Macbook won't start

Hi,

I'd been having some trouble with my mac. It would constantly freeze, so I decided to repair permissions and the disk, but the problem persisted. I then updated MacOS software, but when it was supposed to restart, it didn't. I decided to start it up in verbose mode, and this is the last message seen before rebooting itself, and being stuck at the same place again:

Error reading driver 'System\Library\Extensions\IO80211Family.kext\Contents\PlugIns\AppleAirPortBrcm4311.kext\Contents\MacOS\'

I inserted the Snow Leopard disc while it was showing the apple logo, turned the computer off, and tried to boot the system (in order to run the disc repair utility) but it made no difference. I have no idea how to run the disc repair utility from there. After rebooting several times, I was never able to run the disc repair utility. Any hint on how to do this? I was able to get the disc out, but rebooting still gets stuck showing the same message as before, wait some minutes, and then do the whole thing again and again.

First try to boot your machine in SAFE Mode: As soon as you hear the chime, hold down the shift key and keep holding it until the gray Apple icon appears. If the machine boots OK in safe mode you can delete the bad driver that you indicated in your post.

If you can't boot to SAFE Mode, boot the machine with your Snow Leopard DVD. Insert the SL DVD and reboot. As soon as you hear the chime, hold down the option key until the gray Apple icon appears. It may take awhile but you'll see an icon of your DVD disk. Select it and press enter. The machine should then boot from the DVD. From here you can run Disk Utility by selecting Utilities from the top menu and then selecting Disk Utility.

Note that freezing is usually associated with a hardware problem. Most likely suspects are memory and graphics.

how to delete driver

Thank you for answering! I was able to run the disc repair utility, but when I tried to reboot, it got stuck by the same message as before. Is it possible to delete the driver using terminal? What would be the command?

Best regards,
D

Did you try the SAFE boot mode that I suggested above?

I did

Hi! Thank you for your response. I did try safe boot before but it would not restart. I tried after running the disc repair utility, but it didn't either. I don't know what else to do !

Have you got a time machine back-up?

A re-install of Leopard would be a good idea, but it would be better if you had a back-up in place just in case