Mavericks Black Screen with Cursor (mouse)

Just encountered two Mac Mini's which, when turned on, show a black screen with a cursor which moves when you move the mouse. cmd + alt + esc doesn't do anything.

Tried:

1. reset PRAM
2. SafeBoot (hold down shift)
3. hold down cmd + s and type "/sbin/fsck -yf"

I gave up and reimaged these macs.

Did a bit of research afterwards and found this apple discussions on it. There were two suggested fixes. One involved blindly logging in which isn't an ICT Technician friendly fix. However, Spiro.r suggested:

1. ssh 192.160.0.1 -l username
2. sudo rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist
3. sudo rm /Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist
4. sudo rm /private/var/db/.AppleUpgrade
5. reboot


As ssh is by default turned off, you could also do this in single user mode (hold down cmd + s).

Apparently it is a problem with updates. It basically wants you to log in and OK an update, but seems to stop the login screen appearing. Not entirely sure anyone knows what's happening, but deleting these preference files and .AppleUpgrade fixes it. I shall try it next time I see it.

iMac 24 inch 7,1 SOS beeps

An iMac is beeping when switched on. Beeps are 3 short, 3 long, 3 short:

beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeep, beeeeeeep, beeeeeeep, beep, beep, beep

Basically SOS

So far I've tried:

1. swapping RAM with working computer
2. swapping power cable with working computer
3. holding down D and other keys

Looks like its a EFI ROM corruption. Could possibly be the battery. Will try replacing the Battery first. Here's a tutorial on it

Mac Pro startup trouble - White screen with no entry sign

On start up, mac makes startup noise, goes to white screen with Apple Logo and spinny thing at bottom, then after about 2 minutes the Apple Logo changes to a grey No Entry sign. Still the spinny thing at the bottom.

I've tried:

• reset PRAM/NVRAM (same thing)
• holding down "alt" and selecting Windows partition boots to windows perfectly!
• single user mode
• comes up with "Still waiting for Root Device"
• netboot - using deploy studio
• repair disk permissions is Disk Utility
• set startup disk to OS X
• reimage OS X

Found this apple article, although it's dated back to 10.1, and 10.2! Goes on about reseting PRAM, reinstall OS.

Finally, I thought I would try the Hard Drive on another machine, so I "firewired" it up to the machine next to it.

• I booted the broken one off the working one. Worked fine
• I booted the working one off the broken one. Worked fine

So I knew that both installations on both Hard Drives worked fine. To boot I held down "alt" and selected the firewire OSX to boot from. It appeared that using the "alt" key to select an operating system fixed the problem.

I then tried holding down the "alt" button, selected the OS X partition which wasn't working, and it worked fine!!

So, I finally concluded that it was down to the "bless" command you use. The one with Deploy Studio (which is how I set the boot disk originally) seems to not work with this machine.

So, to fix this:

1. I booted the machine on it's normal OS X partition (holding down "alt" to select the OS X partition)
2. Went into "System Preferences" and "Startup Disk"
3. Selected first the Windows Partition, and then the OS X partition

This hopefully set the "bless" command right again.

It worked!!

Adobe CS 5 Error 16 - uninstall and reinstall adobe product

Just came across this today on a staff machine. When they tried to use indesign it would crash almost immediately. I then logged in under a local account and tried to use any of the Adobe Creative Suite products, all of which showed this error straight away.

I rebooted, reseting the PRAM and running /sbin/fsck -yf. No changes were made to the operating system and Adobe CS 5 still came up with this error, so the problem wasn't here.

I read up on it and it looked like it has something to do with licensing. I finally logged in as Root and tried all the Adobe products, and IT WORKED!

After running this it worked on all local logins.

Coincidentally, when the staff member logged in and ran indesign, it crashed straight away (no error). After this the error 16 occurred on all logins!! So it was something with her account which much change something somewhere. I shall look into this!

No preboot keyboard shortcuts working on White iMac 17" and 21"

We've had both 17" and 21" white iMacs for about 5 years and in that time I've re-imaged them at least 5 times (once a year) using NetBoot (hold down "N" on preboot). But recently I've noticed that these iMacs no longer register any pre-boot shortcuts including reset PRAM ("alt" + "cmd" + "p" + "r"). This means if I have a problem with them (i.e. if the hard disk fails) I won't be able to work any magic on them. Luckily I've not had any trouble yet but in time it'll need sorting out.

I originally assumed it was the last image i'd put on them, or the way in which I'd done it but noticed, but I didn't think that would effect anything pre-boot, like firmware.

I've done a few searches and found mostly mentions of Bluetooth/Wireless keyboards having this issue and one mention of 3rd party keyboards, but no real success finding anyone with this particular problem. I did a few more searches and found this which does sound more promising. The only difference being it does holding down "c" and "alt", but I didn't try these as I just assumed they would work after trying PRAM reset and "cmd" + "s" single user mode. (Never assume anything!)

A person down the bottom says the PRAM battery might have failed, which would make sense as they are over 5 years old and are unplugged for large periods of time (for security measures). The next question: How to replace battery in old white iMacs?

For the time being I shall just have to rely on them working and use the system prefs to alter startup disk.