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Level 1

21 points

Boots in safe mode, stalls on normal boot

Running Snow Leopard on my Mac Pro 2009.

Pretty straightforward troubleshooting if you want to skip to the end, although how I got to this place might help:

About a month ago I had a massive system crash, the cause of which I cn only attribute to Flash (statistically 80-something percent of crashes come from this little twerp, right?) I could not perform a normal boot, so I looked at Verbose Mode and saw I was getting errors which I cannot quote verbatim leading me to believe I needed to free up space on my hard drive. So I did that in Safe Mode, and it still wouldn't boot in normal mode. I tried again and again and on the 3rd time with no real explanation it booted normally. For a while it would boot and after maybe 3 hours of uptime the Finder would start beachballing my cursor and slowly every app I touched would irreversably freeze. I would force quit Finder (which would never restart) and other things but ultimately everything was frozen except my cursor. The Apple Menu and Cmd+Opt+Esc wouldn't even come up.

I dealt with this for a while and figured I'd bust out TechTool, DiskWarrior for a permissions and directory overhall, and iDefrag (it was insanely fragmented). Well, after polishing my data to perfection I'm back to not being able to boot normally, but I know the disk utilities didn't kill my drive because I can still do a safe boot. Things seem pretty stable in safe mode, so there's a leech somewhere to salt.

So, what are the main differences between a normal boot and a safe boot? Are there some usual suspects I can flush out? Does anyone know how to do a complete purge of Flash's imfluence on my computer?

Should I post my boot logs from the console to help?

Mac Pro (Early 2009), Mac OS X (10.6.8), 32GB RAM, Radeon 4870, IntensityPro

Posted on Nov 28, 2012 5:55 PM

Best reply

John Galt

Level 10

141,234 points

Posted on Nov 28, 2012 6:09 PM

Safe Mode or "Safe Boot" is a troubleshooting mode that bypasses all third party system extensions and loads only required system components.

Read about it: Starting up in Safe Mode

Certain activities are disabled in Safe Mode, but in general if you can boot in Safe Mode but not normally, then you have one or more third-party system modifications that are preventing your Mac from starting normally. Only you can know what you installed on your Mac.

Eisen Feuer wrote:

... Should I post my boot logs from the console to help?

Sure.

View in context

19 replies

Dec 10, 2012 12:32 AM in response to ds store

ds store wrote:

Many PC users like to partition their drives, leaving a space between the OS + apps and the Users data, so when changes to the OS occur or apps, it keeps it all up near the front of the drive for better performance and thus avoids the lengthily defrag process they have to perform monthly.

It's worth noting that modern desktop Windows (i.e., 7 and 8) automatically schedule background defragmentation of non-SSD hard disks. Users never give it a second thought anymore (not that most of them ever did in the first place).

As for multi-partitioning, it's an obsolete methodology that continues to cause sysadmins headaches. Many a server out there in userland runs for years and an overly small boot partition can end up being a nightmare to administer. Whenever I install a new server, the first bloody thing I do with the Dell/HP default partitioning is delete it. NTFS and HFS+ work best when they have room to grow and write very large files contiguously. The more free space on a partition, the less possibility of fragmentation/performance becoming an issue in the first place.

Optimizing only works optimally when it can deal with files that are used frequently. Usually, those are system-/application files, but occasionally they're userland files that would greatly benefit being at the fast end of the platters.

Feb 5, 2016 1:35 AM in response to Trane Francks

HI dudes. I have the same op's problem. Mac pro 2008 with yosemite.

I Can't boot in normal mode, but it's ok on safe mode.

i've changed the hd, made a clean install, but still the same.

Sometimes (days) it boots fine but other days not or if it boot is so sloooowww, if a type something, maybe 7 characters, it lasts about 30 seconds to show in screen.

I'm trying to put a hd radeon 4890 to see if the problem is the graphic (because of the fact that the mac works fine in safe mode) my graphic card now is ati 2600 256mb

i don't know what try next, i'm hopeless 😟

ps: sorry for my poor english, i'm from spain.

petermac87

Level 5

7,447 points

Feb 5, 2016 1:44 AM in response to Sevichenko

This three has been idle for over three years. It would be best for you to start a new topic with your details, issues and perhaps include an etrecheck report for analysis. You will get more help posting an updated topic.

Cheers

Pete

Feb 5, 2016 2:08 AM in response to petermac87

THank you pete!

Boots in safe mode, stalls on normal boot