Help! 10.5.4 killed my MBA. How to restore?

[dallardice]

The 10.5.4 update appears to have killed my MBA. On boot I either get a grey box in the middle of the screen in four languages telling me I need to restart my computer, or I get a blank pale blue screen. I left it on the pale blue screen overnight but it never moved on from there...

Have everything backed up on Time Capsule, but I'm new to Macs, so can you advise on next steps, how I would go about getting my MBA to a state where I can restore from backup, etc?

Pointers to apple support sites welcome but I'm on my iPhone so searching isn't great...

Thanks in advance

 

[saisrujan]

What you see is a kernel panic window. It just means that there was a low level memory management error etc. and your computer cannot proceed. Something probably went wrong while installing the update.

You will probably have to use the Mac OS DVD to do a complete system restore. See if this Apple support article can help.

 

[nintendude]

reinstall OS X using restore discs. you can remote install this using remote disk but i heard its slow. otherwise, use the superdrive (if you have one)

 

[n0de]

I haven't used the remote disk for install, so I cannot comment on how to use it, but if you have an external USB cdrom do the following:

1. With machine off, connect USB CDrom with install disk loaded.
2. Press the power button and hold the option key from before the chime until you get the screen where you can choose what drive to boot from.
3. Choose the install disk, progress through the screens very slowly. On one of the screens (it may be behind an "options", "customize" or "advanced" button - anyone else can chime in here, I am going from memory) there is a selection for choosing a restore from time machine/capsule.

Good luck

 

[dallardice]

Thanks everyone, I've now resolved the problem.

I reinstalled the Mac OS from the install DVD, and then used n0de's tip to find the option to restore from backup. (It's under Utilities). First restore was to immediately before the Software Update, and after the restore I had exactly the same problem. I needed to go back to a backup from about a week ago and then my Mac worked fine. I reinstalled the Software Update to 10.5.4 and that has gone OK, so I guess something messed up my Mac a few days prior to the Update and it was only the Update reboot that brought the problem to light.

Because the Air only has one USB port, it's a bit of a fiddle because you can't have the SuperDrive and the USB Ethernet adaptor plugged in at the same time. I used the USB port for the SuperDrive and restored over my wifi network - given that it's a 802.11n network, and I only have about 30G of data on my hard drive, (and this isn't my work machine, so I could live without it), each restore took about 12 hours. It would have been faster if I'd used Remote Disk for the install disk and plugged the Air into the network, but I've found Remote Disk unreliable so I thought I'd just wait for the wifi restore.

Thanks again folks.

 

[queshy]

Not good. I think I'll wait a few days before installing 10.5.4 on my Air.

 

[kalex]

I installed 10.5.4 on mine 3 days ago and it went without any hicups. I actually did a hotfix rollup (in microsoft terms), installed bluetooth update, firmware update followed by 10.5.4 update and it survived with 0 issues.

 

[PLin]

I also haven't observed any problems with 10.5.4 on my MacBook Air.

 

[gcmexico]

I also haven't observed any problems with 10.5.4 on my MacBook Air.

*
I've had no problems either..but what's up with these updates crashing systems...10.5.3 wrecked my bluetooth and sleepmode functions...is every update a gamble that it might screw up your system?

 

[nyzballa12]

It seems as though many updates are just killing MBA, maybe too little resources?