After 10.5.3 update the system doesnt start up

Same thing happens on my Mac. 😟

Try starting with the Option key held down to get Startup Manager. Select your normal startup drive and continue.

Mine did the exact same thing.

Spent several hours on the phone with Apple yesterday.

Tried to do the Archive &Install. Wouldn't work.

Ended up having to do an erase & install.

OK an update. I've booted into Single-User mode and run FSCK from the command line. It found some errors and successfully repaired them. However, my Mac still won't boot. It seems to be stuck continually writing crash logs to disk. I took a photo, hopefully its clear enough for you to see.

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/2761/dsc00016mu7.jpg

Managed to find out what the crash log says.

http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/2952/dsc00017bn0.jpg

I have the same problem, booted up in safe mode and it will not let me type in the box that wants my password. I have been a mac person since 1995 and I will say since I bought this macbook pro several months ago I now hate apple products. So damned buggy and slow I wish I had kept my old PowerBook and never upgraded. I will never ever recommend a apple product again. Now I am forced to use this crappy itouch that will not connect to wifi unless I standing on the wifi modem. Apple your stuff blows now.

I am having a similar problem on a Intel iMac 2.0 gHz running Leopard off of an external firewire drive. I reinstalled the update from the combo updater. I have repaired permission and run repair drive though disk utility, done an fsck from single user mode and the best that I can do is get the system to start up in safe mode. I uninstalled Norton AV as that has been a source of problems in the past with no effect. The system seems to hang early in the boot process, but not being a unix guru, I can't tell where in the process it hangs.

Interestingly, I updated 3 other computers with no problems. I can only assume that there is a conflict with some program during start up.

I sure wish apple would deal with this quickly. Are you listening apple?

I too got stuck on the Apple screen. Booted up from disk, ran utility, and checked disk which it indicates is fine. I cannot archive and install because there isn't enough room on my hard drive. Help!

Boot it up in Single-User mode again. When you get to the command line prompt type "exit" it will boot without the GUI. You should be able to see on screen when it hangs and what errors it shows.

So you could start from the disk, and if you have another firewire drive - try with a Combo-updater on your firewire drive.

Good Luck.

Same with me. Up to 10.5.2 eyerything went well on my white iMac Intel. Now I have the ever spinning grey wheel. Only chance is to boot in save mode to get into Leo. I downloaded the 10.5.3 combo and installed again. My mac was so kind and booted twice, as expected.

Same problem as before, and no, I haven't installed any 3rd party extensions or apps.

I never trusted leopard and so I installed it on an external FW HD to test it. Now I've got the final bill. I'm so glad that my productive system has stayed on 10.4.11.......

Message was edited by: Don_Michele1

I have the grey screen thing too. What is single user mode and how do you start from it?

Single user mode is where it drops you to the command line as the "root" user without loading the OS X interface. "Root" is the head admin, so all files are open to being modified so the computer is quite vulnerable in this mode, but this mode is quite useful for repairs and diagnostics.

To get to it hold command-s at bootup.