebinding with the new operating system...then I imagine this bug could bite us some more. But by that time I should be wiser about things.)

    Chuck - you cynical, cynical cynic, you. Sheesh. I might like comments, but I don't fake problems to get them! With outrageous accusations like that I'm tempted to take you to a planetarium that shows claymation bugs instead of stars....oh wait, we did that already... :-P
  • Nic
    Btw - I guess this means I shouldn't update anything on my macbook, like, evar. Yes?

    OR was this just a clever way to rack up more comments as you knew the public would be wrought with concern?
  • huh, I wonder how I survived, given that I've mangled my own iMac to the point where the system preferences refuse to open...
  • Kathy
    Ouch. Nothing burned onto CDs/DVDs at all? Asking cause I know to do that since my incident. Everything gets burned periodically now. =/

    I really REALLY hope you manage to save everything!! I'm praying for you!
  • Chuck - yes, that would be the brand spanking new iMac. The marvel of modern computing. The glorious media machine. The incredibly expensive paperweight.

    Alex - I cannot possibly agree with you more. I'm going to become the most paranoid freak ever with every new update from this point onward. Not cool.

    Kathy - Yeah, you did lose stuff. But you got some stuff back, from friends and whatnot, right? I'm gonna lose everything that I've done or made or taken or been involved with since 2002. Some stuff from the 90's was archived on it too. Digitized family memories. Digitized scrapbooks from music festivals and summer camps. My entire study abroad experience. Every song I own. That sucks. I feel your pain in a new and all too frightening way. Sigh.
  • Kathy
    AHH! GOOD LUCK, Deas! *concerned* I know how much it sucks to lose all your pictures and stuff.... :(
  • I'm scared to update, especially after my wordpress nightmare recently. Please keep me updated on your efforts.
  • Nic
    Ummm. Isn't this the spiffy, BRAND SPANKING NEW iMac? What the hell is going on? And yes, you are way too calm about this. This entire comment was written in caps, but i went back and changed it for fear of sounding hysterical. God knows I would be.
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