Mavericks Install Fails at First Reboot

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Level 1

4 points

Mavericks Install Fails at First Reboot

On an early 2009 iMac running Mountain Lion on internal hard drive and no external drives: Mavericks installation starts and runs fine until it gets to the first reboot. When the computer tries to reboot it cannot find a valid operating system, a multi-langauge failure notice appears on the screen. Eventually the system crashes and reboots again automatically with exactly the same result.

If I go to the recover disk and select Mountain Lion 10.8.5 as the startup disk, the computer boots into the old Mountain Lion fine and everything runs normally. Attempting to re-run the Mavericks install produces the same result.

The computer is current on all patches. Logs do not hint at a problem. I assume that the Mavericks installation needs to reboot into an "updater OS" so that it can peform the update surgery. It would appear that the vector which causes the computer to boot into this temporary OS is not pointing to a valid OS - thus when I redirect it back to 10.8.5 the rebooting stops.

Any thoughts as to what's going on here or what to look for?

Thanks!

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 26, 2013 8:39 PM

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Answer 1

sheila_m.

Community Specialist

Oct 29, 2013 10:54 AM in response to Maclakeham

Hello Maclakeham,

I would be concerned too if my MacBook Pro was getting recurring kernel panics after installing Mavericks. You have already gone through some great troubleshooting steps to help isolate the issue.

I recommend following the steps in the section titled "Troubleshooting a recurring kernel panic" in the article below to help isolate and troubleshoot this issue even further:

OS X: When your computer spontaneously restarts or displays "Your computer restarted because of a problem."

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4636

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.

Best,

Sheila M.

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Answer 2

Maclakeham Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 31, 2013 10:01 AM in response to sheila_m.

Thank-you for the feedback, but the solution doesn't seem to address the issue. I was able to capture a bit of the panic screen.

Panic was "Process 1 exec of /sbin/launchd failed, errno 2"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-2050.48.12/bsd/kern/kern_exec.c:3560"

There was a backtrace followed by:

BSD process name correspondign to the current thread: init

Boot args: config="\OS X Install Data\com.apple.Boot"

"Mac OS version:

Not yet set"

Followed by some other kernel info

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Answer 3

Oct 31, 2013 2:39 PM in response to Maclakeham

Additional:

Reset PRAM, repaired permissions, checked disk, etc.

Removed items from the various startup and launch directories as mentioned in other posts.

I reinstalled Mountain Lion - that went fine.

Tried to install Mavericks again - with exactly the same problem. So there seems to be an issue here with Mavericks that doesn't exist with Mountain Lion.

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Answer 4

sheila_m.

Community Specialist

Nov 1, 2013 2:21 PM in response to Maclakeham

Hi Maclakeham,

Thank you for the additional information. Due to the nature of your issue or question you may find more information by using another one of Apple's support resources - https://getsupport.apple.com/GetproductgroupList.action

All the best,

Sheila M.

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Answer 5

Nov 7, 2013 4:12 PM in response to Maclakeham

Hello! I have a similar error:

Fri Nov 8 03:34:49 2013

panic(cpu 2 caller 0xffffff8029f5e045): "Process 1 exec of /sbin/launchd failed, errno 2"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-2050.48.12/bsd/kern/kern_exec.c:3560

Backtrace (CPU 2), Frame : Return Address

0xffffff8111e03e10 : 0xffffff8029c1d636

0xffffff8111e03e80 : 0xffffff8029f5e045

0xffffff8111e03ef0 : 0xffffff8029f410f7

0xffffff8111e03f10 : 0xffffff8029f70e41

0xffffff8111e03f50 : 0xffffff8029c1b6e1

0xffffff8111e03f90 : 0xffffff8029cb8f53

0xffffff8111e03fb0 : 0xffffff8029ccebcc

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: init

Boot args: config="\OS X Install Data\com.apple.Boot"

Mac OS version:

Not yet set

Tell me what to do. Reference in the last response did not work.

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Answer 6

Nov 11, 2013 8:48 AM in response to Maclakeham

Problem solved thanks to Jamie in Apple support. The symptoms could have been hardware and this work-around would not have worked had there been a hardware issue.

Process:

1. Disconnected anything that is not Apple. This includes memory, disk drives, keyboards, mice, etc. Required since this problem could be caused by unexpected behavior from a peripheral. (I didn't have any issues with this.)

2. On another Mac (that works and has Mavericks installed), use a portable hard drive (or other storage device) to install Mavericks. Run the Mavericks installer and install Mavericks on this external hard drive. Note that this drive must be properly formatted to install Mavericks and the recovery partition. This process will not work if it's not properly formatted.

3. Trundle the portable hard drive over to the Mac that isn't updating. Boot from the portable hard drive and verify that all is well. (This boot isn't strickly necessary, but after the 8 million reboots I went through I figured, "What the heck!"

You are now running the Mac that cannot be upgraded from a Mavericks image running on an external hard drive.

4. Restart the Mac. When the musical tone sounds, press the Option key. This will allow you to select the boot media. You will see the main hard drive along with the Mavericks install on the external media. You will also see "Recover 10.9".

5. Boot to the 10.9 recovery partition.

6. From the recovery options choose Install OS X.

7. Select the main hard drive - the one which you have not been able to upgrade.

8. Let 'er rip. Oh, and by the way. You did actually back up your computer before starting all of this, didn't you? I didn't need my backup - but that's probably because I had one. (Computers have a sense of humor like that.)

9. The process will download (another) copy of Mavericks and proceed to install it.

The process went fine for me. As mentioned earlier I didn't need my backup - all my files and customizations were there.

The Apple folks were outstanding! My thanks to Jamie who went out of this way to sort this thing out. I got an E-mail and phone call discussing this solution an hour or so after our chat. Clearly this had bothered/puzzled Jamie enough that he had to find a solution. Thanks Jamie!

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