I'm running Snow Leopard on a mac mini.
I recently downloaded the updates and when the computer restarted it got hung up on the gray start up screen with the apple and the spinning circle.
I've tried resetting PRAM just because and that didn't help.
I've tried forcing quit and restarting. It never gets past the gray start up screen and spinning wheel.
What else can I try?
I should also add that I disconnected everything for several minutes and then reconnected the 24 inch apple cinema display and keyboard. It still wouldn't start up.
Try using Disk Utilities (from your installer dvd) to verify/repair your boot drive.
Here's some docs on the subject of boot problems:
Gray screen appears during startup
How do I do an archive and install on Snow Leopard. It seems that there was an option for this that you had to select on previous OS's, but in Snow Leopard it automatically does this if I go ahead and reinstall from the system disk? Am I right?
I only have done a fresh install of SL when I originally got it and I've never been put in a position where I had to reinstall (more about that in a moment). But I believe that SL is an update install so you don't loose anything.
Now, having said that, and the reason I have never been put into this position was I always have current backups I can revert to. You should have too. And for this case back up your current system before applying the update just in case it clobbers your stuff.
I agree about having backups. This is one of my computers I have lazily not come around to doing that... partly because I do not have a lot on it that wouldn't be too difficult to replace.
I think my next step is to try the old "archive and install"
Just out of curiousity, what do you use to back up your systems? I've used time machine and Superduper. Superduper is my preferred method, because it creates a bootable drive for me, but it also seems to interfere with other things on my systems.
I'm looking for a good backup system
Just out of curiousity, what do you use to back up your systems? I've used time machine and Superduper. Superduper is my preferred method, because it creates a bootable drive for me, but it also seems to interfere with other things on my systems.
I use Carbon Copy Cloner but you using SD is just as good. I use an internal drive on my mac pro to backup my system every day at the same time (i.e., a time when I know I am not near my machine). I also backup to an external drive but less frequently. And maybe once a month run Disk Utility to verify all the drives so that potential disk errors don't pile up possibly making it more difficult to repair (so far no errors have appeared -- knock on wood).
FWIW, I also keep my boot drive separate from the drive I use for my home directory. This way if something catastrophic were to happen to the boot drive it wouldn't take my home dir down with it. It also allows me to boot from backups of the boot drive (e.g., the one I daily backup to -- backup drive is actually two partitions; one for boot and one for home dir) while still allowing me to use the same home directory.
The way I use my machine daily backups is sufficient. YMMV.
By the way, because I keep the boot drive separate from my stuff it means I only need a relatively small boot drive. In my case it's a 120GB SSD. So the backup is partitioned into a 120GB and the rest for my home dir drive.
stuck on start up screen
