Tip Details Add a Related Tip

Rate as: Positive Negative

Leopard upgrade problem... blue screen of nothingness

If you upgrade your Mac to Leopard, you may run into an issue. After the install is complete and it tells you that you need to restart, your machine restarts and then you end up with a blank blue screen. It's a nice shade of blue, but it gets a little boring after a while... and you're going to be looking at it for a long time. This happened to me, and I didn't know what to do. It's not clear if there is more "installing" going on, or if your computer is hung. Turns out it's the latter.

If this happens to you, here's what Apple support told me to do to fix the problem.

1 - Hold down the power button for several seconds until your computer turns off.

2 - Turn on your computer while holding down the "C" key on the keyboard. Continue holding down the "C" key for at least 10 seconds. This will cause your computer to boot from the DVD and this will result in your getting the Leopard install program.. again. You need to perform the upgrade, again, and this time it'll work.
Rating: 100% positive, 2 total Votes
Categories: Mac OS X Leopard
Added: on Nov 02, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Added By: an anonymous user

Comments on this Tip

Add a Comment
This didn't work for me. I went through the entire install, and I got the same result.

Apple now has a document on this, you can find it here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306857. The problem is a program call "Application Enhancer". This is a program used to customize the dock in OS X Tiger. If you have it installed, uninstall it before you attempt to install Leopard... you can check to see if you have it by going to System Preferences and looking in the "Other" section. If it is installed, there will be an item called Application Enhancer.

I followed the "Solution 2" in Apple's document, but it didn't work. The problem is when they tell you to "restart normally". If you just hit the power button, the change won't take affect and this fails. To get it to work, type:

shutdown -r now

on the command line. Once I did this, it worked as expected and I no longer had the blue screen after installing Leopard.
– Added by an anonymous user on Nov 02, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Apple has updated their instructions to fix the problem on shutting down. Here are the commands you need to enter on the command line to fix this problem (each is on it's own line and followed by hitting the Enter key):

/sbin/fsck -fy

/sbin/mount -uw /

rm -rf /System/Library/SystemConfiguration/ApplicationEnhancer.bundle

reboot
– Added by an anonymous user on Nov 07, 2007 at 11:26 am
Your Comment:
(how to format)
Rate This Tip:

Verify Humanity:
Sorry, we know it's annoying, but please enter the characters shown in the image to the left so that we know you're an actual person and not an evil spammer. Thanks.
       

Related Tips

Disable the 3-D dock in Leopard

100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Oct 24, 2007 at 10:47 pm

New screen capture options in Leopard

100% positive, 3 comments - last added on Jun 06, 2008 at 6:55 am
– Tip added by mollyp on Jan 22, 2008 at 12:36 pm

Selecting text in the terminal window

Categories: Mac Leopard terminal OS X
100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Jul 15, 2008 at 3:51 pm

Change in Spaces behavior

Categories: Mac OS X Spaces Leopard
100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Jun 02, 2008 at 10:35 am

Improved Spotlight search in Leopard

100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by Marcos84 on Nov 16, 2007 at 7:29 am

Customize the Finder Sidebar in Leopard

25% positive, 5 comments - last added 6 hours, 34 minutes ago
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Nov 02, 2007 at 8:29 am

Quick Mac Calculator

66% positive, 2 comments - last added on Jun 09, 2008 at 9:12 am
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Jun 09, 2008 at 7:45 am

Multiple Docks on the Mac

Categories: Mac Leopard Dock
100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Jul 16, 2008 at 3:32 pm

web clip widgets

100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Jul 01, 2008 at 9:20 am

Installing PHP GD on a Leopard Mac

100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Jun 27, 2008 at 1:39 pm

Adding searches to the Finder sidebar

100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Jun 27, 2008 at 9:07 am

Bulk image manipulation on the Mac

100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Jun 11, 2008 at 6:28 am

Open finder windows from open/save dialogs

Categories: Leopard Finder shortcut Mac
100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Jun 04, 2008 at 3:18 pm

Changing the default application

Categories: Mac Finder OS X
100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on May 22, 2008 at 10:32 am

Determine PDF sizes based on the icon

Categories: Mac pdf icons OS X
100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on May 20, 2008 at 2:50 pm

Mosaic screen saver for the Mac

Categories: Mac Leopard screen saver
100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on May 12, 2008 at 12:13 pm

Take screen shots with no drop shadow

no ratings, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user 1 day, 14 hours ago

Change the Spaces dragging delay

no ratings, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Jul 08, 2008 at 9:28 am

Installing GIMP on a Mac

no ratings, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Jun 05, 2008 at 11:18 am

Be invisible on iChat

no ratings, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Jun 03, 2008 at 8:28 am