HT205750: About the OS X El Capitan v10.11.4 Update

Learn about About the OS X El Capitan v10.11.4 Update
eperkov
Level 1 (2 points)

Q: Beware! This update may break your OS (boot freezes with white blank screen and no login). I spent 3 days trying to fix it and ended up restoring everything from backup! Other users reported the same issue. Apple needs to address this.

This is not a question but a solid statement. Upon applying this update my MacPro stopped booting to login screen. It would just hang with white blank screen. It wouldn't even boot in a Safe mode! Recovery did not help - the same issue remained. I had to restore the whole partition from backup to fix this problem. Other folks reported the same issue. I am not sure if this is related to my ATI HD 5770 graphic card but it seemed very much like this. The OS would fully start but there's no login screen; the only option is to login via telnet/ssh. system_profiler would fail to work either.

I'll wait till Apple does something about this update.

Mac Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)

Posted on Mar 23, 2016 7:27 AM

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eperkov

Q: Beware! This update may break your OS (boot freezes with white blank screen and no login). I spent 3 days trying to fix it and end ... more

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  • Helpful answers

  • by pinkstones,

    pinkstones pinkstones Mar 23, 2016 7:37 AM in response to eperkov
    Level 5 (4,209 points)
    Safari
    Mar 23, 2016 7:37 AM in response to eperkov

    I had absolutely no problems updating to 10.11.4, and I'm running a mid-2010 MacBook. 

  • by Allan Jones,

    Allan Jones Allan Jones Mar 23, 2016 7:38 AM in response to eperkov
    Level 8 (35,176 points)
    iPad
    Mar 23, 2016 7:38 AM in response to eperkov

    No issues here either.

  • by jimfromvienna,

    jimfromvienna jimfromvienna Mar 23, 2016 12:02 PM in response to eperkov
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 23, 2016 12:02 PM in response to eperkov

    I Applied the release version of 10.11.4.  Now I cannot even boot up in safe mode.  Running mid-2011 Mac mini.  Using Time Machine, but I can't even get to it.  Any suggestions what to do?

  • by eperkov,

    eperkov eperkov Mar 23, 2016 3:30 PM in response to pinkstones
    Level 1 (2 points)
    Mar 23, 2016 3:30 PM in response to pinkstones

    Thanks for your reply. That's most likely because your graphics is integrated. As I mentioned in my original post - I am using Radeon HD 5770 in my 2010 MacPro tower . A colleague of mine who also uses some ATI model has similar problems. At the first restart after letting update run - wham! White blank screen and no possibility to login, even in a Safe mode.

  • by eperkov,

    eperkov eperkov Mar 23, 2016 3:37 PM in response to jimfromvienna
    Level 1 (2 points)
    Mar 23, 2016 3:37 PM in response to jimfromvienna

    Not much of options from where I stand. I ended up restoring the whole partition from backup; luckily I had a fresh one.

  • by FrenzCraw,

    FrenzCraw FrenzCraw Mar 25, 2016 10:29 AM in response to eperkov
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 25, 2016 10:29 AM in response to eperkov

    I had the same problem. I tried all the fixes I found online for 2 days. Had to restore from Time Machine backup.

  • by FatMac>MacPro,

    FatMac>MacPro FatMac>MacPro Mar 25, 2016 11:33 AM in response to eperkov
    Level 5 (4,835 points)
    Mar 25, 2016 11:33 AM in response to eperkov

    One solution which is working for others with that problem is to get the update installer from Apple and run it from the Desktop.

  • by jh0000,

    jh0000 jh0000 Mar 25, 2016 12:38 PM in response to eperkov
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mar 25, 2016 12:38 PM in response to eperkov

    macbook air 2011, stuck at boot screen after osx update...

     

    This helped

    https://www.justinsilver.com/technology/os-x-el-capitan-10-11-1-hanging-on-boot- fixed

     

    1) boot to recovery mode (hold cmd-R at boot)

    2) in terminal compare kexts in "/Library/Extensions/" and "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Library/Extensions/"

       and remove some kexts from "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Library/Extensions/"

      in my case HP and Canon printers

    3) reboot and everything works again

  • by Todd Dixon,

    Todd Dixon Todd Dixon Apr 26, 2016 2:09 AM in response to eperkov
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Apr 26, 2016 2:09 AM in response to eperkov

    I fix Macs for a living and have had this with three Macs. 2 x iMac and 1 x MBPro. Tried all the scenarios. In fact I had to physically remove the drives from inside the machine and put in external case to reformat and reinstall.  ie if I booted from external system and reformatted internal drive then tried reinstall from standalone dmg then it would hang on the boot (yes I left it overnight).  Even if if I cloned known good Mavericks to bare drive inside machine and attempted El Capitan then the same issue occurred. If I installed clean El Capitan to bare drive in external case then all is good until I move drive back in to iMac then it dies again.  It smells of drive firmware, MB chipset and 11.4 issue.  Two of these problem machines happened to users who had safely upgraded to 10.11.3 from Mavs or Yosemite and then they died after 10.11.4 update a week ago. I have downgraded these machines to Yosemite for now with no issues. Oh and I also did a reformat from Snow Leopard to take Corestorage out of the equation and there were no migrations involved in my rebuild attempts so old kext files are not an issue. FYI all machines are sporting nVidia graphics and the two iMacs are using nVidia SATA chipsets but laptop is using Intel SATA. <sigh>