<p>Imagine the scene, everyone else is either raving about what Leopard does and how cool it is or they are whinging about problems they are having with the upgrade. I do the sensible thing, and decide to upgrade to the recently release OSX 10.4.11 (which should be the last release of Tiger) rather than upgrade to Leopard. I think I will wait a few more weeks before I think about that little problemette.</p>
<p>I did the even more sensible process of waiting for 24 hours after is was released, and checked all the normal places and RSS feeds to make sure they weren’t any major problems. All the signs looked good.</p>
<p>Hey, I was on a roll, I did an even more sensible thing. I upgraded my wifes iBook from 10.4.10 to 10.4.11. It went so smooth it was scary.</p>
<p>Then my problems started, I was getting too confident.</p>
<p>You do the usual thing, click on the little Apple symbol at the top left of the screen. Click on ‘Software Update’, then wait about 60 seconds to see what joys Apple will be delivering to me electronically today. There was 10.4.11, I clicked the install button and waited for the huge download (I don’t remeber how big is really was) to complete. The wireless was working overtime today…</p>
<p>I waited for the installation to complete, then nothing… the screen went black… err… this isn’t supposed to happen. It’s an Apple, it supposed to work flawlessly.</p>
<p>OK, DON’T PANIC (to quote a rather famous radio series, book, TV series and film). I waited for about 30 minutes to see if anything else would happen. And no, it didn’t. Then I do the thing I hate doing most with my Macbook Pro, I turned of off by holder the power switch down for 4 seconds to kill it. Tentitivly, I turned if back on. It would be OK, I’d done this a few times before, and everything seemed to OK afterwards.</p>
<p>Nothing… Absolutly nothing… All I could see is the Apple logo, with the little spinner, spinning beneath it. I waited, and waited and waited.</p>
<p>OK, PANIC. I get my wife’s laptop back, and google to see if I can find out what to do. After a look of searching, I find nothing that can really help me. I tried various boot key combinations to see if I could get the machine started. Nothing. So in desperation I dug out my installation DVDs. I had no idea what I was going to do as I’d never reinstalled a Mac before (Windows I’d had done countless times – I used to rebuild my old machines about every 3 months becuase they needed it).</p>
<p>I put the first DVD in, and booted up. I get the installation screen, and try the ‘Archive and Install’ routine as I had read that this should preserve all my settings and applications. I had to not install some of the standard applications and trial software, but this wasn’t a problem as I’d either got more upto date versions, or had tried the trial software and knew that I didn’t want it reinstalled.</p>
<p>After a while, the installation finished and thbe laptop rebooted. I got my login screen. SUCSESS!!! I signed in OK (as the procedure had preserved nearly all my settings), and started checking a few things out. I repaired my disk permissions, but there were no major problems there.</p>
<p>So with my confidence restore, I decided to try the upgrade again (as I was on the installation DVD version rather than my previos version of 10.4.10).</p>
<p>I went though the same process again, did the software update, waited for the download to finish, and the installation to complete. This time things were looking up, My Macbook Pro decided it was going to reboot (after just doing nothing last time).</p>
<p>The same thing happened again, all I saw on screen was the Apple logo and the spinning thingy (apologies for not know thay the spinning thingy is really called). THIS IS NOT FUNNY ANYMORE!!!</p>
<p>After rebooting from the DVD and doing the ‘Archive and Install’ process again, the machine was back up and running. Now this was starting to get annoying. I was determined to get the update installed.</p>
<p>’Third times a charm’ I thought to myself, and I started the update again. The installation went OK again, and the laptop rebooted. All I can see is the spinning thing again… I am getting despondent now… so in frustration I leave the laptop alone and go off to watch some TV. I had an eye operation on Monday 12th November, and I was having problems watching the TV (but for some reason working on the laptop didn’t seem to be a problem). But after about 10 minutes, my eyes were getting tired, and it was time for more eye drops (10 applications a day this week – oh joy!!!) out of the fridge. I was wandering toward the fridge when I saw my MBP was sat there on the login screen…. WOO HOO!!! It had finally worked.</p>
<p>So, my laptop was working again. OK, let just make sure the MBP reboots before I get to excited. It shutdown really quickly, then all of a sudden, I was back at the login screen again. IT WAS STILL WORKING!!!</p>
<p>I testing a few things out, and after some testing the only things I lost overall or had problems with were:-</p>
<ul>
<li>The wireless network has lost its WPA kety</li>
<li>The Cisco VPN client software had stopped working</li>
<li>Plaxo client won’t sync</li>
<li>Mozy wouldn’t backup</li>
<li>CoreDuoTemp kept comming up with error messages</li>
<li>I lost my soldid black wallpaper</li>
</ul>
<p>Overall, I lost about 4 hours fixing my Macbook Pro, but at least I know who to reinstall Mac OSX now… And it looks like I was in <a href=”http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/16/caught-in-apple-restart-hell/&#8221; target=”_blank”>good company</a> too…</p>