Ok, here's what happened; my automatic update popped up, saying updates were available and it needed to shut down and install. First attempt froze up on the start of the install, so I restarted the computer and the update, update was 80% or so complete and froze up again, nothing happening for a good thirty minutes. So I thought I needed to power down and try again, big mistake apparently, because now I'm stuck on the grey screen with the apple logo and the spinning wheel thing. What can I do to repair this? Should I just take it into the Apple store? It's running Lion, the 2.33 Ghz, 2 GB RAM if I remember right. Thanks in advance and thank god for iPad and tappalk.


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Boot from the recover partition and reinstall lion?

Boot from the recover partition and reinstall lion?

I am restoring from my latest backup, thank god for automatic backups. Then I will try to reinstall the update. Thanks.


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Was able to re-install lion ok, but can't log in. Get a FileVault error message, no details on what the error is. Any ideas how to proceed from here?


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Well, its back up and running again. Lost all of my photo's since I got the MBA. I guess if file vault is turned on, time machine backups aren't backing up anything. Tough lesson to learn for sure. At least I was able to get all my music and all but a couple movies back without any problem.

Well, its back up and running again. Lost all of my photo's since I got the MBA. I guess if file vault is turned on, time machine backups aren't backing up anything. Tough lesson to learn for sure. At least I was able to get all my music and all but a couple movies back without any problem.

Time Machine backs up everything even with File Vault activated. Chances are Time Machine wasn't backing up for a while prior to your MBA crashing (for whatever reason), hence why you lost data. Would be my guess.

Time Machine backs up everything even with File Vault activated. Chances are Time Machine wasn't backing up for a while prior to your MBA crashing (for whatever reason), hence why you lost data. Would be my guess.

Hmm, searched back on Time Machine, could find nothing there, was had the Apple tech guy on the line and using the remote screen view or whatever its called, where they can guide and see what you are seeing. The backups were there, just no information was being backed up from my user profile. Was able to retrieve probably 90 percent or more of the photos I thought I had lost by using a recovery program on my SD cards. Very happy with how it worked, just need to fire up my old computer and transfer the photos I had there now. Checked the time machine, and everything appears to be there this time. Going to pick up a USB hard drive next time I see them on sale and back up a bootable clone to it and keep it somewhere else for safety, don't want to go through this ever again.

I am rather paranoid when it comes to backing up digital images.

First of all I lock the SD card. I download images using Image Capture rather than letting the originals go straight into the iPhoto data base. Next I copy the downloaded images to my back-up drive and use Preview to open every backed up image, thus making sure the back up and therefore the original downloads are not corrupt. When the back-up has been tested I then put the card back in the camera and reformat in the camera. Finally I transfer all images to a memory stick which can be easily stored off site.

It is a bit more work but well worth it should disaster strike.

A final thought. While I see the value of TimeMachine particularly for someone that routinely needs to take a step back and recover an earlier version of a file, I would always recommend a clone or a disk image before running various updaters. I also recommend booting from the clone and testing it out, again do it before you run the updates. Full recovery from a clone is ever so much easier than any other method.

I do not ever run updates the instant Software Update tells me to. If there is a big problem Apple will pull the update usually in less than 24 hours. I can recall three instances but there are probably more. Generally within three or four days the various Apple Forums should give you a good idea of any isolated issues that may crop up.