SBBOD after logon

Please note that because i get the SBBOD as soon as I do anything ,e.g. even simply move the mouse, I am unable to load any applications, to do anything, so checking logs is completely out of the question. The machine just simply locks up :-(

Thanks for the post. I have read and looked at nearly all of these solutions, the problem I have is that I cannot follow any of these diagnostic steps as I am unable to do anything, i.e., as soon as I either click the mouse, move the mouse, press a key... anything the SBBOD appears and then that is it, I can't do anything accept power off the machine.

I have tried things like pressing Command+space to bring up the search window to type "Activity Monitor", but alas the SBBOD appears straight away and that is that.

So in summary I have no way of working through any of these diagnostic steps.

As this is not my MacBook and the owner does not know what version of the OS he is running, it is hard to know exactly what steps will work. Looking at the version from within the Bash shell I can see that it is 10.10.2 which from what I understand, equates to Yosemite. Remember I can't run/do anything on the MacBook to find out for sure. I also do not have the original disks that came with the MacBook, so I can’t use those to do any diagnostics.

So what I have done so far:

1. Run Disk Utility
   1. Verify Permissions
   2. Repair Permissions
   3. Verify Disk
   4. Repair Disk
2. Safe Boot

   This works sometimes, i.e. it will let me in after logon with the dock and menu bar, but as soon as I click on anything or do anything for that matter the SBBOD appears. Other times all I get is the desktop background wallpaper and nothing else. Again as soon as I click the mouse the SBBOD appears.

3. Then I started in single user mode and run

   fsck –fy

   until I got the “…appears to be OK” message, and rebooted.
4. I have also reset the NVRAM.
   

Nothing works.

One thing to note, is that after resetting the NVRAM I get the audible bong at start-up/power-up. However after repairing the permissions this stops working.

I am now looking at creating an external USB startup disk with a copy of Yosemite on it to see if I can at least backup their data, and maybe do some diagnostics from there. The problem I have with this is that I do not have MAC to create this drive so am trying to work out how to create one from a Windows 7 machine. Fun and game :-)

Again any ideas would be helpful.

Thanks for your answer. As I said in my previous message, I would love to be able to do that “go to Applications/Utilities/Console and copy the log” but I can’t because as soon as I log into the computer (in Safe mode), I would click on the menu and ta da... the SBBOD appears and that is it. Time to power off computer. So you can see my dilemma, I can’t do any of the traditional troubleshooting as I am unable to do anything on the machine without the SBBOD appearing.

This is a very tricky one.

Thanks Eric I will give that a go.

I really appreciate you sticking with me on this one Eric. I know it’s not easy trying to help someone when you are working blind and can't see the exact problem. The re-install direction was where I was heading so you have just reconfirmed my decision. It’s just a bit slow when you are not familiar with the Mac systems. I have a tiny bit of experience with them, but not a lot. I have been a Windows administrator for 20+ years, but don't have a lot of exposure to Mac's, and they are VARY different, i.e. the logic is almost black and white compared to Windows and what I am familiar with :-)

Ok I have backed up the hard drive. Will a re-install of the OS delete the existing user accounts and their data or will all this be retained?

Hi Eric.

I backed up the hard drive and initiated a re-install of the OS. Upon doing this it informed me that it was unable to re-install over top of a newer OS.

I spoke to the owner of the MacBook and found out that he had installed Yosemite 10.10.2 over top of his default factory OS, Lion 10.7, hence the error. Silly boy!

This meant that I had to wipe the hard drive and then do the re-install. This all worked well, so we now have a working MacBook, no SBBOD, i.e. back to a factory setup.

I have copied all the users data back across to the computer. I was not sure what else to copy back across so left it at that. I noticed that Yosemite had different path structures to that of Lion, so I thought it would be best for the end user to simply treat the computer as a new one and re-install any applications they needed and reconfigure their e-mail, printer, etc.

Even though working on Macintosh computers can be very scary when you are a Windows user, because they are like chalk and cheese, I still enjoyed the challenge, and thanks to kind hearted people like yourself, things are no too daunting.

So once again, thank you for all your help. No doubt, I will probably pop back up here in this forum again in the future, when I get given another Macintosh challenge.

Kia ora

Neil