Mackeeper crashed my computer, help

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Level 1

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Mackeeper crashed my computer, help

My friend recently was tricked into installing Mackeeper. He put in his password and username to his mac and followed its instructions to installation. After, he purportedly had no problem with Mackeeper; however, on rebooting his computer, he now is stuck on a gray screen that eventually flashes a folder with a ? on it. I've come in to help him. I have tried to hold down OPTION on booting to access the system management, but the only result I'm having with that is eventually the mouse cursor will show up, and nothing else (i've held down OPTION for at least 5 minutes). Secondly, I tried Command-R; nothing. Shift, for safe mode-- nothing.

What to do? I haven't read any account of Mackeeper totally wiping out an individual's hard drive. Can I access or backup somehow my old files? There are many, many important things on the Mac that I just cannot afford to lose.

I appreciate any help; in the mean time, I'm still googling for answers.

custom, Windows XP

Posted on May 15, 2013 9:03 PM

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Answer 1

seventy one

Level 7

27,424 points

May 15, 2013 11:34 PM in response to garrettzorz

There are many third party apps which may combine with MacKeeper to cause problems for your computer. See the following for guidance as to how to rid your computer of this beast.

How to uninstall MacKeeper – updated |

But you still have to gain entry to start the process and the symtoms you mention are in keeping with HD problems.

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Answer 2

--A--C--

Level 2

308 points

May 16, 2013 2:41 AM in response to garrettzorz

If you have another mac available, use FireWire Target disk mode.

Connect both macs with a Firewire cable, Your mac acts as host, your friends mac as target.

The harddisk of the target will show up on the host like an external harddisk.

So you can start backing up from there.

here's how to:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1661

If there are many things on your mac you can't afford to lose, then you can't afford not to make regular back-ups!

At least one bootable clone, preferably two. One to keep at home, one somewhere else (to protect from dataloss in case of fire, burglary,...)

And if you have that, you can add Time Machine as an extra, which has some other advantages/disadvantages. (more regular, no work, but not bootable and less reliable), and can return your machine to the state it was in, x days/weeks ago, when you didn't have the problem.

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Answer 3

ds store

Level 7

30,725 points

May 16, 2013 2:10 PM in response to garrettzorz

Take the machine to a local PC/Mac software repair place, tell them what happened and you need data recovery performed and the system restored.

You can opt to wade through all this I wrote, but it's going to take time and you can't afford to make a mistake, your rather early in the self repair of Mac's stage still.

Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive

Step by Step to fix your Mac

https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents#/?p er_page=50

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