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Macintosh Grey Screen of Death

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Submitted by tfiske on Wed, 09/05/2007 - 23:34.

Well at some point over the last week, I updated my mac, and now it won’t boot.

I get a “unable to find driver for this platform: “ACPI”” I have tried the non-invasive steps from this article . (reset pRam, single user mode, etc) all steps result in a panic. And am now thinking I need to go through these steps and re-install the full update?

Does anyone have experience doing this? Can I use a 1GB thumb drive to hold the patch that needs to be applied? Any other tricks people can suggest?

==Archive and Reinstall==
Fallback if below doesn't work... If all else fails, it’s generally recommended to do an archive and install, which is basically a full OS reinstall, but preserves most of your settings. You may have to do things like set up your printers again or enter a few application codes, but other than that, your settings are for the most part intact. The old system folder is renamed to another folder, but is now unbootable (which it was anyway), and can be deleted.

==Solution==

1) Follow steps to re-install the update 10.4.10 from a external hard drive you will need:

  • an external HDD (or a USB Thumb Drive, or CD-R *should* work)
  • your installation DVDs (mine were Tiger v 10.4.5)
  • the latest comboupdate DMG file from http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/ mine was called "Mac OS X 10.4.10 Combo Update v1.1 (Intel).dmg" approx 220 Mb of download! Using a working computer, download the comboupdate file and copy it to the external HDD (You can do this from any machine, Mac or PC, etc). On the mac with Kernel Panics,
  • insert the install disk 1 and reboot,
  • holding down the "C" key until you reach a language menu;
  • choose english.
  • plugin the external HDD, and wait until you think the external HDD has been loaded.
  • select Utilities > Terminal from the menu at the top of the screen.
  • work out what where your internal and external HDD's have been mounted to: 
    df -h  /dev/something1 -- -- -- -- /Volumes/My Book << this is my external HDD  /dev/something2 -- -- -- -- /Volumes/MacBookPro HDD << this is my internal HDD
  • mount the comboupdate DMG image; type: 
     hdiutil mount /Volumes/External HDD/MacOSXUpdCombo10.4.10Intel.dmg
  • where was this mounted to? type: 
     df -h
    or 
     ls /Volumes
    mine was mounted to /Volumes/Mac OS X 10.4.10 Combo Update v1.1 (Intel)
  • install the new update 
    /Volumes/Internal\ HDD/usr/sbin/installer -pkg /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ 10.4.10\ Combined\ Update...pkg -target /Volumes/Internal\ HDD
  • if this finished successfully, exit terminal
  • Select Utilities > Startup disk > Choose the internal HDD and hit restart a few times. 2) Reboot in single user mode -S 3) /sbin/fsck -fy 4) GUI restored - no reinstall
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