Spider-Mitch

Q: Install failure, hangs, and errors. Still trying...

I'm well over 24 hours into this current battle with my 2011 MacBook Pro. I wish I had taken better notes, so everything here will be from memory.

 

First I upgraded a 2008 MacBook Pro with no issue, so I was stoked  thinking the newer MBP would be an even better candidate. Wrong.

 

The first issue I encountered after running the installer was an "Install failed" screen. This was after some 45 minutes. From the utility I attempted to repair, verify, and fix permissions of the Macintosh HD volume that was grayed out in disk utility. Some things took, but in the end the volume was not repaired nor could I select it for the start up disk or as a destination for a Time Machine restore.

 

I went ahead and erased the volume (I have a second partition for boot camp, by the way. I don't know if this is part of the issue or not. I left it there.) I was then able to restore my Time Machine backup to the newly initialized volume.

 

So, at this point I was at least back to where I started, though I had to let the restore run overnight since it was in the neighborhood of 6 hours. Then, I waited nearly the entire work day while Time Machine was indexing the old backups, making space for the new one, and then backing it up. Surprisingly, this was near six hours of my day. Moving forward, I still had the previous days backup, plus a newer one to make myself feel a little cozier.

 

Start Mavericks install attempt yet again. This seemed to make is somewhere after an hour or so. There was one password prompt that I could not figure out, so I ended up leaving it blank and it went away. It was something to the effect of entering my "login" keychain, though it didn't seem to take my normal password. Then I got to the "less than a minute remaining" screen. I let that run for over 60 minutes until I finally got tired of waiting.

 

Then I discovered I could still get up to the menu bar and pulled up the install log window. It was set to show errors and had been pushing out the same one for hours! Something I should have noted, but it was something to this effect, line after line after line:

OSInstaller[368] V /volumes/macintosh HD: DSDB

 

Then I realized it was hung in my professional opinion. So I tried to restart and select a startup disk, but that hung as well. Frustrated, extremely tired, and did I mention FRUSTRATED, I held ye olde power button until she blinked out.

 

Then I pushed the power button and it started in OS X 10.9...BUT it was a clean install and began the usual series of questions. Network, Apple ID, do I want to migrate, etc.. This wasn't feeling right to me, especially since the 2008 MBP did no such thing. It just worked.

 

So now it's restoring yet again from Time Machine for Monday, pre-Mavericks attempts, to make yet another go of it tomorrow. I hate to blast my Boot Camp partition away and attempt to remove that from the equation, but I don't know what else to try and I'm pretty worn out.

 

Comment if you have any solutions or can verify the things I've brought up. I couldn't find a single piece out there about the error logs

MacBook Pro (17-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.5), Windows Boot Camp partition

Posted on Oct 23, 2013 11:57 PM

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Q: Install failure, hangs, and errors. Still trying...

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  • Helpful answers

  • by GBurdeti,

    GBurdeti GBurdeti Oct 24, 2013 12:32 PM in response to Spider-Mitch
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 24, 2013 12:32 PM in response to Spider-Mitch

    Hi,

     

    I got this problem(V /volumes/macintosh HD: DSDB Found) too, but with a late 2008 MBP. I just let it run and did nothing. After a couple of minutes, it rebooted by itself and ran an install configruartion process. All seems well now. I did not loose anything.

  • by atruelsen,

    atruelsen atruelsen Oct 24, 2013 1:02 PM in response to GBurdeti
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 24, 2013 1:02 PM in response to GBurdeti

    My first attempt with my 2009 MBP failed.

    No errors was found ón disk so I gave it another try keeping an eye ón the log.

    Spend 10 minuttes saying "Found DSDB..." and then terminated succesfully :-)

  • by Matthew Connolly3,

    Matthew Connolly3 Matthew Connolly3 Oct 24, 2013 5:59 PM in response to Spider-Mitch
    Level 1 (110 points)
    Oct 24, 2013 5:59 PM in response to Spider-Mitch

    I just upgraded a Mac Mini that got stuck on about 1 minute remaining and printed Found DSDB in the logs for about 15 minutes. I went to the apple menu and selected Restart, and it wiped my hard drive and it had wiped my hard drive and done a clean install.

     

    Lucky I had a time machine backup!

  • by Spider-Mitch,

    Spider-Mitch Spider-Mitch Oct 24, 2013 7:54 PM in response to Spider-Mitch
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Oct 24, 2013 7:54 PM in response to Spider-Mitch

    Third time is the charm, I suppose. I was able to get things working tonight. Started the upgrade at 5:39PM and was done by 7:10pm. Possibly earlier but I wasn't babysitting the computer every moment.

     

    The only things I did to prepare, that I in fact logged, are the following.

    1. Make yet another Time Machine backup or three.
    2. Run disk utility against the main disk and destination volume, for all possible things (verify and repair, permissions and disk). My understanding is that you can do this on the live boot volume without the need to boot from a recovery partition or other drive. I was running Lion 10.7.5 by the way.
    3. Rebooted, and ran Time Machine again.
    4. Rebooted. (Yes, this is just voodoo but hey, I've got Mavericks now after two epic fails.)
    5. I quit Mac App store manually before clicking the first install button after Mavericks downloaded. I also made sure the only thing plugged in to the computer were the power cord and the Ethernet cable. No external monitor, no Time Capsule, no keyboard, etc...

     

    I would't say my problem is "solved" but it's definitely not a problem any more. Sorry folks, but I have only provided my personal story of upgrading and no real answers. I suppose you could follow my voodoo steps above, but let's face it, it's nothing more than the way it worked for me.

  • by bigj6360,

    bigj6360 bigj6360 Oct 31, 2013 8:16 AM in response to Spider-Mitch
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Oct 31, 2013 8:16 AM in response to Spider-Mitch

    I had this same issue on an 09 mac pro.

     

    It sat at "less than one minute remaining" for about 20 minutes.

     

    I opened my install log and sure enough:

     

    V /volumes/macintosh HD: DSDB Found)

     

    This came directly after the Migration was successful message in the log. I sat and watched it for about 15 minutes, almost gave up to kill it and Boom! a restart button appeared.

     

    For me the solution was to wait...

  • by world-of-pies,

    world-of-pies world-of-pies May 21, 2016 6:09 AM in response to Spider-Mitch
    Level 1 (39 points)
    May 21, 2016 6:09 AM in response to Spider-Mitch

    Yes - i've had this on a 2008 MacMini and a late 2012 macbook pro.... nearly gave up.. but waited and waited - after about 15 mins it finished successfully.