Powerbook G4 (OS X 10.4.11) won't boot up after latest security update

A wise strategy. I was getting a bit cavalier about just doing however many installs Software Update was prompting all at once.

The main Archive&Install has now finished, and I've just re-established the Pismo's Internet connection via our Airport network. Am now downloading the 10.4.11 updater, and only that. Will proceed with the others in baby steps, as you describe.

Many thanks for the clear description of your road to recovery.

jb

(Hi, my name's John, and I'm a recovering Apple updater...)

I can confirm that this page helped me solve the white screen hang on tiger / powerbook G4 after 2009-001 security update - i closed my laptop lid just before the update finished and i think it screwed it up - plus my disk space was very low ..

but I managed to do it without the startup disk:

boot into single user mode apple-s
run fsck , mount / and start /etc/rc
download the update as a .dmg
mount external disk containg the .dmg of the update
use the -mountroot option described above (i extracted to /tmp)
and voila!

that's 5 hours I won't get back ! - but could have been more so thanks to all.

I had the same problem with my old G4. It was setup with multiple users and therefore I could not log in with Safe Mode. I was able to boot up on disk#1 of Tiger System Install Disk (by holding down option key and selected that disk from my screen, selected English, then click on menubar option to goto Disk Utilities. I verified and repaired my hard drive. Rebooted and did not help.

I reseated my battery ... did not help.

I then rebooted on the disk#1 of Tiger System Install disk and installed the system on the second hard drive that I had on this machine, that was basically an empty formatted hard drive. I then ran update of that system, quicktime and itunes one at a time. I did NOT run the security update.

I then downloaded the combo update 10.4.11 PPC and updated the original hard drive that would not boot. Tried to boot up on that hard drive. Did not work.

Downloaded the security update to the bootable second hard drive and ran it, selecting the unbootable 1st hard drive and installed the security update from the downloaded version. It worked and now my 1st hard drive is booting again.

Thanks everyone for the helps on here!
Joan

I also downloaded the same security update to my 12" powerbook G4 and it also made it unbootable. I booted on external drive and ran the update from the download site again and it also fixed the problem. Was able to boot again.

Question for you, when this happened by chance did you check out the "Start Up Manager"? I went into mine and found no icon in the middle showing the Mac HD. I just saw Circle arrow and a straight arrow pointing to the right. Was patch Characteristic of this? Have you seen this? Thx.

Thanks, your hint saved my day!

My Smptoms:
Unable to mount disk images.
After applying Sec-Updt 2009-002 PowerBook didn't come over grey screen.
Booting in verbose Mode (Cmd-V) showed a repeatedly crashing loginwindow process.

Fortunately, I had a spare, running PowerBook as helper.

What I did successfully (your mileage may vary):

1) Connect both Powerbooks with a FireWire cable.
2) Startup the non-booting PB in target-disk-mode by pressing the "t" key while booting
3) After some time the Disk will show up in the other PB.
4) Do a disk-check with DiskUtility
5) Start the Security Update
6) Chose the external disk as destination
7) When finished, shut down the external PB, disconnect the Firewire cable
8) Boot up the now fixed PB in verbose mode by pressing Apple-V while booting.
9) The loginwindow process starts up flawless 🙂