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View Full Version : Dreaded Blue Screen of Death mars some Leopard installs



Hands0n
28th October 2007, 12:01 AM
Basically, if you have any performance enhancers installed in OS X Tiger - then you'd better remove them or check out the article carefully before you attempt to install OS X Leopard.

You have been warned


Apple support drones are getting an earful from Mac users who are getting the dreaded Blue Screen of Death while trying to update to the latest and greatest version of OS X. This thread on an official Apple support forum (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1195031&tstart=0) has more than 200 posts left in 25 hours at time of writing. A large percentage of the writers report getting a persistent blue screen that forces them to abort their installation of Leopard.

Among the signs that something is awry is the following post from a Mac user in Australia:

I've just been on the phone to Apple AU support for an hour (around half of that spent on hold, but on-and-off as they sometimes consulted other techs), and they definitely know of the BSOD issue, said they started taking calls from 9am Friday as the first (early courier!) deliveries of Leopard were installed, and they've been flat out, "phones ringing non-stop" since then. Implied that Apple stateside has been swamped (as you can imagine) and they haven't been able to pinpoint the issue causing the BSOD but "they're looking into it".

It's still not clear what's causing the snafu. Seems at least some of the the people experiencing problems had a third-party developer app called Application Enhancer installed. Some also had external disks or other peripherals attached when they pulled the trigger on the Leopard install. The OS went on sale on Friday all over the world. Many users later reported they were able to successfully install, but it sure was a messy road to redemption.

To recover, users were instructed to rip "Ape," short for Application Enhancement, from the Leopard's maw. The process is too gory for us to print here, but suffice it to say that, among other things, it had users use a command line to purge files with names like "Enhancer.prefpane" and "com.unsanity.ape.plist." Another remedy being suggested is to use the OS X feature Archive and Install.

Apple PR reps didn't respond to a request to comment by time of writing. We'll be sure to update if they do.

El Reg is eager to publish screenshots or snapshots of the fatal install. We'd imagine Steve Jobs to come up with more of an Azure or Cobalt Blue shade. If you have shots, please contact the reporter here.

We can only hope the normally smug Mac Guy is duly red-faced. After all, aren't BSODs, botched installs and kludgy fixes the stuff of the inferior OS to Cupertino's North? Not that we don't look forward to updating to Leopard soon. But as was the case with users of the iPhone, we think it'd be better to hold off a little while, thank you very much. ®


Article Source (and live links): The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/27/leopard_install_problems/)

bsrjl1
28th October 2007, 06:53 PM
I had this problem, so booted into another version of OS X to try to sort it. Followed the instructions to remove APE (I'm sure I had the latest version as I use AppFresh), but it didn't matter. So just chose Archive & Install and it went fine. Had to reinstall Parallels & a couple other apps, no big problems.

Ben
28th October 2007, 06:58 PM
I take it the Parallels HDD/Guest OS still worked fine after reinstalling Parallels? I.e. you didn't lose your Guest OS?

miffed
28th October 2007, 07:42 PM
I take it the Parallels HDD/Guest OS still worked fine after reinstalling Parallels? I.e. you didn't lose your Guest OS?

I did an "Archive & Install" , No BSOD , but I had to reinstall Parallels , I was a little worried , but when I did it , all worked fine - in fact , I had forgotten , I had left XP "suspended" , and it picked up exactly where I left it !

The only other app I have noticed anything strange on was Apple Remote Desktop - which seemed to reinstall lots of stuff , but all works OK

Hands0n
28th October 2007, 08:30 PM
Well I'm back from Very Scary Land :) having just upgraded the Macbook Pro to Leopard. All is well, eventually.

I used the MBP for this next upgrade (2 of 3) as it has Parallels but not as vital to me as the Mac Pro. I followed what I did with the Mac Mini and did an Upgrade. I do not use APE or any other software that gets its hooks deep into the OS. Having seen how little reward is given for doing this on Windows I have made a conscious decision not to bother with the Mac computers. Wisely so it would seem, at least when it comes to upgrade time. The noise on the forums is dreadful, but only to be expected. Updates to an OS that has been hooked into like that are bound to fail or, at best, be problematic.

Before commencing the Update on the MBP I did a full disk backup to an external USB drive using Carbon Copy Clone - it took over an hour to image the 45GB of disk that I have used on the MBP. But I wanted some means to get my MBP back to its former condition should the worst happen.

The actual Update worked fine, all very predictable and exactly as happened on the Mac Mini. A quick tour around the resulting system showed no problems that I could see. And so I turned my attention to Parallels, and that is where things went a bit more wrong!

The last time I used Parallels I let it just Suspend XP, so when I started it up after the Update it tried to Resume and got into a bit of a state. The display didn't look right, it went into Coherence mode and was a bit strange when I switched back to the Windowed display, with vertical and horizontal sliders making it difficult to use XP.

After a bit of exploring I decided to re-install Parallels Tools from the pulldown menu, this was because the mouse would not work in the XP window. In doing so Parallels got itself back to working form, but it killed my AVG anti-virus which now would not start! So I downloaded the latest installer and re-installed AVG following which the Parallels XP installation worked correctly.

So, not quite as uneventful as the Mac Mini Update - but then with Parallels doing what it does I suppose things were bound to be a bit jittery. But I got there in the end, in all it added about 30 minutes to the end of what would have been a routine and forgetful OS X Leopard Update.

I've had tons worse with successive Windows updates - and don't even get me started on my two Vista experiences :D

Ben
28th October 2007, 10:38 PM
I did an "Archive & Install" , No BSOD , but I had to reinstall Parallels
That sounds right. Archive & Install gives you a fresh OS install, archiving the old one separately so it's available if you need to get files from it etc. As the Upgrade route 'upgrades' the existing OS to Leopard it's much more vulnerable to conflicts.