Will not boot into Safe Mode

Sorry, I have no progress to report. I, too, have upgraded to Mountain Lion.

My hunch (given elsewhere, but I can't find a link at the moment):

• firmware, or a file relating to EFI, does not cater for safe boot in edge cases.

What makes these cases edgey, I'm not sure.

With significantly reduced numbers of folders and files on my OS X startup volume (respectively 344,220 and 1,687,485 at the time of writing) I reproduced this bug.

JCC, please, what model is your MacBook Pro?

How many folders and files are on the startup volume?

I'm using a MacBookProp 13" circa July 2011, 8GB Ram, 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5. I'm not sure how to find out how many files/folders are on the startup drive. How would I look that up?

Probably easiest to use Disk Utility.

I have 251,167 folders and 1,4113 files, according to Disk Utility.

I have the same problem with an imac 2011

Chalk up one more with the same issue. MBP Retina 8gb/512gb.

The system actually works great, but I was trying to run through a safe boot to see if it would stop the lsbox sandbox errors that came with 10.8.2. (supposedly it stops them for a week or so)

Just to make sure there are no other issues I ran fsck -fy, and it shows no issues in single user more. Safe mode either via holding shift or nvram boot args -x -v it ends up stalled on **checking extended attributes file trying to do safe boot.

Left it there for 3 hours once. No joy.

Same issue. Rwm repairs, reinstall, no joy.

Replied on this thread here too. Very frustrating.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4190808?start=0&tstart=0

Same problem here on a Mac Pro 2009. What are "rwm repairs", fsck_hfs -Re?

I'm exactly in the same shoes here. Try to stop the lsboxd error by booting into safe mode suggested by others on the board, got stuck in "checking extended attributes file". 2010 MBP.

Looking for commonality amonst sufferors here. Security features can sometimes upset the Apple Cart. Has anyone here

1. activated FIPS mode
2. set a firmware password
3. encrypted their disk
4. decrypted their disk
5. used any kind of smart card reader for authentication
6. enabled "root"
7. ... other security feature not used by default

For ref:

FIPS mode info : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5239?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

I haven't done, nor am I using any of the above. However, I am using Intego's VirusBarrier X6 and its suite of virus, network and malware protection services. I also use Paralles 7 quite often to run certain financial software not availabile for Mac OS. Not sure if any of that has any relevancy to this issue.

I have none of the above enabled.

Yes to some of those questions, but my hunch is that none of those factors are contributory.

For anyone who is willing to experiment (in addition to your own feedback to Apple), you might try:

1. use Time Machine for a backup of your startup volume, without exceptions
2. erase that startup volume
3. use Time Machine to restore
4. as soon as possible after restoration, try safe mode
5. if safe mode succeeds that soon then a few days later, try again.

From what I recall (long ago), safe mode may work for only a while following restoration.

Add me to the list. Since Snow Leopard, I have not been able to do a safe boot. The gray bar stops at about one third and it stays there forever.

I thoyght that it was due to a vestige of some old junk, but I've reinstalled ML to see if I avoid the pixelated icons, and things are the same. I still have the icon pixelation and the inability to boot into safe mode.

Up until half reinstallion of all my apps, I was able to safe boot. But there's a point where it no longer does it. And I can't tell what is triggering it.

Could it be related to the number of files and folders?

Mountain Lion 10.8.2

Folders : 451.584
Files: 1.729.631

Yup, here too. Boots okay to full system, but MacBook Pro 2011 Mt Lion seemed to be running slow. Tried to boot into Safe Mode: progress bar reaches just over 25%, then hangs.

Jim