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
Searches: leopard mac blue upgrade

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

New screen capture options in Leopard

88% 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

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

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

Dragging files on the Mac

Categories: Mac OS X Tiger Leopard
50% positive, 2 comments - last added on Jun 02, 2009 at 2:39 pm
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Sep 25, 2008 at 5:14 pm

Improved Spotlight search in Leopard

100% positive, 1 comment - last added on Jun 01, 2009 at 3:16 pm
– Tip added by Marcos84 on Nov 16, 2007 at 7:29 am

Customize the Finder Sidebar in Leopard

25% positive, 5 comments - last added on Jul 23, 2008 at 6:26 pm
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Nov 02, 2007 at 8:29 am

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

Gimp no longer working on Mac OS X 10.5.7

Categories: gimp X11 Mac OS X 10.5.7
83% positive, 1 comment - last added on Oct 13, 2009 at 2:19 pm
– Tip added by an anonymous user on May 28, 2009 at 4:52 pm

Duplicate birthdays in iCal

Categories: iCal Mac Leopard
100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Nov 29, 2008 at 7:18 am

Create Leopard favorites at side bar

Categories: Leopard Mac favorites
100% positive, 1 comment - last added on Jun 02, 2009 at 1:46 pm
– Tip added by virach on Apr 19, 2009 at 8:30 am

Zooming with the mouse on the Mac

100% positive, 1 comment - last added on Dec 16, 2008 at 7:30 pm
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Dec 16, 2008 at 7:28 pm

Changing the spotlight shortcut

100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Nov 22, 2008 at 9:09 pm

Organizing mailboxes in Snow Leopard

Categories: Mac Snow Leopard Mac
100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Oct 15, 2009 at 9:03 am

Make Spaces easier to recognize

100% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Feb 03, 2009 at 2:46 pm

Alert volumes on a Mac

no ratings, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Oct 14, 2009 at 9:32 am

Application compatibility with Snow Leopard

no ratings, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Aug 27, 2009 at 4:40 pm

Customize your Mac look-and-feel

no ratings, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Mar 30, 2009 at 1:28 pm

Fixing blue screens of death on Leopard

Categories: Mac Leopard repair booting
no ratings, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Dec 30, 2008 at 3:08 pm

Keep dock icons from bouncing

Categories: Mac Leopard Dock
no ratings, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Dec 30, 2008 at 10:58 am

Router info in the Airport menu

0% positive, 0 comments
– Tip added by an anonymous user on Dec 03, 2008 at 2:54 pm