On 23 May 2014, at 6:05 pm, Peter Crisp <petercr...@westnet.com.au> wrote:
> Hi, a colleague of mine has an MBA around mid 2009 vintage which just has the > grey screen full tie with the spinning bar thing. I think he said it is a > 20GB SSD. > > Anyway, he had it pretty full and then did a Mavericks update and it seemed > to become problematic from that point. > > I've tried the start in Safe Mode and Recovery mode and the Command P and R > on start up. Have left them a long time on each different attempt and it has > remained on the grey screen with the spinning wheel. > > He has at his home a Seagate wireless disc which holds his backup and he has > given me permission to do a full erase if I can even get to the point of > doing that. > > The problem with an MBA is no peripherals or Disc drive to put an OSX disc in > how does one get to the net when it is in this state to download a new OSX. > > But my first problem is to get to a screen where I can get Disk Utility to do > an Erase or anything even. > > Any tips from anyone on this? > > Had quite a bit of review of the Apple Support and done all I can see there. > > A few things to try (which you haven't mentioned) 1. Start in Single User Mode (hold down cmd-S at startup). This will leave you at a black UNIX screen, with brief instructions how how to run "fsck" to detect and fix hard drive problems 2. Start in Verbose mode (hold down cmd-V at at startup). This will show you the chain of events as processes are loaded during the startup process, at least to the point of the loading of the graphic interface. You might just see what's holding things up. 3. Hold down cmd-R during startup. Since you say your colleague has installed Mavericks, this should cause the computer to restart from recovery partition, where you will have access to Disk Utility. 4. If you or your colleague have taken the precaution of creating a Mavericks installation device (UDSB Stick or DVD - always a good idea) try restarting from that. Again, you will have access to Disk Utility from that. Peter Hinchliffe Apwin Computer Services FileMaker Pro Solutions Developer Perth, Western Australia Phone (618) 9332 6482 Mob 0403 046 948 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Mac because I prefer it -- Windows because I have to. -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug>
