Freeze on softwareupdatelauncher

Amazing. After hours on the phone with a Senior Apple rep and now waiting months for "Apple Engineers" to get back to me, this solved it. Thanks so much ffried.

Yes, Pressing Return resolves this problem. As if there's a hidden dialog box waiting to be accepted. As to the why, it is related to other stuff going on with the specific computer, rather than an issue with a specific software update - the same download of the 10.9.4 Combo updater that works fine on other Macs still results is SoftwareUpdateLauncher appearing when the restart is triggered, exactly as it was when it was attempting to restart to complete the automatic update. I will certainly be keeping an eye on this specific Mac to see if the problem re-occurs, but I'm not surprised that so few Tech Support staff have become aware of the issue - it's only effecting a fraction of a percentage of Mavericks users.

I had the same problem. And the same solution worked. Thanks for saving me time.

Worked for me too. I have had this issue for about a year now. So simple of a solution. Thanks guys!

Hi ffried

i really love magic solutions which help me. Thank you very much for investigating this one!

Chears, David

Hi everyone,

I was able to resolve this issue.

1. From the Desktop, click on the apple menu and then click on "Log Out (your username)"

2. A new pop-up displays; click on Log Out

3. Click on "Restart"

4. Once back in the grey "SoftwareUpdateLauncher" screen click on the apple menu and then click on "Log Out"

5 Right after step 4 hit "Enter" on your keyboard

From there just follow the system prompts until the update is fully installed in your computer.

Hope it helps.

thanks juan felipe... this one works for me

I can't believe Apple is messing up this so much and obly trial and error works :D thank you for that weird solution.

2017 and this fix still works on machine with 10.12 - thanks for such a simple fix that I didn't have to start my own three to solve.