Q: Filevault 2 does not start with encryption

I finally solved the problem: I made a back up, erased the hd and restored 10.8 from a usb stick. in 10.8 i activated filevault. after the encryption was done i started the migration assistant and migrated the data from the back up. everything is looking ok now. I don't know what the reason for the problem was, but that seems to be a solution.

But be aware: If you switch off filevault and want to reactivate it, there will be the original problem again!

Are you sure that the problem reappears on a "clean" system after turning file vault off and on? (not that I want you to try this...) Because then it would be a widespread problem and I still do not find too many people complaining about it.

But thanks for reporting your solution! Before I do this though, I'll give 10.8.2 a chance to fix this!

Yep - have the exact same problem. With my last machine and 10.7.x everything worked fine without even thinking about having to wipe the whole disk. This is simply unacceptable. And it's the THIRD heavy bug 10.8 (.2) hits me with ...

# 1 # Parental protection in 10.8 was completely messed up, increasing the time left for the kids plus some login problems plus plus plus - and kids tempt to be quite impatient, when they cannot access their games :-)

# 2 # wakeup-issue plus combined installer for 10.8.2 from 10.8 terminates with an error message

# 3 # filevault doesn't work

That's three completely disfunctional features un 10.8. - im curious, what I'll find next.

I could finally solve the problem for me without wiping the drive. The first problem was that filevault would not start and then the iTunes 10.7 upgrade terminated with an error.

Apparently I had some bad kernel extensions that the app Launch2Net had probably installed when I had used it in 2010. The Launch2Net uninstaller did not remove those extensions. I manually deleted the following extensions from

System/Library/Extensions/

NM_MultiModemDriver.kext

NovatelWirelessUSBCDCECMControl.kext

NovatelWirelessUSBCDCECMData.kext

SierraDIPSupport.kext

SierraFSRSupport.kext

SierraHSRSupport.kext

SierraIPDirect.kext

USBDeviceSwitch.kext

After removing them, the iTunes 10.7 upgrade finished without an error. At this point, I did not activate filevault, because 10.8.2 just came out. I installed the 10.8.2 combo update after booting in safe mode, repaired permissions and reset the PRAM. Now filevault started and completed without a glitch.

Now I can't say whether the Kext removal or the 10.8.2 update (or both) solved the filevault problem, but I suspect the Kext problem to be the culprit.

Hi PDipp - Many many thanks. This solved my issue. I do have launch2net installed. And I had an issue installing the 10.8.2 combo update before - simply resultet in an error ...

I did the following:

# remove the kext files you named plus reboot

# after that i reran the 10.8.2 combo update. This time it would finish wto failure (first good experience)

# after that rebootet again

# and encryption / file vault started wto failure

UNBELIEVABLE :-) Thanks!!!

launch2net is the problem!!!! uninstall it and it is solved. it worked right away.

Thank you so much. Had the same problem, deinstalled the "Vodafone Mobile Broadband" application with its drivers. Problem solved

PDipp pointed me in the right direction. In my case it was a Logitech extension.

Console showed:

12/21/12 12:36:03.913 AM com.apple.kextcache[437]: Prelink failed for com.Logitech.Unifying.HID Driver; aborting prelink.

As soon as I ran "sudo mv LogitechUnifying.kext/ ~" I was able to run Filevault without the "Boot file not written error message".

Bill

I had the same issue and doing the complete uninstall of Vodafone Mobile Broadband" fixed it for me - I did not even have to reboot first.

This fixed the problem for me:

cd /System/Library/Extensions

sudo mv Vodafone.kext VodafoneFilter.kext ~/Desktop/

I couldn't figure out which extension was the problem, so I solved it by booting the recovery partition, opening the Terminal and typing:

mv /Volumes/DeviceName/System/Library/Extensions/ /Volumes/DeviceName/Users/UserName/Old_Extensions/

cp -rf /System/Library/Extensions/ /Volumes/DeviceName/System/Library/Extensions/

Hope that helps someone who can't find the offending kext.

Thanks for PDipp. After I uninstalled Launch2Net, Filevault re-encrypted my drive without any hiccups.