Will not boot into Safe Mode

I also have 2 4GB memory sticks in my MacBookPro 13" circa mid-2011 and have not been able to safe boot since July 2012. I upgraded from 4 - 8G RAM back in 2/2012, and it's very possible I didn't attempt a safe boot until Jul 2012 when I first noticed the problem on my machine and first posted to this thread. I purchased the memory from OWC. I do not know who makes the memory for them.

… may be related to memory size and not that it is third party memory …

The 8 GB in this MacBookPro5,2 was preinstalled by Apple.

With no change to memory, I may have a workaround but it's too early to disclose.

More likely to be the module size rather than the manufacturer. I have 12GB installed (3 x 4GB) in my MacPro. It's the Ramjet DDR3-1066 units and they're identical to the Apple-supplied RAM as far as the system's software is concerned.

Graham Perrin wrote:

I may have a workaround but it's too early to disclose.

Looking forward to details, Graham.

So according to Graham it has to do with the memory size.

- either 8GB

- or memory modules of 4GB

And that he might have a workaround.

But it stays a problem that needs to be resolved by Apple I think.

It doesn't seem to be a problem with faulty memory modules as there are different makes involved in this thread.

So I will keep an eye on my bugreport, that it will not be closed... :-)

A friend of mine has the same problem with his iMac, he has no extra memory installed, I just have inquired what kind of memory is installed in his machine.

I will keep you poasted.

I have the issue as noted earlier. Fwiw I also have 8gb. In my case apple installed bto option.

George

It's not related to RAM:

I have 15GB in my Macpro 5.1. (GB came installed from Apple.

Fighting againts Mountain Lion and its blurry icons, I decided to format and reinstall from scratch. I was able to restart in safe mode several times. But it came a moment when it was no longer possible.

I think that it's something related to the number of siles in the HD.

How much total RAM with this in? 8GB? Anyone with this problem using only 2 2GB sticks?

imac 2011 with 12 GB preinstalled. No save mode.

… according to Graham it has to do with the memory size …

No – I never suggested that.

Sorry Graham,

My wrong, misinterpreted.

Jan

Yeah, that's what I saw. When I had the thirdparty ram installed, safe boot and recovery partition simply did not work at all (2x8GB). I returned the memory and I am getting some replacements today or tomorrow from Crucial that they guarantee to work in my iMac. I will be checking all of these boots as well as running an overnight memtest from single-user mode as soon as I get them.

Has anyone found a solution to this problem yet? I also cannot successfully restart into safe mode. The progress bar seems to stop about one third of the way. I have a mid-2012 MacBook Air 8GB ram. However I did manage to reboot into safe mode a few months ago, so I have no clue as to what the potential cause is.

MacBookPro6,1 (2.66GHz i7)

8GB RAM (Apple original factory install)

System was upgraded from Lion to Mountain Lion a few months ago.

In following advice given elsewhere regarding kernel_task consuming 3.5GB of RAM I attempted safe boot using the shift key.

Safe boot hangs at about 20% with a sharp rise in temp and fans on max. The disk had been encrypted with FileVault2. I decrypted it before trying safe boot. It may be important that my 500GB HDD has a 40GB Bootcamp partition at the end of the disk in addition to the EFI and Recovery partitions. My boot volume (458GB) has only 12GB free.

This is not caused by your RAM or any other non-factory options. My machine is bog standard exactly as it came from Apple. I can't say when this started as I have never needed to boot into safe mode before.

I'd be interested to know if there is a correlation with installations of Adobe or Autodesk software using FlexNet anti-piracy protection.

Dave

For what it's worth,

I went to http://www.memtest86.com/download.html and downloaded Linux version of bootable CD.

Created bootable CD and let the memtest run for 8 hours, it found no errors in my 2*2 (Apple) +2*4 (Kingston) memory.

So I am waiting for the Apple developers to come up with a solution.

Jan