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Startup hangs with "Login Window Application Started"

After installing the latest updates from Apple today (Sept 27, 2008), my Mac Mini hangs on booting with the progress indicator. I rebooted in verbose mode (option-V) and found that it is repeatedly putting out a message about
"/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS/loginwindow: Login Window Application Started"

I went though the instructions on: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1411 to no avail. I rebooted in single-user mode, and checked the timestamp on /System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app and sure enough it was updated today.

Was there a problem with the latest update? How can I recover?

Thanks.

Mac Mini, Mac OS X (10.3.x)

Posted on Sep 28, 2008 1:44 AM

Reply
1 reply

Sep 28, 2008 10:16 AM in response to rpradhan

You can give this a try:

You will need to type some Unix commands. If you are not comfortable with this, I don't know of anything other than a re-install. But if you are careful, you should be OK. I recommend you print this out in a largish mono-spaced font so you don't miss any spaces (or add extra ones). Note that case is important.

Be careful. Some of these commands are dangerous, since you are going to be root.

Start up in Single-User mode by restarting the computer. After the chime press and hold down the COMMAND-S keys until you see white text on a black background. When this has finished you will see a prompt ending in '#', although there may be other messages. Enter the following commands after the prompt:

/sbin/fsck -fy


Press RETURN. Wait a few seconds for 8-10 lines of output. If the last line says repairs were carried out, repeat this command until you get a message 'The volume <yourdiskname> appears to be OK'. Then continue with:


/sbin/mount -uw /
cd /Library/Preferences
rm com.apple.loginwindow.plist
rm com.apple.windowserver.plist
cd /Library/Caches
rm -r *
cd /System/Library
rm Extensions.kextcache
cd /System/Library/Caches
rm -r *
reboot
Press RETURN after each command.

This should now take you to a proper login screen after the normal boot sequence. You should then Repair Permissions by using Disk Utility (in your /Applications/Utilities folder).

Startup hangs with "Login Window Application Started"

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