MacBook Air not booting

[robhob]

Hi guys

To start, my Mac experience is VERY limited... my boss has a MacBook Air which needs to be upgrade from 10.5.8 to Snow Leopard to run Dragon Dictate. He never shuts the machine down... a colleague of mine decided to reboot before starting the upgrade. Now the machine won't boot. I've managed to get the machine to start booting to safe mode but so far what I'm getting is mostly the following error:
disk0s2: I/O error.
As the error message occasionally changes to it looks like it's trying to get somewhere. On of the more intelligent messages has been:
/system/library/CoreSerives/loginwindow.app/contents/MacOS/loginwindow[25]: Login Window Application Started -- Threaded auth

It's been running like this for about and hour and a half now.

What are my options... I'm in East London, there ain't no Apple service centre here.

Cheers

Rob

 

[DCS]

Hey Robhob,
Are you sure the colleague did not restart while the computer was updating?
You could try resetting the PRAM - this has sorted some weird problems that I have had in the past with my macpro.

Resetting PRAM and NVRAM
Shut down the computer.
Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
Turn on the computer.
Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
Release the keys.


But to be honest I/O errors usually suggest a hardware issue so the drive might be on its way out.

 

[robhob]

Thanks DCS. What does the Option key look like on the Air? I don't see anything obvious...

 

[DCS]

Hey - the option key is also known as the alt key. It will be at the bottom of the keyboard one or two keys away from the space bar.

Do you have the original install disks that came with the macbook air? Or does it even have a DVD drive?

 

[DCS]

Im off home now but here is something you can try if you have the original boot disk. Boot from the disk that came with your Mac. Hold C while booting. Select Disk Utility from top bar and repair permissions and verify the disk. Reboot normally and see if it works now.

 

[DCS]

One more thing to try - Safe boot. Hold down shift while booting to boot into safe mode. If this works, open Disk Utility from Utilities and repair your permissions and verify the disk.

 

[robhob]

About to try a repair using Disk Utility from the Utility menu.

 

[robhob]

Y'ello!

I've come right. Did a repair and then did an upgrade to Snow Leopard. Thanks for all your help.