Why does my Macbook stay stuck on the boot screen after installing 10.7.4?

Question

Why does my Macbook stay stuck on the boot screen after installing 10.7.4?

I use a White MacBook (early 2008) with OS X Lion on it. I checked for updates recently, when I found that OS update 10.7.4 was available.

When I started the update, the Software Update utility asked me to update by restarting. After I did this, the update got downloaded and the machine restarted. Now, it is getting stuck on the boot screen with the Apple logo replaced by a 'circle with a line in it' (like a typical "not allowed") logo.

Any pointers about how I can boot it up?

MacBook (Early 2008), Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on Jun 16, 2012 6:18 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 17, 2012 1:04 AM in response to viraj.paripatyadar

To go back to a previous state, I tried restoring a backup from Time Machine which was taken one day before the 10.7.4 install.

The Time Machine restore was completed sometime in the night, but the machine still gets stuck while booting up on the Apple logo. Now I'm totally stuck. 😟

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Answer 2

Jun 17, 2012 4:22 AM in response to viraj.paripatyadar

Here is a possibly relevant article from Apple for you:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570

Hope this helps 🙂

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Answer 3

Jun 18, 2012 7:37 AM in response to Radiation Mac

Sorry, but the steps from the article haven't solved the problem yet.

I tried out most of the steps from the article (ones I could do without leaving my desk anyway) - Boot without peripherals (stuck), Safe Boot (stuck), Reset NVRAM/PRAM (stuck), repair permissions (stuck).

This time, I just repaired disk (showed no problems) and following with repairing permissions. If this doesn't work, I will be trying a full reinstall and then a Time Machine restore tomorrow.

Will post what happens.

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Answer 4

Jun 18, 2012 7:50 AM in response to viraj.paripatyadar

Disk repair hasn't worked as well.

I just wanted to add a quick observation: after I tried the TM restore for the first time, Safe Boot in verbose mode seems to be stuck at this line "VBoxAdpDrv: version 3.1.0 r55467". This may point to the problem being a Virtual Box problem.

I use Virtual Box extremely rarely - haven't used it in many months. After a re-install, I'm going to remove it and then try the upgrade. If it works, then we've probably found the culprit. If it is real, Apple should maybe add a line saying Virtual Box known to cause problems with this upgrade (or fix it 🙂).

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