Black Screen with white text at startup (??)

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Level 1

8 points

Black Screen with white text at startup (??)

Hello All:

I have a 2010 15" MacBook Pro, just got it in June. Had to send it in for a logic board replacement and now have it back. Everything works great except now instead of having the standard Apple greyish startup screen, I have a black screen with white text that scrolls through all of the startup stuff. I figure they changed some line on a plist somewhere so they could watch the startup and make sure everything was OK, then forgot to change it back.

Although I know it is good to know what's going on under the hood, I would rather it started up the regular way. Anyone know how to switch it back? I would call Apple, but would rather not sit on the phone for a long time for what I believe is probably a very simple fix. I did a search but couldn't find my problem listed....

Thanks everyone...

MacBook Pro 6,2, Core i5, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Oct 15, 2010 12:06 PM

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Answer 1

phillyhouse Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 15, 2010 12:56 PM in response to Kappy

Hmmm....

Note that the computer starts up to the desktop, it doesn't stay on the black screen. The thing starts up so fast that there is no time to type anything from the time it finishes scrolling and the desktop pops up. Perhaps I am confusing the problem - everything is fine except I get the startup details instead of the normal grey screen....

Thanks for the response though!

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Answer 2

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Oct 15, 2010 1:27 PM in response to phillyhouse

Sorry just a misunderstanding. You are going through a verbose mode startup. Not sure but you can try this. Navigate to /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/ folder and look for com.apple.boot.plist. Open it in TextEdit. Look for:

<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>-v</string>

If you see "-v" in the second line then delete the "-v" and re-save the file.

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Answer 3

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Oct 15, 2010 12:46 PM in response to phillyhouse

First, after the startup is completed you should see a prompt with the cursor. You are booted into single-user mode. At the command line prompter enter:

reboot

Press RETURN

Hopefully, this will return you to a normal startup. If not it means there's a problem with a system file. You will need to do a reinstall of OS X. The Snow Leopard installer will reinstall OS X without erasing the hard drive, and it will preserve all your files and users.

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Answer 4

phillyhouse Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 15, 2010 1:59 PM in response to Kappy

Kappy:

Thanks for the reply. I looked at the plist, but the -v was not there. Here is a copy of the plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string></string>
</dict>
</plist>

At least I know what it is called now - a "verbose startup".

Again, thanks for the help. Learn something new every day.

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Answer 5

phillyhouse Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 15, 2010 2:20 PM in response to phillyhouse

Problem Solved Thanks to Kappy -

Once I knew what the condition was called (verbose mode) a quick search led me to a page at osxdaily.com about turning verbose mode on and off. You can check status of verbose mode using the command "nvram -p" in Terminal. Although not in my .plist, the "-v" did appear in the nvram list.
Using the command "sudo nvram boot-args=" fixed the problem.

Again, thanks to Kappy for the assist!

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Answer 6

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Oct 15, 2010 4:52 PM in response to phillyhouse

Would have been my next suggestion but your just too fast for my.

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