OSX won't start but Windows will

quad_red

Hi folks,

A strange one tonight. My 2009 13" Macbook won't start into OSx. It justs sit at the gray apple logo screen with the loading icon indefinitely.

However, if I press option when booting it will load into my Windows 7 bootcamp partition without any problems (which is where I'm writing this).

Any ideas/suggestions?

Cheers,
Quad

DubTony

IIRC holding down the option key should give you a choice of startup disks. If this doesn't work, there should be something in Windows that sets the startup disk, (I don't know Windows at all) go there and select Macintosh HD. Then restart and it should start straight into Mac OS.

quad_red

MMmm.

Hi DubTony. There is no problem with booting into Windows. I just press option and select it.

The default option is still OSx. I read online about holding shift when the mac is booting. That seems to have changed the situation. It stills takes an inordinate amount of time to go through the apple loading screen but it now brings me to the login screen.

However, if I try and log in as any user the process fails with constant, changing and endless 'finder has crashed unexpectedly' errors.

muggyog

Start up in 'Single user' mode ('apple' and 'S' keys). and run sbin/fsck -f at the command line.

miralize

Have you flushed the PRAM and SMC?

quad_red

Thanks guys.

Still no luck

Have flushed pram and smc, no luck. Ran the check as instructed by muggyog from the command prompt. No luck.

Still faced with these errors

crazyderk

I had an issue similar to this but it was after a major update from apple, the machine froze during the update and wouldnt boot up, I tried all the usual troubleshooting techniques but in the end had to reinstall the OS, however it did not affect the data!

muggyog

The Dyld error message in your first screenshot indicates a missing framework. Your OS has been compromised and needs to be repaired. Diskwarrior might do this but I suspect you will have to reinstall the OS ( you shouldn't lose any data in the process ).

quad_red

Lads, when you say reinstall the OS - exactly how?

Just booted from the system disc. Checked the osx partition from the disk utility, repaired it - but no problems ever detected or reported.

If I select 'install osx' will that delete the existing data (and the Bootcamp partition?).

nialler

OK if you can boot into the finder try download a combo-updater from Apple and run it and see if that resolves the issue.

Nial

quad_red

Cheers for all the help guys.

I used the system disks to reinstall the OS last night. Solved everything. Laptop booting up as normal again. All my logins and data still there. The bootcamp partition was unaffected.

Not sure what caused all of this but gonna be pretty strict about continuing to back up!