alina.vancea

Q: Macbook air won't boot in safemode

Hello,

 

I have a MacBook air 2015 and my disk got full and now I cannot login with my user. The progress bar get stuck at 100% and the system won't let me login. I read that I must boot into safemode but I cannot do that. My MacBook does not make the startup sound and even if I press the shift key the system does not take me to safemode. The only thing that I can do is to go to Recovery mode.

 

Can someone please point me into the right direction.

MacBook Air, OS X El Capitan (10.11.5)

Posted on Jun 24, 2016 9:02 AM

Close

Q: Macbook air won't boot in safemode

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

  • by OGELTHORPE,Helpful

    OGELTHORPE OGELTHORPE Jun 27, 2016 8:25 AM in response to alina.vancea
    Level 9 (52,113 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jun 27, 2016 8:25 AM in response to alina.vancea

    You can use Target Disk Mode to access the MBA:

     

    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201462

     

    When you delete or copy files off of the MBA, do not forget to empty trash.  Only then will space be allocated for new data.

     

    Ciao.

  • by dwb,Helpful

    dwb dwb Jun 27, 2016 8:11 AM in response to alina.vancea
    Level 7 (24,073 points)
    Notebooks
    Jun 27, 2016 8:11 AM in response to alina.vancea

    If you don’t have another Mac or lack the required cables you have a couple other choices. An Apple Genius at the Apple store (or a tech at an Apple reseller) will have an external drive which can be used to boot up your computer. S/he can then help you decide what files to move from the computer onto a flash drive (temporarily) so you can boot the computer at home and safely move files to an external drive. (Don’t have one? Get one!) (Media files - movies and songs are large files so they are always good candidates.)

     

    This is one of the many reasons I have an external drive which I clone my computer’s hard drive to using CarbonCopyCloner. (Another good program is SuperDuper!) If/when my computer won’t boot I can plug this external drive in and boot up with it. If I’d experienced your problem I’d have been able to use this cloned drive and then move enough files off to resolve the problem. (I know this isn’t necessarily going to help you now but think about it for the future. A clone is 1 part of a good backup strategy.)

     

    Actually this clone idea can help you now. If you aren’t close to an Apple store or if you don’t have a Mac using friend you could grab an external drive online or at your local discount or office store. Since you can boot into recovery mode you may be able to download the OS and install it onto the external drive. (I say may because if your drive is really overly full you’ll be told you can’t download the OS. You can check that out now before purchasing the external drive.)

  • by alina.vancea,Solvedanswer

    alina.vancea alina.vancea Jun 27, 2016 8:25 AM in response to alina.vancea
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Notebooks
    Jun 27, 2016 8:25 AM in response to alina.vancea

    Thank you for your quick answer! I don't have a second mac or a cable to connect to one so this path was quite difficult for me.

    What I managed to do was the following:

    1. Enter in Recovery mode

    2. From command line set up the flag to always start in safe mode

    nvram boot-args="-x"

    3. Restart

    4. Wait for a lot of time, maybe around 2 hours, I was in Safe mode

    5. Entering in Safe mode deleted my tmp files, this was the problem in my case

    6. Enter back in Recovery mode and remove the flag to start normally

    nvram boot-args=""

    7. Restart

     

    After all this I got my system back with no issues, just a lesson learned to read the warnings


  • by alina.vancea,

    alina.vancea alina.vancea Jun 27, 2016 8:24 AM in response to dwb
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Notebooks
    Jun 27, 2016 8:24 AM in response to dwb

    This sounds like a plan for future.

    I finally figure it out as explained above in another reply.

    I can't believe I manage to break the OS by creating  temporary files.

     

    Thanks for your reply, I for sure have to consider it, since I don't have to many options, there is no apple store in this city if I have something to fix I will probably wait for  several days.

     

    Best,

    Alina