QuickTime 7.3.1 (#3): Continued problems starting up, more fixes
Some startup problems are proving intractable.
Early last Friday, we noted serious problems starting up after applying the QuickTime 7.3.1 update. The problem was typified by users endlessly stuck in Setup Assistant or a persistent gray screen.
As we initially suggested, most users were able to resolve this issue by simply booting in Safe Mode -- accomplished by holding down the Shift key while your Mac is starting up. A number of maintenance tasks are performed during the safe boot, and you might not need to perform any additional troubleshooting, i.e. safe boot, normal restart, problem solved.
Some users are getting off even easier, able to startup properly by simply performing a hard shutdown and subsequent power-up. MacFixIt reader Ken, for instance:
"Installed and restarted; got to the gray screen with the spinning gears, and there it stuck for about 45 minutes. I did a hard shutdown, waited 5 minutes and started up, and to my great relief, started up without a problem. Intel MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz with 3 GB memory, 10.5.1. Gave me heart failure for a while, although I could've started up from an external FW disk."
Some users are worse off, having to resinstall the system, via our tutorial, to resolve the issue, and experiencing data loss (simply reinstalling the system shouldn't result in any data loss) MacFixIt reader Bernt Kristiansen for instance:
"I just lost a couple of days? work because I tried to download Quick Time 7.3.1. on top of Mac OS X 10.5. The G5 would not restart, and I had to reinstall the Leopard. It seems, however, that I have lost quite a bit of data in the process. For instance: all names and email-addresses were lost from the Address Book. The strange thing is that when I use Spotlight to search for a name, Spotlight points at Address Book and a blank card. Frustrating."
Another reader, George Wedding, tried virtually every workaround except for a system reinstall with fruitless results:
"I installed the QuickTime 7.3.1 Tiger update on a PowerBook G4 1.2GHz running OS X v10.4.11. This machine is well-maintained -- it has worked flawlessly for months. [...] When I returned and awoke the sleeping computer, I was informed that the QuickTime update was successfully installed and prompted to Restart. Upon restarting, the updated PowerBook would not pass the gray Apple screen -- it simply froze at the spinning wheel (I tried three or four restarts, waiting 5-10 minutes at the frozen screen each time).
"During several subsequent Restart attempts, the updated computer would not boot into either Single User or Safe Mode. Also, the PowerBook would not boot from an external Firewire drive with OS X installed. I then inserted and booted from an OS X v10.4 install DVD and launched Disk Utility, which found the drive. In several attempts, Disk Utility?s Repair Permissions "lost contact with the disk" being repaired. Disk First Aid did run, and it found no problems to repair. Next, I restarted and tried "Safe Boot" mode a couple more times and finally encountered a kernel panic for CPU 0: (unable to find driver for this platform: "PowerBook 5,2"). Then, I deleted the various cache files as detailed by MacFixIt here -- but no joy. Now, I keep encountering the aforementioned kernel panic."
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
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